Back in April, Lady Lazer Light and her mind-melting projections found their way back to Chengdu on the back of her second residency at Red Gate in Beijing, so Kiwese and friends put on a show at Jah Bar, one of the most legendary dive bars in town – as irie as the name suggests.
百鬼夜行 100 Spirits was a show for the ages. And in case you weren’t there, or only have hazy impressions of the night, here is a recap video to get the memory glands pumping. We managed to squash over 100 people into Jah Bar, a sweltering pit of ghoulish bands, frenzied fans, broken air conditioning and awesomeness.
Huge thanks to all the friends who came and helped out, and to our stellar line up of Chengdu’s finest: Hiperson, The Hormones, Su and Splortch Selector, it was a pleasure to play alongside you all as Kaishandao, and I look forward to the next.
In the bleary eyed haze of 4am in the morning, I stumbled home from the after party at Morning Bar 早上好 and began mashing about on my phone trying to decipher a Chinese van booking app. Several hours later, a comedically large house moving van appeared, and we were ready to go. Chongqing, here we come!
With a lot of laughs and a bit of KFC, the OOS x Lady Lazer Light x Kiwese China tour bullet trained it’s way to the sprawling, hilly municipality of Chongqing, home to 30 million people, the most populated centre in China.
NUTS Livehouse Chongqing is one of the most professional venues I’ve been to in China. These guys have their shit down pat, from the lights to the sound to the promotion to the vibe. The venue itself is located in Deyi Fashion Mall, a bizarre building in Jiaochangkou full of different levels, sections, awnings and shops.
The crowd was electric, with more than 100 people turning up on a weeknight. Although there was no warm-up band arranged, the Spheres magically mutated into a mysterious New Zealand hip hop act called The Niubis™. Never before has Chongqing been so educated about multinational milk corporations, the uterus or breakfast condiments.
It’s the second day of the national October holiday break, and we’ve just taken a 19hr overnight train from Beijing to Chengdu.
After arriving at the Chengdu Music Hotel, we chucked back some egg pancakes 煎饼 and a hot sour noodle 酸辣粉 round the corner on Minzhu Lu (R.I.P.). Back in my neighbourhood, I ran back to my house for a quick shower and change of clothes – having been in Beijing for the past three weeks, it was so good to be home and see all my friends, along with this amazing band from Wellington that I had been raving about for the past year!!
The Spheres were playing the headline slot on Day 3 of the second NUART Festival, a three day music, art and tech extravaganza that takes places over two streets and stages, featuring both local and international acts and artists. They played on a street stage built of bamboo to an enormous and adoring crowd of people young and old. Quite simply, Chengdu has never seen anything like it.
The quiet old street of Minzhu Lu, next to where the gang were staying, will be demolished to make way for a music hall complex.
That includes Morning Bar 早上好, our local watering hole and the venue for the Chengdu after party. Following the festival, Lady Lazer Light set up her projector and eyeballs and Riki presented his techno/juke project Cave Circles for the second time on tour, ultimately pushing his soundcard to the state of kaput. My beautiful friend Su from the electronic label atmen had just come back from Germany and brought her minimal techno vibes to the party.
As usual, Morning Bar was bustling with all sorts of friends. I found Riki eating spicy chicken wings with a reggae band from Guizhou at 3am in the morning.
Morning Bar has since been walled off and left to decay, the glass windows and wooden fixtures have been extracted and recycled by local workers, the eateries and stores have ended their decades long business to move elsewhere. When I walk past the old place on Minzhu Lu my heart sinks, now an empty shell of what was such a joyful hub of drunkenness, music and good times.
But when I glimpse over the blue retaining wall and see the Orchestra of Spheres poster still stuck to the alcove outside, I know that is a memory that can never be demolished.
In the first instalment of our five-part China tour series, Orchestra of Spheres reunite with Lady Lazer Light in Beijing and wreak havoc at School Bar, Temple Bar and Brother’s BBQ Tribe in Feijiacun.
Featuring interviews with Nevin Domer of Genjing Records, Liu Fei of School Bar, Wang Fen from Baxian Fandian, Dan Lenk from Death Narcissist and more.
There are plenty of places that run weekly/spontaneous jam sessions in Chengdu. Submarine Bar down in Yulin is one of them.
Here’s a little ditty I shot and edited for the buddies down at Submarine Bar last night.
The chick in the hat was doing an acoustic singer-songwriter type thing early on, then as the night grew boozier and approached the early hours, launched into this epic Chengdhua rap.
Roughly translates to “lemme tell you / I’m wearing a dress tonight / you thought I wasn’t drinking tonight but I’m still on it / where should I go tonight / y’all satisfied? / I came out here again tonight / you drunk / we all drunk again etc.” etc etc
Cameos from Zhang Xiaobing 张小饼, The Hormones 荷尔蒙小姐 and Mosaic 马赛克.
Submarine have jam nights every Wednesday!
Video shot on a little camera by Xiaomi stuck to a selfie stick. At only 400RMB ($90NZD) it is a fraction of the price of a GoPro and still pretty nice quality! (this is not an ad hahaha, just giving 大家 the heads up!)
Behold! Beijing’s bogan paradise – where no one’s body is a temple and nobody ever leaves sober. Coated with a delightful lustre of Jager, coffee shots and projectile vomit, Temple Bar is discreetly tucked away in an upstairs building off Beijing’s Gulou Dong Dajie.
Following a packed out show at School Bar the night before, Beijing’s WeChat feeds were wagging about the unconventional stylingsthat had landed in town.
For night two of their China tour,Orchestra of Spheres and Lady Lazer Light returned with a different set of tunes and even more floating eyeballs, intoxicating the warped minds of Temple even more than usual.
Check out the video of ‘Rotate’ below!
Cheers to Pink at Temple, Georgia Hind and Anton Burian.
The cosmos aligned in 2015. Late in September, Wellington ancient-future funkists Orchestra ofSpheres and their long time collaborator in audio-visual overstimulation Lady LazerLight, embarked on a two-week tour of China.
For any fan of indie music in New Zealand, the name Blink, the moniker of Ian Jorgensen, and his label A Low Hum is straight up household.
The all ages shows he put on in Wellington back in 2006 have had a profound influence on me. No longer did we have to try get into San Fran on our sisters’ 18+ cards. Those AA shows facilitated a way for us kids to be part of the local scene and to support it, slowly and painfully stream demos on dial-up MySpace pages, mosh out with the big kids and buy $12 EPs down at Real Groovy. Shaky Hands, So So Modern, The Mint Chicks, Tiger Tones were just some of the bands I was exposed to via A Low Hum when I was 15 or 16, undoubtedly sparking a passion for independent music within me that continues to this day. Inspired and shit, *cries*
So it was with huge joy and a decent amount of fangirlism that I caught the overnight train from Chengdu to Beijing and was able to interview Ian while he was touring with Shocking Pinks last month, the first real date of a 60+ show plus world tour.
From organising and curating the sorely missed four-day secret line-up festival Camp A Low Hum, writing DIY manuals, throwing New Year’s Eve parties and recently publishing 15 years of his own music photography, Ian has returned to (one of the things) he does best – touring the world. Check it out.
About a month ago, atop a sunny, slightly crumbling rooftop along a Beijing hutong, Kiwese caught up with Nick, Ash and Cory from Shocking Pinks ahead of their shows in China and beyond.
Check it out in the very first episode of Kiwese TV, along with a blitzing version of ‘Smoke Screen’ live at School Bar!
