Tag: China

P.K.14 – 1984 – 3rd December 2013

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Cat #: 151TZM

“1984” is P.K.14’s follow-up to “City Weather Sailing” and comes after a five-year hiatus. The name of the album was inspired by “1984”, the dystopian political fable and the final novel by English writer George Orwell (1903-1950). Most of Orwell’s works have a vitality that has only grown stronger over time. Likewise, P.K.14’s music also has an astonishing, enduring vitality that prompts the listener to think and come to his or her senses.

The band’s fifth studio album, “1984” was recorded in October 2012 at Electrical Audio in Chicago with the help of legendary American producer Steve Albini, whose previous collaborations include Nirvana, The Pixies, Cheap Trick and P.J. Harvey. All tracks were mixed in Sweden by producer Henrik Oja, who also worked on P.K.14’s first three albums.

In a departure from their usual recording process, for this album, the band first went to Sweden to rehearse for a week with Oja, who worked a lot on the guitar and organ. Together they put the final touches to the beautifully crafted sound that has now become P.K.14’s trademark.

As with Orwell’s novel, “1984” is a spotlight in the dark, with songwriter Yang Haisong’s haunting and subtly satirical lyrics speaking of harsh reality.

“You and me walked a long, long road / You and me once left the world behind us / You and me once heard their jeering laughs / They welcomed us to the world of being controlled” (You and Me)

“I’ve already forgotten everything that’s happened / I live in a world without truth / I’ve already forgotten everything that’s happened / That which is miraculous couldn’t be more miraculous / That which is dead couldn’t be more dead” (Crazed Woman)

Yang Haisong’s powerful and poetic texts – and subtexts – hold a mirror up to the world and warn of a life lived in “1984”, where just having a thought can be a very dangerous thing. If that day arrives, at least we know “the Public Kingdom For Teen” will be in our corner, singing a war cry. 

Alpine Decline – Night of the Long Knives – 10th October 2013

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Cat #: 155TZM

One year after spiriting off to China, Alpine Decline return with their fourth album, “Night of the Long Knives”. Descending from the high altitude visions of their previous records, the duo walks us gassed out and head numb through chaos and time sickness, deep into the ruins of ancient alleyways and naked skyscrapers. This time under the expansive sonics of producer (and China punk godfather) Yang Haisong, “Night of the Long Knives” is Alpine Decline surfacing from the Beijing haze maze at the height of their powers, crafting songs with the ghost-memory quality of myths and guiding us deep into the cinematic and stereoscopic landscape of their world, real and apocryphal.

Somehow sounding both clearer and denser than their previous albums, “Night of the Long Knives” opens with “Day 213”, a broken transmission from the site of the band’s crash landing. Stepping away from the rubble, we again walk with the duo through a landscape that is equal parts fascination and horror (although never cynical, never sneering). This fourth album presents some of the bands most accessible, nearly pop moments, masterfully folded into experimentation and sonic exploration. From the deep hooks of “Drunk on Crystal Fire” to the zombie lurch of “Industrial/Domestic”, “Night of the Long Knives” is an album that proves, once again, Alpine Decline are making some of the most creative, exciting albums anywhere on the planet.

Alpine Decline – Visualizations – 9th October 2013

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Cat #: 149TZM

In the Spring of 2010, their self-titled debut still cooling on the racks, Alpine Decline left the sun-stained Sierra Nevada to trek through China from the Eastern capital to the Himalaya peaks in Tibet. Returning to the studio – this time working with L.A. experimental artist M. Geddes Gengras (Robedoor, Pocahaunted, The Congos) – the duo poured all the captured spirits of their journey into “Visualizations”, a ten-track-trip that revels in their expanded visions.

Though clearly a rock album, the songs on “Visualizations” seem to emerge from a more fleshed out landscape, with the guitars and drums rising up from a mist of drones that are sometimes ghostly and sometimes the full-throated OM of the otherworld. The songwriting and melodic craftsmanship, with vocals ripped up and glued together on magnetic tape, is more fleshed out than their debut, their identity more firmly realized, from the heart-pounding “Enter the Bullet” and “CCTV” to the mournful dreams of “The Fever Subsides” and “Deeper into the Part”. “Visualizations” lets you travel with Alpine Decline through provinces of electronic waste and shadow-warped night markets, dropping you off at the final notes short of breath but exhilarated.

Alpine Decline – Disappearance – 8th October 2013

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Cat #: 152TZM

Something is amiss in the world of Alpine Decline. Just months after releasing their sophomore album “Visualizations”, the band returned to M. Geddes Gengras’s Green Machines studio in East Los Angeles to record “消失/DISAPPEARANCE”. Whereas the previous album found the duo wandering through some ghost world without a map, on “消失/DISAPPEARANCE” they are in control, pulling you down by your ankles into their deep deep sleep. Opening track “The Anesthesiologist” twists radically from bone-crushing guitar and drums into a warped brain-burning seven minute dronescape. When it finally lets you get up, brush yourself off and look around, you are undeniably in uncharted territory.

Haunting melodies, vocals that flutter in the ripples of a gas leak, cryptic guitars, bleeding synthesizers, and hypnotic drumming combine into something both headphone-ready and made to make you move. This is rock music for the mythically inclined. “An Accident” and “Now You Believe in Vanishing” are radio singles for an FM that never existed, and the band fearlessly steer the ship into the polyrhythmic got-down-on-the-one bump of “The Other Side” and the strobed-out hypnosis of album closer “Frontier Religion”. By now, putting on an Alpine Decline album has become a kind of ritual passage, stepping into a space both instantly familiar and completely otherworldly, but when the tape reels stop spinning and the machines cool down, the band is nowhere to be found. Before the album hit the pressing plant, Alpine Decline themselves had disappeared, not to resurface again for almost a year in the rubble and chaos on the outskirts of Beijing. 

