Where: 2 Kole­gas
When: Thu 10 May, 21:00
How Much: 80 RMB
Who: aus, Cuushe, Cokiyu (More Info)
Why: My expla­na­tion of what I like about this sort of music needs a lit­tle bit of shared his­tory. If you’ve never played any of the Kata­mari games (Playsta­tion and now iPhone), go have a lis­ten to this song on Xiami. But it’s not like the guys play­ing at this Flau night made that music, it’s just that it reminds me a lot of some of the tracks. It’s a lot of ambi­ent, glitchy elec­tronic music that doesn’t seem like the sort of thing I’d like, but I do. I absolutely love it. I’m not sure how cap­ti­vat­ing a live set will be, but that’s part of the rea­son I want to go. It will be inter­est­ing, and the music will be great.

Get out and see it! The only other stand-out event I would rec­om­mend (if you like that sort of thing) is another elec­tronic group, this time one that doesn’t use any lap­tops. Swiss group Syn­drome WPW play Hot Cat Club on Sun­day, 40RMB.

Most years, May fes­ti­val sea­son is a hair-tearing, brain-draining, heart-wrenching deci­sion mak­ing period, com­plete with printed-out line­ups and timeta­bles and fig­ur­ing out if you can really be in Tongzhou and wher­ever MIDI is held all in one day. And on years when Ditan Folk Fes­ti­val throws its hat into the Labor Day calamity, it gets even worse. Thank­fully, as far as I can tell, this year is an absolute no-brainer.

Day 1, April 29. Straw­berry Fes­ti­val, Tongzhou Canal Park
With­out Ditan Folk on this par­tic­u­lar day, it’s between heavy hit­ters Straw­berry and MIDI. And while MIDI’s first day has a good array of hard rock and metal groups, there’s noth­ing we can’t see at MAO Live House within the next month or so. And even if things were dif­fer­ent, they’d be up against some seri­ously good acts at Strawberry’s open­ing day. Every sin­gle stage is jam-packed with awe­some bands I’d pay good money to see else­where. The Straw­berry stage has head­lin­ing for­eign act, Blonde Red­head, along­side Hang­gai, Re-TROS and New Pants. The Love Stage has indie pop rock­ers Con­ve­nience Store, the blind mas­ter of folk Zhou Yun­peng and rarely-seen punk rock­ers Reflec­tor. The new Planet Stage has smaller-name for­eign acts like Arms & Legs (US), Jeans Team (UK) as well as Hong Kong’s Killer­soap. Plus, the Over­load Stage kicks MIDI’s ass for metal groups, with vet­eran act Voodoo Kungfu along­side younger (but still just as hard­core) A.J.K. And even the elec­tronic stage has stepped up its game, with Migas’ res­i­dent Nass­dak, Lantern favorite Elvis.T and Ital­ian new­com­ers and Haze reg­u­lars The Pipesmok­ers. As though that wasn’t enough, they also have their School of Rock stage with fresh young bands out for some fes­ti­val expe­ri­ence, the exper­i­men­tal Cha stage and the “Straw­berry Life” exhi­bi­tion hall which will host cul­tural activ­i­ties and events. There’s no rea­son not to get your ass to Tongzhou on the first day of May holidays.

Day 2, April 30. Ditan Folk Fes­ti­val, Ditan Park
It’s hard for a lit­tle folk fes­ti­val in a park to win out over mosh-pit won­ders like MIDI and behe­moth jug­ger­nauts like Straw­berry, but Ditan Folk Fes­ti­val has a solid chance this year. Even though my favorite band (Res­i­dence A, in case you had for­got­ten) is play­ing at MIDI, and some of my indie pop indul­gences (Perdel and The Life Jour­ney) are play­ing Straw­berry, my heart belongs at Ditan. Two of my favorite folk acts are on that day, with Yun­nan wun­derkids Shan­ren and always-interesting exper­i­men­tal artist Xiao He likely clos­ing out the evening. Blue­grass star­lets The Randy Abel Sta­ble are also per­form­ing, as well as the very tal­ented French multi-instrumentalist Zhang Si’an. All in all, weather per­mit­ting it’ll be a lovely day to just sit in the grass lis­ten­ing to qual­ity music amongst your friends. Stay in the city and recoup some of your energy.

