I just had Kristin Winsents, a DJ from P3, Norway’s answer to Triple J, call up to chat about the music scene in China. Apparently if you go to Kristin’s website and under the headline “musikkmisjonen i opptak” click on the date (20/09) you can listen to the show.

I’ve barely been able to see any bands and music because I’ve been off to Oslo for Oya, chasing up jobs here and generally getting to know a new city. Anyway I ended up on my mobile at 10:30 last night chatting live. So what is my take on the music scene.

There isn’t a strong band scene in Shanghai, it seems pretty culturally imperialist to expect a bunch of indie bands, but there’s not much evidence of a strong youth music scene. The only record shop I’ve seen was a Chinese folk/new age one at the excellent Moganshan Lu artist/gallery compound. Otherwise, there’s only street stalls selling pirate dee-vee-dees and cee-dees. And mostly the range is pretty abominable: Celine Dion, Oasis and so on. Apparently there’s another stall somewhere doing a roaring trade in Belle & Sebastian and other indie type records. But you know that’s one dodgy pirate stall in a city of 20 million.

The lack of a music industry as such – I don’t count the local Idol incarnation Super Voice Girls… PR phenomenon? marketing genius? yes, probably, but not music. Anyway, there’s no local hub for music to form around, the kind of hub you’d usually rely on record shops for.

Shanghai does appear to have appeared on the touring DJ list, though it’s mostly second rate jocks like Rennie Pilgrem or John 00 Fleming that make it here, as well as third rate Australian DJs – the latest is some character called Mark John, who is apparently one of Australia’s most revered jocks. That’s why the visit from Jori Hulkkonen was so great the other week. A combination of really great and definitely some odd music is a breath of fresh air. The next day Common, Derrick May and Ian Brown played in Beijing too, though I stayed in Shanghai.

Other than that it’s pretty slim pickings for touring acts – you get your Whitneys and Michael Boltons – but not much more. Shanghai has some great people and good bars, but being a finance city the focus is on venues with generic jazz or typical house or smooth rock. But underneath it all, things are exploding. We went across the river the other day to Pudong to see Nanjing’s PK-14. Pudong is the corporate capital of Shanghai and a memorial to the skyline of the Jetsons, but being there it’s hard to believe it didn’t even exist five to 10 years ago. It was just rice paddies. So with that massive rate of ‘progress’ it’s easy to imagine that within a few years things will have changed dramatically again.

Plus the past year has seen some killer local bands getting levels of exposure and confidence to get out and explore. Subs (pictured), of course, are one of the best live bands China has to offer and increasingly one it’s best known internationally. But there are plenty of others. PK-14 play angular indie songs influenced by the usual suspects atm, Joy Division, Gang of Four. Ma Fei San play an uncompromising sound somewhere between hardcore, post punk, post rock, experimental and noise. And D!O!D!O!D! (they have to be influenced at least nomenclaturely by !!!) play improv sounds drawing on rock and free jazz.

PK-14 – 她丢失了信仰
PK-14 – 燥眠夜
PK-14 – 这辆红色列车

There’s a growing pool of other bands making cool, if often derivative sounds (but then again isn’t most rock?) and plenty of them are playing at the Midi Festival in Beijing over the next week. I’m interested to hear more of punk girl band Hang On The Box.

Piracy is the biggest problem for music here. It’s so easy to get fake CDs and so hard to get the real things. No record shops and mail order can take a LONG time, the only reliable sources for music are a handful of pirate stalls that sell fairly obvious alternative CDs or downloading music. So the scenes here don’t have that local record shop locus that has focussed so many music scenes (though of course that’s a trend on a larger scale than just China). From what I hear though, musicians, especially underground punk and electronics, are starting to connect via online hubs (one that’s open to non-Mandarin readers is Wuhan Punk). Most are pretty closed to foreigners right now, but it could be the start of something pretty interesting.

Check out Beijing-based music journo Jon Campbell’s column at Pop Matters for local knowledge. He’s the English speaking face of Subs, he’s written for the Wire and most English language press in China, so he knows what’s what.

