Rise China! The Maybe Mars Revolution

While staying in Beijing for five days, I was especially eager to get a taster of what people listened to. Of course, like every nation welcoming in consumerism (China however has become a strange Capitalist and Communist hybrid), it has its own mainstream pop, or Mandopop as it’s known, as well as importing in plenty of western pop hits and club anthems. Hearing Lady Gaga pounding over the clay roof tops of the muggy streets is only a tiny part of the weirdness a trip to The People’s Republic of China yields.

With its various tones and accents, the Chinese language prevented me finding out much of anything. Eventually, due perhaps to all those gifts I laid out throughout my many visits to Buddhist temples, I was granted some good luck. The night before I was due to leave the city to catch a plane to Tokyo, I boarded Beijing’s swish tube network and zoomed up to the University district in the North West where I found club D-22. Since opening in 2006, only a year before the label Maybe Mars was set up, the club has a reputation for being the epicentre of upcoming music in Beijing. Little did I realise how important the venue is to the city’s student counterculture. Almost every home grown Chinese band worth mentioning has graced its small, smoky stage. Like living legends, their group pictures decorate its walls.

Before I go any further, it might help to put the label into context. Among a population 1.4 billion and rising, Maybe Mars is born out of an increasing desire for free expression, after it was ruthlessly suppressed under the dictatorship of Chairman Mao Zedong and his successors. It is a deep and complex history of violence and fear generated by a strangling state control and an uncompromising bid to modernise the country. As a way of banishing the demons of the past and in a desperate bit to be the great Nation it always dreamed of, China is currently absorbed in an almighty superiority complex. Its bloody history is a touchy subject, often swept under the carpet altogether as social problems and criticism simply get in the way. State TV blares out repackaged history and successful economic figures, the sports channels play their victories over and over.

These days, China’s collective of artists and musicians have been given more space in which to exercise and explore their talents, provided of course they don’t go too far. It explains why most Chinese keep out of politics, if they are aware of it at all. Though none of the bands signed to Maybe Mars latch on to any overt political activity or statement, its culmination shows the new desire to carve out artistic freedom from the ground up.

The internet is playing its part to help knock down old borders. A music movement in China might just be the last swing of the hammer. The Maybe Mars website offers live videos, streamable music, press coverage and a free compilation ready to download. Each of the twenty nine bands currently signed to the label make up a broad mix and don't worry, not everything is sung in Chinese. While incorporating many familiar western style and genres, they all hold on to a strong sense of individuality and respect for their musical origins. My favourite would have to be the outstandingly awesome Carsick Cars. Likened to the Postpunk guitar mashing sounds of Pavement and Sonic Youth (even touring alongside them back in 2007), the band dive headlong into dense, sometimes painful guitar textures inspired by the experimentations of Glenn Branca. ‘Guang Chang’ starts on feedback atmospheres and builds up, giving way to epic chords. Tracks like ‘Zhi Yuan De Ren’, with its king-sized riff and ‘Zhong Nan Hai’ (named after a Chinese brand of cigarettes) with its searing distortion drones, remind you how glorious and affirming Rock can still be.

Another band that put Maybe Mars in the spotlight are P.K.14. They join up a new-wave, Television like sound with the assertive poetry of their headman Yang Haisong (the guy also responsible for recording most of the label's bands). With real flare and a dedicated fan base, Demerit and Joyside represent the label’s hot-blooded, foot-to-the-floor punk groups. Ourself Beside Me, three cool Beijing ladies, play a different kind of sneering, eccentric, off-key punk inspired by the sleazy sounds of The Velvet Underground and The Fall. Using bicycle bells and plucked guitar harmonics over a lazy beat, their brilliant track ‘Sunday Girl’ shows Beijing’s sinister side.

The label has also just signed Duck Fight Goose. Sounding like a cross between Battles and These New Puritans, they are China’s answer to the math-rock scene. The band members give themselves animal alias’ (Duck, Goose, Panda, Dragon) and “refuse all kinds of sadness and play funny games with their instruments”. At D-22, I managed to see the duo called 10 (now renamed (((10))) after the recent earthquake in Japan) perform their characteristically long and ever-evolving sonic wizardry. Drinking Tsing Tao beer in the gallery up above, I got a bird’s eye view of the array of machinery bellow. Pedals, keyboards and iPads combined together to fill up the club, until it felt like the whole place was about to burst.