Day 3, May 1. MIDI, Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park
I know that the word “Shunyi” makes peo­ple shud­der at the thought of get­ting taxis to and from, but it shouldn’t be too dif­fi­cult. MIDI has a 10-minute shut­tle bus to and from the Fengbo (俸伯) sub­way sta­tion, which will be great on the way there, but I do worry about the fact that the last train is at 22:11; the last train at the Line 13 inter­change is 23:24, and that will likely get you to Dongzhi­men after the last train any­where else leaves. Still, it’s doable, and I’m sure there’ll be a plethora of heiche will­ing to get you home. At any rate, trans­porta­tion issues aside, the lineup is going to be a good one. The VANS stage plays hosts to Xi’an hip-hop crosstalk­ers (who famously cussed out Japan in their last appear­ance in Bei­jing) Black Head, one of my favorite high-energy punk rock­ers SUBS and old stal­wart of the scene, Mis­er­able Faith. Other stages host Aussie hard­core rock­ers Arcane Saints, vet­er­ans of the punk scene Misan­dao, the bizarre addi­tion of indie pop-rock group Perdel and for­eign rock­ers The Amaz­ing Insur­ance Sales­men. Should be a great night, and check out the pho­tos of the park — it looks amazing.

It’s worth not­ing that Day 2 & 3 are eas­ily inter­change­able, if you don’t like Xiao He or really don’t think Black Head are worth it. MIDI April 30 brings Mos Def, Res­i­dence A, Muma & Third Party, Voodoo Kungfu and folk artist Hao Yun. Ditan May 1 has solid Ningxia acts like Li Dong and Buyi, as well as funk out­fit Afrokoko Roots and folk leg­ends Traveler.

The month of JUE March started off with a bang, with an epic show send­ing off some of Beijing’s most-loved bands. I skipped out on most of the show, since all I really wanted to see was the new Rus­tic lineup, but it was packed with pun­ters and that’s always a good thing. Rus­tic was great as usual, though there really is some­thing to be said for the dynamic that Ricky and Lucifer had on stage. I think Ricky leav­ing, while the right choice for him artis­ti­cally, hurts both bands a little.

When 2 Kole­gas re-opened after the epic win­ter months, it was fit­ting that it was a Ningxia night. I really didn’t care who was on the lineup, though it was all the old faves — Buyi, Wu & The Side-Effects, WHAI, Lidong. I think I just spent most of the evening wan­der­ing around say­ing how much I had missed 2 Kolegas…

The Sally Can’t Dance exper­i­men­tal fes­ti­val was held over two days at “the new D-22″ at Di’anmen, which made it dou­bly as inter­est­ing as it would have been by itself. I posted about the space, but the music was great as well. I went for the sec­ond, less harsh noise day and really enjoyed myself, and was happy to dis­cover that Li Daiguo’s music was just as amaz­ing as every­one had always told me.

Con­tin­u­ing in the theme of Sally Can’t Dance, the first JUE event I attended was the Tea Rocker’s Quin­tet, which was just as amaz­ing as you’d imag­ine a band with Xiao He, Li Daiguo and Yan Jun would be. It was held in a gor­geous guqin stu­dio in 798, and it was a delight­ful after­noon show filled with tea, music and relaxation.

Also at JUE’s 798 extrav­a­ganza that week­end, I man­aged to catch David Thomas Broughton, a won­der­ful folky singer-songwriter from Britain via North Korea who does a won­der­ful job loop­ing sounds and weav­ing them into amaz­ing songs. There were a cou­ple of inci­dents where he threw things (a water bot­tle, his shoe) that I found more than a lit­tle odd, but it was for­given for how great he sounded. I also stayed for a while after­wards to catch Lucifer’s qui­eter solo side, but they were mostly cov­ers and I left when he started to cover Adam Green.

And then it was JUE, with their big first act of the fes­ti­val, Death Cab For Cutie. This is, of course, not Death Cab but Life Jour­ney, because the entire crowd was com­prised of exu­ber­ant Amer­i­can youths, which is fine when you’re one your­self but mostly just makes you feel alien­ated if you’re not. The band put on a great show, though, and musi­cally I thor­oughly enjoyed it.

Post-rock night at Mao was just what it was adver­tised as: some of Beijing’s best post-rock musi­cians per­form­ing one after another. I got to see Spar­row, who I haven’t seen for nearly two years. They were just as good as ever, as was Glow Curve, but pen­ta­tonic and Grind­ing Ear weren’t really my favorites. How­ever, we were hang­ing with an ex-member of pen­ta­tonic and got lots of juicy band gos­sip that I have totally for­got­ten by now.

This was billed as Black Cat Bone’s last show, since Jon Camp­bell was in town for The Book­worm and his book tour, and it was pretty damn good. It started after 1AM, and it was a total change from the zen-like night at Mao, but with enough fire in the belly it was jam-packed fun, as those mas­ters of blues always are.