I hit on Five Dollar Day when a CD appeared in my mailbag from the guys at Stylus. It was hidden amongst a bunch of leftfield electronic beats, mostly second rate indie rock and sound art. Minimal information by way of sleeve notes, I couldn’t even tell whether the artist was Five Dollar Day or Black Bears, turns out it’s the former and the latter is the latest album from New Jersey-based 27 year old Lt (Lucas True) Lloyd. The album itself was a lovely, messy mix of alt-country twanging goodness, indie rock hooks and reflective moments and it’s been stuck in my CD player for a few weeks.

I just got back from a 12 hour overnight train trip from hell, sorry Beijing, complete with the roar of a violent snorer in the berth above. For various reasons I haven’t slept in a couple of days, so you’ll have to bare with my brevity. Here’s Lloyd on a few of my questions.

Why the band name? Five Dollar Day, really into Henry Ford?

Actually a friend came up with it. He and I were going to work on songs when it started, but he lived in London at the time and I lived in PA. Henry Ford was an ass.

How did you get into music?

My father always had guitars lying around the house, I messed around with them, but realized his were righty, and I played lefty. I finally got a left-handed acoustic right before college and spent more time fiddling with that than with my classes. I actually blame Pearl Jam for opening my eyes to music and the energy it can contain and express.

Five Dollar Day’s been going 6 years, but it looks as though it was an actual band in the past – why did you pare it back to just you?

Actually, it never was a band. I wish it were. I’ve played very few shows and always recruited a couple of friends to play. Five Dollar Day has been a project of mine for about 6 years. I’ve probably written over 200 songs… most of which you’ll never find anywhere other than on my small blue box and on various tapes. Most of them are terrible concepts that seemed adequate at the moment they were recorded.

What’s this blue box?

Good question. Some digital recording device. It’s a nifty treat, but I still don’t understand how to operate 90% of its capabilities.

What sort of things do you write about? Why bury your vocals so far down in the mix?

I usually write about real events or feelings. Most of my songs are missing a verse or two, which might clarify their meaning for the listener. I just get tired of the music and believe the song would be too long if I included the entire set of lyrics. Often times I’m told that my songs make no sense. I sometimes use current events & history to create a song. The vocals are buried because I can’t sing!

I can’t find much mention of your first three CDs anywhere except your site – were they just released locally or is there info elsewhere? How do you release your music now?

The first three CDs were merely compilations for a few friends who expressed interest. I don’t think they are bad songs, I was just a terrible musician/producer when they were written and recorded and have no intention of sharing them with anyone…again. I don’t/haven’t released my music. Not sure I have enough confidence in any of it. I’ve only sent out a handful to various review sites and magazines. I make it available to anyone who asks for a copy of an album.

Is music a job or a hobby to you?

Hobby. If it’s ever a job I will quit.

What do you think of filesharing, legal downloads, basically the influence of the internet on music?

I’m fine with it. Share and be shared. I suppose that’s easy to say when you’re not relying on sales for a paycheck. I might be angry if I were Metallica.

Read my review of Black Bears by Five Dollar Day at Stylusmagazine.com.

The album’s not readily available, but you can download a few songs (including the lovely Cold Hands and a cover of Elton’s Rocket Man) from Lloyd’s myspace page… He does say somewhere above that he’ll make the album available to anyone who’s interested. Chase him up via myspace.

It was clear noone knew quite what to expect from the Finnish electro showcase last night at the VIP rooms. Obviously Absolut Vodka’s local marketing manager – the event’s sponsor – didn’t, she spent half Ovali Virta’s show asking me whether it was a ‘successful’ performance. Well the answer is a resounding yes and a quiet no.

Cleaning Women were first up. Three guys as angry girls, complete with Doc Marten boots, short shrill pigtails and black stockings on homemade instruments: an electrified clothes drying rack, a guitar made out of an Illy coffee tin, drums built from stainless steel colanders, pots and rubbish bins. On paper it sounds like a wasted hour, but the clattering, harsh rhythms add up to something like early ‘80s industrial group Einsturzende Neubauten.

They get an amazing sound out of the homemade guitars, and when vocals somewhere between Tim Buckley, Ian Curtis and Souxsie Souix glide over a seductive metal samba it all adds up to something newer, a fascinating punk jazz with a crazed, almost hymnal feeling.

It was strange though, to watch this uncompromising group in such an elitist venue. Owned by one of China’s most famous actors, the VIP Rooms are pitched somewhere between elite lounge bar and super club glam. A winding maze of paneled rooms and alcoves lead to increasingly exclusive rooms each level, up to the coveted fifth floor. The drinks are frightfully expensive, even for Shanghai, and the advertising around the room seems more important than the music.

