November 25, 2009

Beijing Electro City

Well that didn’t take long.

I found the new Chinese sound…

…or at least a sound that I was new to me, by way of a Chinese artist.

But first the requisite tedium of time, place, overanalysis and a dozen other tangents:

After catching La Loupe last Thursday, I opted not to see Au Revoir Simone or Rahzel (playing separate concerts—Chinese people are crazy but they’re not that crazy) and take it easy on Friday because 1.) the shows were relatively expensive—150RMB [$22] and 100RMB [$15]) respectively, which sounds cheap but taking drinks and cab fare into account, would have made a relatively expensive night out; 2.) I was afraid I would go through another pack of smokes (a health concern, not a financial one; more on this shortly); and 3.) I was saving my energy, money and health for Saturday’s cryptically-titled “Great Beer, Bad City” concert, showcasing China’s finest electronic music talent, at 2 Kolegas, “Beijing’s Hottest Dive Bar & Live Music Venue” (according to their website).

Like D-22, 2 Kolegas has established itself as a legit venue since its founding by two expats a few years back, attracting indie acts from near and far (I regret missing YACHT’s Halloween show there). Also like D-22, it happens to be off the beaten path, but (unlike D-22) this does not work in my favor: 2 Kolegas is a 15 km / 25 minute / 45RMB taxi-ride away, in the northeastern reaches of Beijing… in the parking lot of a sketchy drive-in movie theater that I might have mistook for a carnival (further explanation is clearly necessary, but will not be provided.) As with most places I’ve tried to find in Beijing, I found it on the second try, after a 15-minute detour down a shady side street lined with empty cabs—I had hoped they were ferrying passengers to nightlife off the main road, but this was not the case.

I arrived to find a keffiyeh’d iLoop grinding out a hard techno set on his laptop. This was some heavy shit, from the relentless throb of the 4×4 beat and sawtooth snarl of overdriven basslines to the ghosts of melodies, mutilated into looped stutters and vocoded warbles, everything compressed as all hell. I wasn’t averse to the intensity, but I imagine that drugs and alcohol might have helped. (Insofar as Chinese drug culture seems conservative to the point of invisibility, it was no wonder that the place was fairly empty.) It was also too early for this shit—I figured more people would arrive later but the hypothetical crowd never quite materialized.

LIman was only nominally poppier: after opening with the telltale stabs of A-Trak’s remix of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Heads Will Roll”, he faded into harder tech-house obscurata. Like iLoop, LIman scarcely strayed from a driving 130 BPM beat, settling for dynamic regulation via filter and killswitch effects. Still, he managed to get more people on the floor, as about half of the 50 or so clubgoers left their seats for his set. If iLoop was the heavy metal of techno, LIman was grunge… and everyone likes grunge.

Doshy, the night’s guest DJ from Germany, picked up where LIman left off, lacing his more diverse set with a hint of funk and a touch of dubstep. He was the only performer who was not (as the joke goes) checking his e-mail onstage, opting for a hardware setup instead. Whether it was the meager turnout or jet lag, he seemed slightly off, missing several cues, though it was a nice change of pace when he varied the tempo a bit.

The crowd had thinned out to a scant dozen diehards by the time Sulumi (the long-awaited topic of this post) started his set at 1:00 AM. Thankfully, he didn’t mind, cranking out a non-stop set of original 8-Bit compositions as though he were playing to a full house at Studio B (R.I.P.). For some uncanny reason, I had high hopes for Sulumi, and he did not disappoint: I can’t say that I’ve ever listened to 8-Bit in earnest, but his high-energy set earned him at least one more fan.

The closest reference points I can think of are Crystal Castles, Surkin’s remix of Bionic Commando, and maybe Octopus Project (from what I remember; I haven’t listened to them in forever). Like CC and indie-electro darlings (I hate that term) Ratatat, Sulumi re-invents the punk / rock aesthetic electronically as Ninetendo bleeps and sine waves against a thumping techno back beat.

Even as the audience dwindled to just a few tireless ravers, Sulumi continued to thrash and twitch about his laptop and mixer. At some point in the middle of his set, a particularly infectious melody caught my ear, amid the endless sequence of chiptune motifs emanating from his ad hoc electro rig. (This happened to be his outstanding remix of his own song, “Kill Me Sweetly,” a Dan Deacon-worthy fist-pumper.) It was one of those singularly rapturous moments where I was instantly transfixed by an artist I’d never heard perform a song that I’d never heard—at that point, I was sold.

Following the show, I did some research and tracked down Sulumi’s latest release, Chaotic Dances the Function, available as a free download (37.4MB zip file). Apparently Sun Dawei is not just a solo act but a label exec for Shanshui Records and a promoter for Shanghai’s Antidote collective. Fellow member B6’s eye-catching poster designs for Antidote shows are quite phenomenal and have apparently been the subject of some controversy; check out the full gallery here.

This is what Time Magazine had to say about him a year ago:

Considered a linchpin of the avant-garde, Sulumi — the working name of 26-year-old Sun Dawei — cites Yellow Magic Orchestra and Aphex Twin as his influences, and his music correspondingly moves between the genres of 8-bit (electronic music that mimics the sounds of outdated computers and gaming consoles) and IDM (”intelligent dance music”). Live shows can be geeky affairs, with Sulumi hunched over a laptop, a hooded sweatshirt obscuring his chiseled cheekbones.

He is also a promoter and the founder of Beijing electronica label Shanshui Records. “The great thing about the experimental scene in Beijing,” he says, “is that it’s easy for musicians to get a foot in the door.” But it’s not that easy to make a living—in fact, Sulumi is one of the few to pull it off. “I do commercial performances sometimes, which is where I get my income,” he shrugs. “But making music is my life—I don’t need any other motivation.”

–Come On Feel the Noise
Time Magazine, 10/23/08

A brief review of the EP, should you choose to download it: opening track “Sweetly” is a sort of 8-bit ballad, which is pleasant enough, but the killer remix is more in keeping with Sulumi’s frenetic live show. While the rest of the songs tend towards the IDM end of the spectrum, his live set was more accessible: I recall a melody that echoed some Múm song from Finally We Are No One, as well as what might have been an interpretation of Blur’s “Girls and Boys,” though I would just as soon credit these to Sulumi himself.

The album version of the remix, linked below, can only give you an idea of what Sulumi is like, since it’s definitely best experienced in the club setting. I can’t say it’s for everyone, but it’s easily my new favorite song.

» Sulumi – Kill Me Sweetly – 4.5MB mp3 @ 192kbps

Related:

• Blip Festival 2009 is going down in Brooklyn. (Sulumi played Blip last year.)
• Yesterday’s New York Times Opinionator features a curmudgeonly piece by composer Glenn Branca entitled “The End of Music”. (My counterpoint is that I happened to be listening to Battles when I came across the article.)

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