Hello Beijing Cream readers. My name is Josh and I work at this other website called Smart Beijing, where I conduct tl;dr interviews with bassists. The Tao is outsourcing these Friday Musical Outros to my colleague Morgan, but he’s schmoozing at some conference now. So here I am.

School Bar has been killing it this year. In my book it’s Beijing’s #1 live rock ‘n’ roll venue at the moment. Pretty much the only place you can walk up on a random day of the week and be statistically likely to find a decent local band and at least a dozen drunken teenagers in leather jackets just living the dream. You should go there on Saturday because all the bands playing are worth your time & money & some potential liver damage.

Lowbow — featured above in a great black-and-white live video shot by Beijing-based photographer Jeff Yiu — is leading the charge, joined by Yan Tiao, Xin Ma You Jiang, and Streets Kill Strange Animals. The latter just shot a music video on a public bus; keeping that one in the back pocket for the next time I have to do one of these here Friday Outro joints.

The Saturday gig kicks off at 9 pm and will run you 40 rmb at the door. That’s 10 kuai a band, pretty solid deal.

If you want to talk for an hour about musical miscellany you can email me here:music@smartbeijing.com.

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.

Hello Beijing Cream readers. My name is Josh and I work at this other website called Smart Beijing, where I write tl;dr music articles on a weekly basis. The Tao is outsourcing these Friday Musical Outros to my colleague Morgan, but he went a little too hard at Pet Shop Boys last night. So here I am.

Throwing a curveball your way today, mostly just to fuck with King Tubby. The video above features Changsha-born nomadic dancer Beio performing along with experimental laptop musician Vavabond and free improv guitarist Li Jianhong, aka Mind Fiber. Beio is doing butoh, a Japanese dance style that involves wearing white full-body paint and moving really, really, really fucking slowly. Jianhong is just squeezing weird tones out of his guitar with the volume dialed down to about a 3, and Vavabond is doing her usual quadraphonic Max/MSP granular synthesis thing. Hey, we can’t just write about ’90s nü-metal and DJs every week.

You can catch Beio and Vavabond tonight at Zajia Lab.

If you want to talk for an hour about musical miscellany you can email me here: music@smartbeijing.com.

Hello Beijing Cream readers. My name is Josh and I work at this other website called Smart Beijing, where I write tl;dr music articles on a weekly basis. The Tao is outsourcing these Friday Musical Outros to my colleague Morgan, but he’s at Migas or some shit. So I got you this week.

Today we meet Daikaiju. If you haven’t come across them yet, here’s the deal: Daikaiju is a four-piece surf rock band from Huntsville, Alabama, USA that wears Peking Opera masks while playing, and pretends to be a gigantic Japanese B-movie monster in interviews. When I asked them why they wear Peking Opera masks, they responded, “Daikaiju wear Peeking Operation masks when executing peeking operations!!!” Awesome.

Indie industry circle-jerker Pitchfork gives them the thumbs up, describing their sound as a “massive wave of prime surf” infused with “prog muscle,” “skanking dub riddim,” and “a jazz-like sense of how to phrase a solo.” I guess that somehow aligns with Daikaiju’s own description of their sound: “Beautiful radiation of hyper-dimensional springy sound creates divine psychic wind for your special protection.”

In any case, you can expect a pretty crazy live act, if fresh accounts from their trail of destruction around the Mainland are to be believed. In Shanghai the drummer moved his kit from the stage to the floor while still playing it or something. They wrap up their inaugural China tour in Beijing with two shows: tonight at XP (50 rmb) and tomorrow at Temple (free).

Bonus viddy: Daikaiju is touring with Shanghai’s Round Eye, who made one of the best music videos to ever come out of China earlier this year. Treat yourself:

If you want to talk for an hour about musical miscellany you can email me here: music@smartbeijing.com.

Josh writes for Smart Beijing and Pangbianr.

Hello Beijing Cream readers. My name is Josh and I work at this other website called Smart Beijing, where I write tl;dr music articles on a weekly basis. The Tao is outsourcing these Friday Musical Outros to my comrade Morgan, but he’s doing some other shit right now. So you’re stuck with me.