Ovali Virta took the stage in matching black jeans, white shirts and black cravats to the theme song from Dallas. Looking like a bunch of drunken college boys, they crowded in (and clowned) around a laptop. It’s obvious they’re not as comfortable on a stage as Cleaning Women, but their music is undeniably more accessible. Big club-friendly electro beats, heavy rock riffs and infectious vocals. Like Joy Division on electro duties, with a touch of Har Mar Superstar or Spod. It’s cool, though not particularly original.

One of them does Gang of Four via Paul Smith dance steps, but it all seems like the moves of a band who’ve been told: ‘you can make great music, but you’ve gotta put on a good performance.’ I would prefer to see them authentically playing their laptops rather than faking it.

If anyone was there to see a particular performance, it was definitely Jori Hulkkonen. He is Finland’s best-known DJ and one of its longest running electronic producers. But it’s fair to say that few if any punters noticed him come on, he slid onto the decks in a cloud of smoke at the end of Ovali Virta’s set. Fortunately the crowd stuck with him and again it’s fair to say I can’t imagine the club’s seen a better DJ in a long time. He played a lush set of deep garage that touched on acid, electro, techno, heavy EBM, bottomless bass and always the spectre of Chicago and Detroit house. The crowd danced enthusiastically, though the confused looks made it clear that everyone was waiting for the headliner. The headliner who was already playing. Industrial tracks melt seamlessly into Depeche Mode in a blink of an eye, then it’s onto Cajmere. It’s perfectly mixed, though you can always tell when a new track is coming into the mix. None of that monotony created by DJs who might as well be playing the same track for an hour.

It ends for us with heavy Nu Groove acid house. We could so easily be at Marrickville Bowling Club listening to this at a Mad Racket. ‘All I need is the acid to be free / Acid in my head!’ It’s so hilarious to hear a track like this in a country where drug use is so heavily criminalized. Acid In My Head!

I love this concept of Consulates and Embassies promoting artists internationally, more of this I say!

The merch stall sold out of Moodymann Live in Japan t-shirts in moments flat, the supply of 12″ singles went soon after. It’s the long awaited Kenny Dixon Jr/Mahogani Music night in Tokyo at Liquid Rooms new home in Ebisu, I stayed in town an extra fortnight to be here.

I am disappointed when my stalling means I miss out on the goodies. Still into the cavernous club to the sound of dreadlocks waving, sharp move strutting DJ Pirahnahead. Hard to believe it was only late Sunday afternoon as he cut through a virtual Detroit jukebox: Jaguar, I Can’t Kick This Feeling, Aril Brikha and a killer mashup of Voodoo Ray and Tricky Disco. Lurching repetitive beats gradually give way to Nina Simone’s aching voice at one moment, then sharp handclaps and deep techno. DJs like this make something more out of the music. He tweaks the EQ and you can see he’s completely aware that the subtle movement is intimately linked to the carnage it’ll cause on the dancefloor. He keeps teasing with the bassline from Teddy Pendergrass’s You Can’t Hide From Yourself, but when he finally lets the entire track drop the crowd explodes. Everyone’s waiting for Moodymann though, Kenny Dixon Jr. What will he play? Who will be there? The gig’s billed as Moodymann & Guests, so we’re wondering just who he’ll bring on stage. So we’re loving Pirahnahead’s set, but equally dying for it to finish.

But the gig feels like a Mahogani Variety Show. Perhaps it’s just a twisted element of Dixon’s self-indulgent ego? With a huge cast of talented musicians, what does Dixon do? He sends them out one by one, Roberta Sweed sings over a DAT, Pirahnahead sings and plays keys over a recorded track from somewhere else. It’s bizarre and hugely disappointing.

Pirahnahead’s first out for a set of soppy Dwele-style R&B balladry, it’s hard to believe that the awesome DJ only 30 minutes before is now playing such rubbish. The guy with such an instinct for the dynamics of a dancefloor and fine-tuned manipulation of rhythm is now crooning weak songs.

