Tag: Snapline

Turning Wine Into Water – 23rd December 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

A filter for your fine wine
Clever ways to pass the time
Background noise, it overtakes
A price to pay for your mistakes
Filter out your reputation
Open to reinterpretation
A vessel holding temporary
A vintage wine exemplary

…people sell their freedom as a necessity for getting rid of the anxiety which is too great to bear…

Rollo May

Today I’m feeling:
Happy and relaxed
Today I’m grateful for:
My student’s relatively good moods. I can’t quite comprehend what Christmas means for these kids but, being what they are, they take full advantage of the generally relaxed atmosphere.
The best thing about today was:
Talking with Eing, Nicha, Nam and Dena outside class. They were in a friendly and curious mood and with our mixed language skills we managed to communicate together for a good ten minutes. This felt like the place where real learning, trying and experiencing, happens. In the classroom is just a setup, a prep.
What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?
I’m actually writing this on Saturday morning as I fell asleep listening to music last night. Time ran out of my control.
I also got a message from Bronwyn that Hayden had to confront a potential burglar at home on Thursday night. I called him, he was a bit shaken by the experience but he seemed to handle everything well really. His covid symptoms aren’t so bad this time but he has to stay away from work for two weeks which is leaving him short of cash. Despite everything, and his voice being a little down, he seemed pretty positive. Being far away and being a dad to an adult means relinquishing control and letting your child deal with the good and the bad in the world. Watching personalities develop is an interesting experiment. I will do it with Hayden for the rest of my life. I will do it with my students for a year or two of theirs.
Something I learned today?
I learned that Martin Atkins has a post-punk museum in Chicago. He was talking about it on the Curious Creatures podcast. I communicated briefly with Martin a few years ago when getting hold of the Snapline album that he mixed. In interviews I’ve seen with him online he has a certain bravado, a barrier he constructs but his articulation with the hosts of the podcast was much more sincere and I liked him a lot more.
How are you celebrating the holidays this year?
As can be expected this app (Day One) is a western Christian-centric app, despite being available to people anywhere in the world and it expects you to be having holidays about now. And I’m not. So I’ll be working as these are just normal days here.

I took this picture because I started checking these new Ai image-making apps that are getting lots of press. AI writing and all sorts of apps can be generated easily and with speech too, it practically means webpages of information can be artificially built. What will be ‘real’ or considered real? This image was created by entering Gormenghast Lord Titus. The image is unique and interesting but did I make it? I want to take the image and draw my own version of it. Will it be mine then? Maybe.

Snapline – Paper General – 3rd February 2015

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Cat #: 173TZM

Welcome to the future! Snapline dusts off one from the vaults, a new two-song slammer with material from the pre-Phenomena (2012), pre-Future Eyes (2011) times, created in their hearts & minds ca. 1982 for a series of never-aired infomercials canonizing China’s proud martial might and technological prowess.

Yes, though the band’s members had only just been born, they were already on the vanguard. This is the sound of disaffected technical university dropouts graduates with honors. This is what’s been in the water. “Paper General” blasts it off at march speed, written for the happiest army in human history. Tens of thousands of men and women standing, smiling like the technicolor postcard you once saw in a kitsch shop. Operators Li Qing and Li Weisi stack the kosmische filter sweeps and pure analog noise generators with Snapline’s trademark loose cohesion. You can almost hear their fingers at the switches! While the picture adjusts (it never quite does), Chen Xi barks the orders. “Turn your radar ON!” His voice is almost lost in the static. Which is the signal and which is the noise? “It could be thousands of ways / to say a word in different tones.”

Next stop: “Wasteland.” The path forward seems infinite but your trip lasts just over seven minutes. Scientific progress sounds like a rickety synthesizer shuttling too close to the sun. Even the control melts. The rhythm is vaporized. It never mattered. Return to earth and you no longer recognize what you once called home. Spin it, flip it, repeat.

Snapline – Phenomena – 2nd August 2012

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Cat #: 112TZM

By the time of release in the US, Snapline’s ‘Future Eyes’ (produced by Martin Atkins (PiL/Pigface)) didn’t meet the constantly evolving vision of the band.
With the support of Beijing label Maybe Mars, the band re-recorded many of the tracks and added others to complete something that more clearly expressed their artistic direction.
For Snapline ‘Phenomena’is a recording of clarity, keeping all the sounds pure – presence, tone, rhythm and frequency are all united. Vibration, sound, recording, phenomena – Snapline softly mix all these things together.

Snapline – Future Eyes – 1st August 2012

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Cat #: 107TZM

Back in 2009 Snapline started asking questions such as ‘if there was a future eye – what would it see?’ Would it see a dirty industrial city? A crowded street? A beam from a huge dome?

At this time Martin Atkins (PiL/Pigface) picked out Snapline to work with and create this album “Future Eyes” featuring 11 possibilities and thoughts.

The album was only released in the US on Atkins own label Invisible Records. Snapline, however, didn’t want to see it released anywhere else at the time as their own vision was constantly changing.

tenzenmen is proud to now make this recording available in Australia, at the same time as the latest Snapline album Phenomena – their own revision of the future eyes.

Alternative China – 4th April 2012

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Alternative China tumblr

Snapline, Tiny Mix Tapes, Josh Feola, Mao Livehouse, Deadly Cradle Death, Live Music Beijing, Skip Skip Ben Ben, Birdstriking, Chui Wan, White+, Matthew Niederhauser, MDNPhoto, Backyard Surgeons, Shanghai 24/7, Layabozi, Hedgehog, Meat Sucks, Rock In China, Cool Hunting, Xiao He, Yan Jun, Li Daiguo, Tea Rockers Quintet, Torturing Nurse, Deaf Sparrow, Duck Fight Goose, World Of Chinese, King Ly Chee, Shanghaiist, Mr Fossy, Rustic, Pitchfork, Red Rock, Beijing Daze, Jon Campbell, Post Rock, Time Out, Pairs, Foxy Digitalis, UndergroundHK, Bomb Shop, Genjing, SXSW, Core In China