Here’s a taste of this Saturday’s show by Shanghai’s Friend or Foe. This video was shot by homegrown, straightforwardly-named blog/burgeoning media empire Live Beijing Music. Dudes are rocking a multiple-camera setup now. Profesh. They took to the high-speed rail a while back to do a special series on Live Shanghai Music, and in the process caught Friend or Foe live in their natural habitat (Yuyintang). This video pretty much tells you everything you need to know about FoF: kind of a plodding, funky Chi Peps vibe peppered with hi-muff guitar shredding. Vocalist Rabshaka Shakalaka (born “Adam”) in a dress. Drummer Mahanadan (born “Rabshaka”) in a pink wig. People dancing. Good times being spilled all over the floor.

Here’s a bonus LBM viddy of Rab doing an improvised serenade in that weird one-way-street alley outside YYT:

There are a lot of reasons to like FoF besides their music. They’re hardworking DIY guys, having self-released their debut, My Claw Is Never Limp!, and then commissioned a bunch of artists to rework its definitely not electronic songs into vaguely club-friendly bangers on the subsequent What Have You Done With My Claw!!?? remix album. They’re proactive about playing out of Shanghai, and don’t ask for much besides sharing the stage with musicians whom they respect, regardless of whether those musicians would objectively make sense on the same bill. Case in point: I booked one of their first Beijing gigs back at D-22 a few years ago. They asked to play with wtf-noise duo Deadly Cradle Death because, as they put it: “Deadly Cradle Death sounds like puppies and kittens, especially on the song ‘Deadly keithyeetal,’ so that’s why we like them. For me, it’s always a good idea to play with bands you want to see, rather than trying to pigeonhole yourself.” I rolled with it and in the end the show was killer. Friend or Foe descended from the rafters with this sort of Sun Ra B-movie getup and eerie space music and proceeded to win a grip of new fans.

This time around they’re playing with Residence A, a band that probably needs no introduction here, and Yantiao, which I conveniently enough re-introduced on Monday. It’s at Temple and it’s free, so you know what that means. If you don’t, I’ll tell you: it means you’ll call your boss at 3 am and say, “Fuck you, I’m not going in to work tomorrow because it’s a SUNDAY for Christ’s sake!” — and continue slamming back “creative” shots and not wake up til Monday afternoon anyway. Temple is going full speed ahead with its mantle of “Most Likely Place to Accidentally Inhale a Dreadlock” or whatever the Beijinger award it won was called and making this night a costume party: dress up like a rock ‘n’ roll stereotype to win free booze. Yeah, that’s real.

Like I said, I’m just filling in. But if you wanna chat or talk some shit, hit me up at music@smartbeijing.com.

Hello Beijing Cream readers. My name is Josh and I work at this other website called Smart Beijing, where I write tl;dr music articles on a weekly basis. The Tao is outsourcing these Friday Musical Outros to my comrade Morgan, but he’s busy preparing for his simultaneous DJ sets at Dada and Temple tomorrow night, so he passed the buck to me.

Today’s video is kind of a cheat. A teaser, you might say. Tomorrow night at Temple, live funktronic act Not There is re-emerging after seven months of dormancy. Not ones to miss out on an opportunity to employ guerrilla marketing tactics, they released this lil’ 25-second clip to promote the show. It’s soundtracked by some kind of reversed ambient drone beat, almost 100% certainly created by Not There’s resident electronics engineer, Edoardo Gagliardi. Beijing can really burn one out, especially if you give a shit about music and stuff. So it’s nice to see Not There rising from the malaise like a phoenix from the ashes (though in this video the ashes are pink carnations and the phoenix is Nick Richards).

Not There bassist Jonathan Heeter played an improv night I booked a few weeks ago and he said that Not There will pretty much only play at Temple and Hot Cat for the foreseeable future. I get this. With so many new venues springing up in Beijing year after year it’s increasingly hard to cut through the noise, but Temple really fills a niche. For spectators that’s the “bar with cheap booze, free gigs, and ridiculous burgers” niche. For musicians it’s the “bar that can pay decently for shows and get some real, flesh and blood humans in there to actually watch the fucking show” niche.

So, yeah: Not There, Temple Bar, tomorrow night (Saturday, May 4). Afterwards check out a set from “DJ Morgan.” Not to be confused with DJ Compact Dicks, who is playing the same night, next door at Dada. See what we did there? Conflict of interest averted!

Josh is the founder of Pangbianr and writes at Smart Beijing. Shout out at him at music@smartbeijing.com.