Roberta Sweed slinks out in a sparkly clingy dress, straight out of your local RSL’s drag show, and sings equally RSL cabaret songs. She keeps reminding everyone why she’s there humming the chorus from ‘Runaway’ or even singing it right through a couple of times. Andrez, the Slum Village/Mahogani connection, was the best of the guests, holding down heavy percussion throughout the show, rarely overdoing anything and, alongside the Detroit Experiment’s Paul Randolph on guitar, knocks out some killer live broken beat. Randolph is mostly great too. Camp and theatrical, but he does a few too many soppy love songs, like his disappointing collab with Kirk Degiorgio I Love You.

I feel like the one thing I come away from the show with is that Dixon must be a fantastic producer to carve his magic out of such a mess. When they’re left to their own volition it’s just self-indulgent, but the bigger picture is that it’s Dixon’s ego on show. Everyone was there to see him and when he was on stage he electrified the whole club, but damn! He was only on stage for three songs. It was cool when he was up though. Gyrating with the most sensual sexual innuendo behind a blinding white screen – how appropriate in Japan – moaning and groaning, it was cool, but it wasn’t enough.

Download: Moodymann, Andrez, Paul Randolph and Roberta Sweed at the North Sea Jazz Festival, Holland, July 2005

My interview with Boris Mezga (aka Comfort Fit) and Marc Wallowy (aka DJ Prymer) is in the latest Cyclic Defrost.

Wallowy’s Berlin-based Tokyo Dawn is one of my favourite netlabels – on release quality, quantity and consistency – so it was fascinating to get his point of view on some of the issues around music and technology. Mezga’s second release as Comfort Fit, and first for Tokyo Dawn, was pretty special especially when you consider it was available as a free download.

I’ve been too busy (slack?) too get around to writing about it so far, but I have given the latest release from Tokyo Dawn plenty of listening – killer tracks from big names like Maddslinky and Wu Tang affiliate 4th Disciple & Hell Razah, but the more exciting stuff is from new names. Obscure producers making beautiful smoky hip hop and broken beat, peeps like Saine, Causes & Forces, Brownsville. I’ll have to write this thing up properly soon. In the meantime…

Read: my interview with Mezga/Comfort Fit & Wallowy/DJ Prymer at Cyclic Defrost

Download: Comfort Fit – Forget & Remember (MP3) or (OGG)

My interview with Rene Pawlowitz, aka Berlin-based broken techno producer Shed, is up at Speakers Push The Air.

Another typhoon just swanned its way over Shanghai, so our trip to Putuoshan is off.

Might make the trip north this weekend for the Beijing Pop Festival. It’s an odd lineup: Common, Ian Brown and Derrick May. But I love Common’s style and being a big Stone Roses fan I have a morbid interest in seeing Brown, Derrick May is always entertaining.

Brown seems excited about it too… Will report if we end up there.

This is the last installment in my taking-a-stand-against-live-blogging report from the Oya Festival in Oslo. It was fantastic to hang out with my good friends Chris and Zan for the week, see loads of great bands, people and sights. We finished the visit with a few days traveling across Norway to Bergen via the Norway in a Nutshell train/bus/boat trip through spectacular fjords – pretty amazing, though kinda disappointing not to hang around in Bergen any longer, it seems like a cool city – I’ll have to write a proper update on that sometime soon.

In line with the ‘We’re up first, but hell we’ll headline’ ethos, Bergen beatmakers Datarock show up at the festival bright and early with half the musicians in Oslo (20 at my count). I found their eponymous album a little one dimensional, but with a crowd of guests onstage from hardcore bands right through to jazz heads, they crayon into the picture a shambolic world of Happy Mondays grooviness.

A whole other crowd of Norwegian bands – Shining, the Thing, Cloroform – trained in jazz, but grew up with metal and electronic music. On stage, at various points over the weekend, they flip jazz on its head, tearing through sets that have as much to do with the Sonics, Pantera and Squarepusher as Ornette Coleman.

The ex-Jaga Jazzist members of Shining play something that’s equally jazz and metal, with a bit of electronics, but if I’m to be honest, it’s really progressive rock. There I’ve said it, they play the much maligned sound, but it doesn’t sound fatty or over the top, when it connects, it is hot. Frontman Jorgen Munkeby says to the crowd: “This is our last show in Norway for a while, we’ll be touring Europe. And looking out at all you pretty girls, we’re sad, because it’ll just be nerdy guys in Europe.” Says it all really, but it’s also a good description of the festival, it’s hugely eclectic with no separation of musical styles: Discaholics Anonymous on the same stage as Annie and the Magic Numbers right before Saul Williams.

