A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

Being a gig goer in Bei­jing for Chi­nese New Year has been a bit of a sad affair. For the week lead­ing up to and the week of the new year hol­i­days, there was lit­tle play­ing and noth­ing inspir­ing. The only thing that the hol­i­day has been good for is pre­dic­tions in the expat media of bands to watch in the upcom­ing lunar year — com­plete with “Eye of the Tiger” puns.

The most inter­est­ing of all the expat arti­cles was, how­ever, the one in Time Out, which took the opin­ions of lots of peo­ple in the indus­try — from venue man­agers to record label exec­u­tives to music school founders. Though these opin­ions were, of course, slightly biased towards the label’s artists or the venue’s pro­moted bands, both Pet Con­spir­acy and Nanwu got nods from peo­ple out­side of their inter­ested parties.

Inter­est­ing news also fil­tered through this arti­cle. Jiang Nanyan from 13 Months Records reported that one of my favorite groups, Shan Ren, are get­ting an image revamp this year, while Shen Lihui from Mod­ern Sky con­firmed that top bands New Pants, Queen Sea Big Shark, and Re-TROS are releas­ing new albums “soon”. Shen Lihui also noted electro-pop group Big­ger Bang, also pop­u­lar with the Time Out pun­ters, and I have to say that given Mod­ern Sky’s track record, I will def­i­nitely be keep­ing an eye out for them.

Here are the upcom­ing gigs for these bands:

Big­ger Bang! play­ing with Free The Birds (Ziyo) and Chas­ing Star, March 8 at Yugong Yis­han.
Pet Con­spir­acy play­ing March 26 at Yugong Yis­han.

Shan Ren and Nanwu have no upcom­ing gigs, but we should be hear­ing from them soon if Jiang Nanyan is right.

ETA: You can now read the arti­cle online for your­self here. Check it out! (Thanks, Jennifer!)