Maybe Mars breaks away from the production line method of imitation that we in the West came to associate with China. It’s a huge leap ahead of the music endeavours of the past and has attracted much attention and support from New York and London musos. According to one of the promoters I’d met in D-22, Maybe Mars is China’s only independent record label and as far as I know, the label focuses its sights mainly on Beijing and Shanghai. In this vast and varied country there must be plenty of others just waiting to get going.

For the present, Maybe Mars is on the front line of a musical revolution. The label takes upon itself the monumental task of nurturing a rising alternative scene and providing a voice for the country’s disillusioned youth. Like it or not, China is set to become a powerful force over the century. Few countries need a subversive Punk and Art Rock movement more. Put aside the China-phobic sentiments that are blowing about and clasp hands with the guys who are on the verge of making history.

(© Copyright 2011 Brendan Morgan)

Labasheeda - The Twlight State (Presto Chango Records)

As far as I could tell from two visits, the average punter in Amsterdam prefers 90’s cheese, euro dance and hammer metal to the more experimental or down to earth projects. But like any city, it had to have its underground somewhere and, as usual, I had to return to the UK to find it. Labasheeda is a doorway to its gritty basement scene, one that reflects a local, more clued in angle. In a way, Amsterdam’s subculture found me.

Labasheeda formed in 2004 and since then have been recording consistently. Under a seriously driven work ethic, they’ve released nearly a record every year. Their newest, The Twilight State is warmly produced, runs beautifully from track to track and hits every goddam mark.

You can hear it all in there: Pavement’s lyrical grunge, Fugazi’s bass lines and tight acoustic punk (circa The Argument); the singer, Saskia van der Giessen, moans like Karen O, pronouncing a strange, sometimes funny version of English (for any other band, this would be a defect but for Labasheeda, it only gives them character).

Overall, the main source is extracted from Sonic Youth’s expansive exploration of guitar screams, tonality and inventive riff changes. They’ve even selected painted cover artwork suggestive of The Eternal as well as incorporating a small amount of a Kim Gordon sophistication that puts to shame most current “girl punk” attitude (the comparatively tame and superficial Paramore for example). There’s no posing, no acting, no dressing up, no falsity, no frills or flashing lights, no tactical target marketing (unless its so tactical I can’t tell) – simply rock music, with guts and realism, made by approachable people who don’t wear tight black. People you could actually enjoy a conversation with.

After an intense opening to clear your head, ‘Headquarter’, an unsettling ballad shoots ripples down the spine by building guitar harmonies over a repeated note of ‘B’. It seems to point an accusing finger: “There’s liars in this room” sings van der Giessen. ‘From You Too Me’ interweaves downcast chords with kicking rhythms and ‘White Leather’, a neat package of all their hooks, tops their myspace at the moment (trust me however, they save the best stuff for the records).

The grumpily wasted ‘Way Out’ leads into the evil, drooling instrumental epic that is ‘My First Choice’ and then to close with imprinted force from ‘Duplicated’. Playing sweet three note melodies, van der Giessen’s violin is the band’s most unique feature. It’s too bad that it appears so rarely and so timidly in the album’s mix.

Although Amsterdam is riding the 90’s, some at least have taken on the decade’s better side. The Twilight State is an impassioned and pragmatic number five from a superb rock band. Labasheeda do pain and sadness, red rage and subtle sarcasm; and, over the next few months, Labasheeda do England. Get out of your hovels and support them.

(© Copyright 2011 Brendan Morgan)

Fang Island - Fang Island (Sargent House)

Fang Island’s fast paced debut, layered with big boisterous guitar, fits like a glove in the current American scene. Describing their music as “everyone high fiving everyone”, they are so much happier than you or I. It’s the prog-metal equivalent of Bastian from The NeverEnding Story raising his fist and triumphantly yelling “YEEAAH!”

