Josh Feola

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July 7, 2009

Cosmic wave

One-off weird music nights are rapidly becoming the Gauze to my Jay Bil. I can't remember the last noise/drone/etc show I went to in the US (well maybe I can) but I've already made 2kolegas Tuesdays a regular thing. Last night was kicked off by this French dude with his floor-camp setup of various chirping and blinking devices. He had this one synth panel thing from Japan that was a 16x16 grid of little white dots that would display cool animations as he programmed along, very beautiful actually.

The highlight of the night was a Japanese-Korean band called 10 ("我们名字是...十"). My new kolegas-affiliated friend Michael nailed it when he described them as "Japanese Bjork meets Kraftwerk." I couldn't tell if the girl (on the left) was on drugs or just cool, but she gave off this infectious weirdo vibe that successively transformed the set from pretty good to really good to the most fun I'm likely to have this week. The musical setup was pretty complex, with the dude on the right running some simple 808-style beats and modulating/looping the girl's mic, into which she inputed her voice (which had a considerable range on its own), balloons, squeak toys, a kazoo, and various other economical noise-emitting items. The best parts of the set were when she would lapse into the kind of deskilled, transcendent shredding you can only pull off if you're a cute Japanese girl with red Kanye glasses and a red panda umbrella and a red plastic keyboard guitar.


After 10 was a set of fairly enjoyable 8-bit gizmodgetry from these four guys, but the place was pretty much cleared out by then. I hung with Yan Jun a bit and discussed the possibility of playing one of these sparsely attended events, now I need to work on my entry point. First I need to go back to work.

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Filed under  //   10   2kolegas   Beijing   China  

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June 30, 2009

Chinese noise

Last night I met Yan Jun, a Beijing-based poet/musician/organizer. I dropped off some copies of the then new Black Monk LP for Yan Jun at a record store in 798 when I was in Beijing in 2007, but didn't end up seeing him in person. I got back in touch with him the other day. Luckily he remembered me, and told me about a weekly experimental music night at a bar a couple of miles away from my apartment.

I biked there solo and started talking to some Australians sitting out front, one of whom happened to be Aaron Hull, a touring field recorder/droner. His set was very good. Pretty atmospheric and amorphous but with some well-placed field samples and the slightest (slightest) hint of deep house rhythm to provide some structure.



Following Aaron were two Chinese noise bands that were virtually identical, except the second one had an additional dude to spit into a mic and flail around more than the others. These bands were ok, nothing special. I did like when this dude (above) started screaming into a tube. Wasn't moved by the laptop guy who looked like he was reading unimpressive emails the whole time.



And what should I pass on my ride home but 黑太阳酒吧... maybe next Tuesday.

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Filed under  //   2kolegas   Aaron Hull   Beijing   China   noise  

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