A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

I have had the mis­for­tune this win­ter to always man­age to choose the cold­est night of the week to head out to D-22, and last night was no excep­tion. At least this time, I made the trip by taxi and not train, but the fact still remains. Unlike pre­vi­ous chilly nights out Wudaokou way, though, there was no draft inside D-22. There was no room for a draft, as it seemed like every punk rock fan in the area had got­ten sick of there being no gigs for two weeks in a row and had packed into the tiny lit­tle area. It was great, though, and just how I like my venues — packed to the rafters with no emer­gency exit strat­egy. The extra level of dan­ger adds a cer­tain je ne sais quoi to the evening.

Fire safety codes aside, the night went well. I arrived towards the end of Fat City’s set which, to be hon­est, worked out well. “Exper­i­men­tal noise” is not a genre I can very eas­ily get into, and I’m sorry to say that see­ing it per­formed live didn’t help its case at all. They did make some inter­est­ing sounds, and when­ever a song started out I was inspired to lis­ten, but after four min­utes of effec­tively the same sounds being manip­u­lated, with­out lyrics to accom­pany them, I was far more inter­ested in my beer and my gig mate than the music.

Then, just before 11PM, Our­self Beside Me was up. I’d heard of the band a while ago, back when I first found out that D-22 had given rise to the Maybe Mars record label and was check­ing out all the bands that called the venue their home. I ran into them again when look­ing up Hang On The Box and see­ing where the mem­bers had gone after­wards, but I had never both­ered lis­ten­ing to their music since I never saw them listed as play­ing in Bei­jing. As soon as they took the stage, though, drain­ing their beers before they started to play, I knew I was in for a good show. Read more