I like music that takes on simple, child inspired philosophies and what drew me to Fang Island was a recorded video on their myspace page where they perform to a kindergarten class. The jubilation and wide eyed expressions on the kid’s faces as they hop about to the hardcore jams was wonderful stuff. It was funny to think of a parallel between these classroom antics and that of any adult Rock club filled with immature goofballs (the sad difference is that children express themselves truthfully, don’t have horrendous egos and don’t smear crap in their hair to be cool. They do it because… well… they just do it.)

Stop-and-start rhythm changes between the band are expertly controlled and the four guitarists display impressive skill and sweet solos that Boston would be proud of. It warrants the use of great phrases such as ‘head banging’ and ‘kick ass’, especially in tracks such as ‘Careful Crossers’ with its tricky rhythms and battling riffs. Unfortunately the collective vocal chanting found in their single ‘Daisy’ and later in ‘Davey Crockett’ ruins it. These sing-a-long brayings of ‘ooooh’s’ and ‘woah woah woah’s’ get old very quickly; ultimately becoming banal sighs in the place of, you know, actual words. Their goal to draw grand, truthful emotion from us seems all too familiar.

Graduating from Rhode Island School of Design (the origin of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Lightning Bolt and Talking Heads) they throw out any evidence of art school subtlety. It doesn’t take long to figure Fang Island as feel-good teenage thrash pop propelling a single, continuously chipper mood. Sometimes, just sometimes it brings to mind those god-awful mobile phone advertisements where hoards of douche bags sing with each other in false unity. Hey everyone! Come on! Let’s get together! Groan.

Compared with their predecessors, Fang Island have moved in an altogether different direction. Their achievements are their glorification of the present moment, the way they capture the manic excitement you used to feel before a trip to a theme park. Their compact album is in touch with a youthful exuberance and contains some masterful musicianship and hum-worthy melodies. Too bad then that its upbeat tone, great at first, reveals no further dimension beyond ludicrously happy. And please, no more Arcade Fire vocal choruses. They’re loosing their allure.

(© Copyright 2010 Brendan Morgan)

Viv Albertine - Flesh EP

According to Natasha Walter’s book published last month, we are witnessing a devious and modernised return of sexism and misogyny. Slight doom heralding it may be but perhaps with Viv Albertine from the iconic Punk band The Slits going solo, we can at least be reminded of a time when it was cool to deem yourself a feminist without the extreme Valarie Solanis implications.

Flat and band mate to Sid Vicious, film maker, ceramic sculptor, “only interested in love and sex as subjects”, her style may seem a little dated. Calling her debut Flesh for example and including a carefully positioned nude picture of herself on the CD, her groin in place of the middle hole so you have to slide your finger in when picking it up – these are laughable Punk’isms that I doubt will shock any member of my own fucked up generation. We take Punk humour as intended and are well over girls in Rock bands (at least I hope so… Christ).

Throughout the four track EP, there are remnants of what Viv originally brought to The Slits back in 1977 (an influence still felt today in all-girl bands such as Vivian Girls) and it’s especially apparent in the chorus line of ‘Never Come’. Her oh-so-British accent, sarcastic in its cute politeness, hasn’t changed much after 25 years. Neither have her themes of nihilistic romance and sexual freedom. The tone of her song writing is different; more nostalgic and with a faint hint of sorrow.

Overall, her EP is modestly arranged, soft but gutsy with varied attention to harmony and instrumentation (use of violin, rock organ and glockenspiel). ‘If Love’ beams with pleasure, like a kid with a balloon and ‘The False Heart’, despite it's clunky piano riff, sees Viv’s voice on great form, diminishing into a lovely silver whisper. But the best has to be the sneering ‘I Don't Believe/In Love’ featuring scraping guitar and general nihilism among the lyrics.

Of course there will be a group of people who’ll buy it out of blind dedication, novelty or nostalgia and I suppose it is the sort of music you’d hear at a Derek Jarman art exhibition surrounded by 40 year olds wearing black and complaining about the "apathetic youth of today". But unlike many other aging Punks, Viv Albertine is more in tune with the grace and wisdom that comes with age. This is not the solo career of some has-been shouting “I’ve still got it” while trying to reconnect with the kids. Flesh shows her fans something personal and reflective; delicate, fragile and human.

(© Copyright 2010 Brendan Morgan)