Another JUE offer­ing, this was a snap deci­sion on my part. With Jianghu being so close to my house, and the fact that singer-songwriters are a par­tic­u­lar weak­ness of mine, I went down to see Court­ney Wing after din­ner and I do not regret the deci­sion. It was a low-key night, with a bunch of peo­ple at some alumni party who didn’t even real­ize where they were, and the music was great. I also got to meet the lovely Qu Want­ing, who had played a sold-out show at Yugong Yis­han the night before.

Chape­lier Fou is one of those artists you really have to see to believe. Lis­ten­ing to his tracks is great, but describ­ing him is dif­fi­cult and doesn’t do him jus­tice. He’s an elec­tronic artist who uses the vio­lin, gui­tar, his voice, and what­ever else he can get his hands on to cre­ate not only inter­est­ing pieces of music but also ones that wouldn’t go astray at clubs. Check out his myspace for now, and if/when he’s back in Bei­jing, catch him. Seriously.

I have never really con­sid­ered myself a fan of trip-hop, though that’s prob­a­bly because I never really gave it a chance. It’s a good genre, though I will admit it’s not the best one to see per­formed live. I enjoyed myself at the AM444 show, but I think the music lends itself to cre­at­ing an atmos­phere in head­phones rather than in per­son. I didn’t stick around for ROM. Enough said.

One of the most antic­i­pated Shang­hai bands, though, were Rain­bow Dan­ger Club. It’s too bad I had been to Great Leap for the chili cook-off because that meant I was a lit­tle more than tipsy when I got to 2 Kole­gas. Still, I remem­ber hav­ing an amaz­ing time, even if it took me a while to remem­ber who was actu­ally there with me. I do remem­ber pogo-ing to RDC, and hav­ing the promised Jager shots with the guys from Friend or Foe. It was a super night and while I wish I had been more sober, I’m also glad I had that water break and got through it like a trooper.

Jef from New Noise had told me about how pop­u­lar pg.lost was with the Chi­nese crowd, but I sort of didn’t believe him. But when I turned up to a totally packed-out Yugong Yis­han, the proof was right in front of me. It wasn’t as fun as it could have been, stuck watch­ing the show on a pro­jec­tor, but the music was great — I def­i­nitely really enjoy their brand of post-rock. And yet again, I close out the month with a Swedish post-rock group…

I’ve been won­der­ing when MIDI would finally get around to announc­ing… well, any­thing at all for their May hol­i­day fes­ti­val. I’ve had to watch Shang­hai get their venue and lineup infor­ma­tion released all at once, while the only thing we knew for cer­tain was that if MIDI was hap­pen­ing in Bei­jing, it would be on the same dates as every other year. But now we know more: MIDI will be held at Haid­ian Park, mark­ing a return to the festival’s orig­i­nal home in 2005. It will be back with the usual dynas­tic stages — Tang, Song, Qing and Yuan — and the elec­tronic music will be han­dled by O2Culture/Yen. The whole festival’s theme is PM2.5, to focus the festival-goer’s minds on the envi­ron­ment and pub­lic health (inso­much as it can be focused on any­thing but rock­ing out).

And of course, there’s no offi­cial artist lineup, but Shang­hai already has inter­na­tional acts Back­yard Sur­geons, Lit­tle Fish and Marky Ramone’s Blitzkreig, as well as big local bands Muma & Third Party, Brain Fail­ure and Mis­er­able Faith on the lineup. Fin­gers crossed we get in on most of that action, too. But if you want to check out a totally unof­fi­cial lineup that’s in the works and will likely change a thou­sand times before the bands actu­ally get on stage, check out this post at Rock in China.

If you’re on the pangbianr.com mail­ing list, you already know this, but I got some sad news in that email today. Ray­ing Tem­ple is shut­ting down their cur­rent loca­tion. This isn’t the first time they’ve been evicted from their home, of course; as all good music venues, there have always been clashes with the neigh­bors. But it’s sad that they’ll be mov­ing on from this home in par­tic­u­lar, because man hav­ing a music venue at a fish hatch­ery was cool. But you can get there for their “Not Last Party” (which it is; at this home) this Sat­ur­day, which rather throws a span­ner in the works for fans of Ray­ing Tem­ple and Rain­bow Dan­ger Club. It’s not their usual exper­i­men­tal noise art, either, but bands we know and love, like Glow Curve and Kang Mao’s folk side-project, Bye Bye and Thanks For All The Fish. What­ever deci­sion you make, though, this will be the last oppor­tu­nity to get out to Tongzhou, say good­bye to the fish, and catch some good music.