Alpine Decline – 7th October 2013

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Cat #: 145TZM

From the opening strains of “Encounter”, the first track on Alpine Decline’s self-titled debut, the listener is guided across the chasm and into a narrative just beyond comprehension. With a more immediate and bracing sound than the albums to follow, “Alpine Decline” draws attention to the band’s ability to craft unique melodies while bloodying your nose with buzzing guitars and twenty-ton drums.

From their previous incarnations in various L.A. bands, the duo doesn’t so much rise up from the ashes, but rather smear the ashes on like war paint and go marauding into the night. From the spaghetti western kill guitar and church bells of “The Pilgrim Got Drunk” to the blissed escape of album closer “Stole Away”, Alpine Decline’s first foray is here and gone in seven tracks that lay the blueprint for the work to come.

Imported under license from Alpine Decline. We’re all in this together!

Li Daiguo – Music For Advertisements – 20th April 2013

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Cat #: 122TZM

Li Daiguo has carved out a niche within Mainland China that few others occupy, that of skilled improvisational artist (he has a reputation for leaving jaws on the floor, layman and critic alike), musical polymath (proficient at a dozen traditional instruments as well as a deft vocal gymnast) and dynamic live performer known for his eclectic collaborations with a rich roster of characters and ensembles, including transgressive Japanese butoh dancers, fellow all-star experimentalists and other lunatics that he meets when he is busking, an activity of which he is quite fond.

Music for Advertisements sees Li presenting a series of sonic advertisements for seven locations that the 32-year-old appreciated during his six years in Chengdu, the southwestern regional hotspot, creative hub and capital of the country’s infamous Sichuan Province.

Using instrumentation dominated by his signature pipa and erhu and accentuated by a lush arsenal that incorporates everything from the cello to artfully-placed beatboxing, Li skillfully brings the 2300-year-old city to life with this dynamic series of self-produced sonic snapshots characterized by sudden and drastic changes of emotion and instrumentation.

“Music for Advertisements is about emotions that I had and observed that were associated in my mind with things going on around Chengdu,” Li said. “Not necessarily big things or events, but just little things that you might notice and have a feeling about—like the way that traffic moves or the atmosphere in hospital hallways.”

Highlights include the chilling pipa-spiked “Green Ram Daoist Temple”; the austere beauty of “The ‘Beautiful Thai Girls’ Under the Old South Gate Bridge,” a brief cinematic sketch that uses layers of hypnotic strings to conjure images of the secretive nocturnes who congregate around the city’s ancient landmark, and “Chengdu Tuberculosis Hospital”, a jaunty, fiddle-fueled effort that spins a resonant tale of mortality within its ephemeral-yet-memorable running time.

With Li as the city’s unofficial composer, Chengdu has never sounded so good. 

LI DAIGUO makes music with the following instruments: pipa, nanyin pipa, members of the huqin family (including the erhu, sihu and banhu erxian), a variety of ethnic flutes (including the hulusi, koudi, bawu, xiao and the nanxiao, the Chinese predecessor of the better-known Japanese shakuhachi), the Zimbabwean mbira, violin, viola, cello, beatboxing and overtone singing.

Based in: Dali, Yunnan, China
For fans of: John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Abing (阿炳)

Various Artists – 噪音 Noise – 1st February 2013

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Cat #: 089TZM

In 2004, Sub Jam established it’s sub-label Kwanyin Records. 
In 2010 Kwanyin starts the “Mini Kwanyin” series. 
CDR, limited copies, unified packages, hand produced. 
The value of CD (or CDR, vinyl etc) is not just as the medium of music but how it builds a relationship with people. 
This is a series of guerrilla publishing – it’s awaking more sounds.

Compiled by Yan Jun and co-released with Mini Kwanyin (China) and tenzenmen (Australia)

Fat City/Lu Xin Pei – Super Split – 20th November 2012

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Cat #: 117TZM

Fat City and LuXinPei are noise and alternative rock bands. Because two bands share each other’s player or idea and been a longtime friends, they make this SUPER SPLIT together. This split is a collection of the bands’ early songs and soundtrack. Though you can find many music genres here the two bands still keep their love to experiment with various sounds and structures in their songs.
CD version is factory made CD-r.
Imported under license in Australia from Zhu Wenbo by tenzenmen.
And thanks to Nisky to provide the cover picture.

All Songs’ Instruments and Vocal by Fat City and Lu Xin Pei
Record & Mix & Mastering by G.B.J.D. Records
Studio : Kill the Poor, Beijing , China
Date: Apr.-Jun. 2011
Album Cover Picture by Nisky, Shanghai, China

X is Y – Never Sever/LP – 18th August 2012

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Cat #: 111TZM

In transferring their powerful live act to disc on their latest recordings — “Never Sever” and “LP” — X is Y have taken a self-consciously pious DIY approach, endeavoring to capture and convey the honest minutiae of recorded performance with the intensity of emotional surrender.

The four tracks here are the Never Sever EP. Buy the CD package to also receive the first album on CD.

Never Sever was originally released thru our great pals at miniless – mini019.