For those of you who have been watching, The Sound Stage has been working in a “series within a series” every other episode or so since last November, featuring bands from our trip to Wuhan. AV Okubo is the last of those bands.

We rode the rails for this one, the pristine carriage of the new high-speed trains, with power-plant exhaust as our backdrop. Hear how AV Okubo visited a “drug street” in Austin during SXSW, but more importantly, listen to “Red Tank” off their latest album, Dynasty.

A few months ago (when it was still cold), Douban put on a small show at Café XP as part of their ongoing “Beyond the Billboard” series of concerts, this one featuring two bands from Chengdu – Sound and Fury (featured here, previously) and Hiperson. We’d never had a chance to interview a band from Chengdu before, let alone two, so naturally we were all over this like… like… like a Chinese nationalist on a contested floating rock?

Hiperson has been building tremendous buzz lately. They opened for P.K.14 for the Chengdu leg of their tour, to a great reception. It doesn’t get much better than that when it comes to indie street cred.

Their music is similar to P.K.14′s in that it’s dark, post-punk with threading guitar parts and cathartic, yelping vocals, but since Hiperson’s members are younger and more raw, they sound, well, younger and more raw. Also, the singer is female, which, no matter how good of a singer Yang Haisong is, is a height he’ll never be able to reach. He also did the sound engineering, incidentally, as he was recording the performance for a live release. If you notice the sound quality’s better than usual, that’s why.

Oh, and for all you haters, I get punched in the face in this video. Yeah.

Continuing our ongoing series in Wuhan is The One, a classic rock ‘n’ roll band following the likes of Chuck Berry and early Elvis Presley. They are also employees at the legendary VOX Livehouse, the only large-scale venue in a city with more than a million students.

One theme I never tire of exploring is how a country with so many young people is still mostly completely unaware of the musical explosion that is happening here…

About a month ago Douban, as part of its ongoing “Beyond the Billboard” event series, invited two bands from Chengdu to perform at Café XP in Beijing – Sound and Fury and Hiperson. I got to interview both bands for the show before the concert. The band featured here is the former, which plays shoegaze, a style that seems to have become very prominent with Chinese indie types late last year.

I went to Wuhan earlier this winter and interviewed five bands. This is the second of the five.

These guys play something that they define as “emo,” but more because of the “emotion” as it relates to music rather than the genre. “Chinese Football” is apparently an homage to the US band American Football, but is also an in-joke here, since the Chinese football team is a national disgrace.

Be sure to check out the lead singer’s vintage guitar collection in the video.

I’ve been interested in Chinese rap for a long time, not only because rap’s traditional focus on social problems and dirty lyrics seem to clash with Chinese political constraints, but linguistically the Chinese language has so many homonyms and rhymes one would think rapping would have endless variety. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a rapper guest on The Sound Stage… until now.

Shuangzi 爽子 is synonymous with Beijing rap, and has been spitting across the capital for years. Perhaps the Chinese Jay-Z, his sound has matured over the course of his career, and he has been known to tackle social issues in his lyrics. No stranger to blending musical styles, Shuangzi and his “Porcelain” band incorporate rock and folk sounds to form the smooth backbeats behind his articulate rhymes.

Ford the river of hell, cross over into the afterlife.

Recently The Sound Stage traveled to Wuhan to interview and film some of the top bands there. I’ve been hearing for a while about Wuhan’s music scene and wanted to see for myself what the fuss was about. This is hopefully just one of several future trips out of Beijing to check out musical developments in the rest of the country.

One of Wuhan’s oldest metal bands, Disappearing River, plays death metal, which is appropriate because its lead singer, Du Wei, works in a funeral home. With dead bodies. Let’s just say he’s got street cred. He’s also known as the “Godfather of Wuhan Metal.”

Disappearing River’s music makes for the perfect introduction to the modern music scene in Wuhan, which might be second in China only to Beijing. There will be four more episodes featuring Wuhan bands in the coming months, each showcasing a different style in this central Chinese industrial and transport hub.

The song featured tonight is The Uncrowned King, and starts after the interview.

A high-tech research lab is probably the last place you think you’d find a rock ‘n’ roll genius, but Fuzzy Mood is all the proof you need. Distilling mathematical theories into musical layman’s terms, this band will definitely put you into a better mood – with science!

Jacky Danny is one of the best rock bands in China, and here’s the video to prove it.

Here’s more of Jonathan Alpart’s The Sound Stage on CRI.

If music is an international language, French musician Jean Sebastien proves that Mandarin Chinese is becoming one, also. Although he plays in several bands, the focus of this episode is his “Djang San” persona, a folk artist playing traditional Chinese instruments, singing in the Chinese language, and mixing Western experimental and jazz influences into ancient melodies. See what Chinese music is, and can become, in the eyes of a talented outsider.

Here’s more of Jonathan Alpart’s The Sound Stage on CRI.

It’s Halloween weekeend! Celebrate with The Sound Stage’s first featured electronic act. You can probably beat their costumes this year, but you can’t beat their beats. Making a cameo: these guys.

Sophie Koh’s family comes from China, who then moved to Malaysia, then New Zealand, until finally settling down in Australia. From this wealth of cultural influences comes Sophie Koh’s unique and striking blend of indie pop. Backed by a crack team of musicians, she spread her jams during a recent national tour (her first) to nearly every city in China, and plans to return in six months.

Her songs are really, really good. Listen to them.

The Sound Stage Music Awards Show happened yesterday at Yugongyishan. Thanks to the bands that performed: The Twenties, Dirty Little Secret, Dream Spirit, Rolling Bowling, Misandao and Nova Heart. We’ll have more coverage later.

We’ve all tried to find just the fitting combination of words to express that feeling you get when you see a Chinese band hitting on all the right cylinders. But sometimes, the less that’s said, the better. Take this band.

No words, man. No words.

(Also check out: The Sound Stage Music Awards, September 6, 7:45 pm, Yugong Yishan.)

I actually auditioned to play bass for this band about a year ago after going on r/beijing looking to join a band. Turns out I’m more suited for making videos than playing the actual music, but I’m glad we got to finally have a successful cooperation! A Scot and two Americans play 所谓的 “indie metal” with a Chinese female singer.

Steely Heart (钢心乐队) has been serious contenders on the Beijing scene for nearly a decade. I recall seeing them back in 2008, and although I was unfortunately too preoccupied to properly give them the time of day, I’m happy to finally have come around and showcase their music with some actual effort.

To paraphrase them, they mix the directness of punk with some electronic elements, but all in all they try to keep it pretty simple. And it works. Well.