Hello Beijing Cream readers. My name is Josh and I work at this other website called SmartBeijing, where I write hagiographies about obscure noise musicians. The Tao is outsourcing these Friday Musical Outros to my colleague Morgan, but I’ve been stumping for Genjing all day, so I’ll keep it going here.
Today’s selection is a video shot on a camera phone of a lathe-cut vinyl record, because it’s 2013. The song is by Beijing bedroom-pop duo Dear Eloise, who don’t really do videos. They don’t do photos either, or ever play live. It’s a studio-only project featuring vocalist Sun Xia and her husband, P.K.14 frontman Yang Haisong (a very busy man). This nice little demo video was made by Alpine Decline, another husband-wife duo that has recorded multiple albums with Haisong since moving to Beijing in 2011.
“I’ll Be Your Mirror” is, of course, a cover of The Velvet Underground’s classic Lacanian love song, but here “cover” can be used in only the loosest sense, as Sun Xia reconfigures the entire vocal arrangement, tuning up Nico’s smoldering Germanic shout-whisper to a sweet falsetto set to her own beat. Yang Haisong shows a steady hand behind the boards as well as on guitar/bass/drums, wrapping the whole thing up in a neat (no, very hazy, but very pretty) little 4-plus-minute package. Stream the whole thing here.
Again, Dear Eloise never plays live, but you can pick up their newest 7″ at a release party tomorrow at The Other Place off Beiluoguxiang. You can also silk screen your own Dear Eloise tote bag, as Nini Sum of Shanghai design studio IdleBeats will be on site giving a free clinic. From 8 pm, hang around while local scene stars Zhang Shouwang (Carsick Cars), Zhou Nairen (Skip Skip Ben Ben), Wang Ge (VICE), and Jonathan Zeitlin of Alpine Decline spin lo-fi/shoegaze classics til the wee hours.
Oh, and P.K.14 drops their new album on Tuesday at Yugong Yishan. That’s kind of a big deal.
If you want to exchange tl;dr emails about musical miscellany, holler at me here: music@smartbeijing.com.