Sons & Daughters look like the sort of kids you might see pashing down the back of an indie club, but being Franz Ferdinand’s labelmates they have attracted a huge crowd. Thankfully, they are worth it. Their loud jangly guitars have a bit of Johnny Cash, lots of Nick Cave and a smattering of Scottish pop harmonies; the rollicking songs belie the jarring subject matter. However, it’s their label-mates that most people are here to see. And Franz Ferdinand surprised, me at least, by being fantastic. New song ‘Do You Want To,’ ‘Take Me Out,’ ‘I’m Your Villain,’ it’s all fantastically lithe basslines, beautiful Scottish pop harmonies and tailor-made pop songs. The between-song banter reminds me of Crowded House. But it’s wonderfully realised pop moments, with a disarmingly shy awkward manner on stage that leave me flushed.

After that thrill, the day topples dangerously. Grasping a couple of drinks from the closest bar we resolve to go back and see our friends at the P3 Radio broadcast despite knowing our passes won’t get us backstage. Somehow, Dutch courage probably, we get through and wind up chewing the fat with Datarock behind the public toilet block for a good hour – that’s after Datarock have dived into a table full of empty beer bottles for the benefit of P3’s listeners, of course. I can hear Roots Manuva playing in the distance, it sounds great, but I’m engrossed in my interview, I miss a triumphant set from Subs too. Damn. Still, finding my way through the 4000 year old ruins, I wonder what the skeletons of ancient Vikings buried below the festival park think. I’m sure it’s all good things.

In a downtown office afterwards, local post-rockers Salvatore play a stellar showcase. People are squashed in everywhere you look and we keep seeing members of the band we hadn’t seen before. The sparkling melodies are coming from at least four different guitarists around the room, one of them is adding sounds from his laptop and all of them have this shamanic look to them. The drummer clutches his sticks like a child who hasn’t learnt to use cutlery yet, but still manages to beat out an intoxicatingly locked rhythm. There’s another guy hidden around the corner taking care of percussion. Ethereal voices echo and hurt my ears, it’s spectacular.

The night is young, there is plenty to do – Headman drag everyone into their twisted world at a local club, Heavy Trash rocked another one – somehow we end up at another party with Roots Manuva asking if we “Got our perv on?”

Disturbing reports floating around the blogosphere of government plans to block Skype. Reuters reports that China Telecom has started blacklisting Skype users in the southern city of Shenzhen. China is the third largest market for the voice over IP (VOIP) service and I guess Chinese telecoms aren’t happy.

Jori Hulkkonen visits Shanghai next week. The Finnish producer has worked his deep house and shuffly rhythm over 5 albums for F-Comm, loads of remixes and used aliases like the brilliant Step Time Orchestra, the almost superstar status Tiga & Zyntherius cover of Sunglasses and a lot more. So you can imagine I’m excited by the possibility. Even more excitingly, he’s joined by several other Finnish electro/EBM types
including Cleaning Women and Ovali Virta…

Cleaning Women are eclectic to say the least. From dark industrial to big Primus via Ministry mess of distorted vocals, slap funk bass and random words in a funny Finnish accent, right through to shouty distorted Fall. Then it’s a weird Afro-Latin rhythm called Hotel Jungle Fever. Bizarre, yet strangely intriguing.

Cleaning Women – Phase (sample)
Cleaning Women – It’s a Classic (sample)
Cleaning Women – Hotel Jungle Fever (sample)
Cleaning Women – A Laundry Track (sample)

The Wire says Ovali Virta are good live and on record they’re definitely interesting. Distorted EBM, but with the darkness of industrial brightened by that psychedelic quirky funk that Hulkkonen’s always been good at. Hush remix the track, cutting everything back to a fat electro club bomb.

Ovali Virta – Purple and Blue
Ovali Virta – Purple and Blue (Hush remix)
Ovali Virta – Jungle of Emotions

I love the idea of gigs supported by local embassies that are actually good – the Goethe Institut and British Councils seem to be especially good at this. Why doesn’t this happen more often in Australia? Is it just the idea that there’s a potential audience of millions in Shanghai compared to a couple of 100 in Sydney?