chaile 拆了

The performance was much shorter than expected. After last month's marathon at 798, this was just a blink of an eye.

718/Sun Lei opened the show, and all I could think at the beginning was, "This is insanely loud." The nearly pitch black room was completely filled with electronic drones, and it became clear loudness wasn't an esthetic decision–Tango just had no idea how to do the sound. Unfortunately this resulted in 718's set being filled with unintentional distortions, which obscured much of his music's nuances.

But even with the sound problems, he still shined. Elements of pastoral folk were a surprising touch, eventually segueing into a rendition of a Chinese folk tune, complete with erhu. The acoustic guitar backed track brought in overdubbed children's voices to wind it out, before he played some material from Nowise Assault.

Langzhou's Li Jianhong turned in a set of brutal, punishing noise. This wasn't drill-n-bass, this was just drill-drill-drill. The highlight was a period where the distortions were twisted so much that vaguely human screams could be made out. Excellent.

Pixellated, nearly organic sounds made up Wang Changcun's set. Perhaps this is background music for alien probes–dense glitches, clicks + cuts, and water drops and drains. Later, Wang mixed in micro cuts of whistles, then adding voices. Spooky.

8gg finished out the afternoon. Heartbeat bass, then pulses, then back to heartbeats. The pair mixed the warped sounds with live video, starting with scattered still closeups of what was either hair, blood vessels, or who knows what else, before switching to sliced pictures of a sponge, and then to fractal zooms of their Windows software.

But after the bulk of their performance, they played what was the most crowd-pleasing section of the day: cut up, sampled, looped, and and absolutely hilarious remix of CCTV1 anchors Wang Ning and Xin Zhibing.

Excellent show. Perhaps next time they can find a better venue.

 Filed Under: Beijing | Harbin | Lanzhou | Live Reports
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This weekend is the Beijing edition of the Get It Louder Exhibition, featuring artists and designers from around the world. Of interest for us is the Sound Art Performance, featuring Sun Lei (aka 718), Wang Changcun, Li Jianhong, and Fu Yu and Jia Haiqing (together known as 8gg).

Regular readers already know Sun Lei/718; the electronics wiz played at the Dashanzi Art Festival, and has released two albums already this year. Li Jianhong was also at DIAF - the Hangzhou resident worked up a dense music incorporating, among other sources, a TV with a contact microphone over the static. The others are new to me - Wang Changchun, from Harbin, will have a CD out on Belgium label Sub Rosa, and 8gg are a audio/visual duo working in "multimedia art, web art, interactive art, visual/music installation, interactive music, aleatory music, experiment (sic) theater." Aleatory! Yeah!

The show is a bit untraditional: it's a free event, but tickets must be reserved in advance.

Please send your Name, Gender, Age, ID number, Occupation, E-mail, and which events (presentation or/and sound performance) you want to attend and why to getitlouder@163.com.

Deadline: June 9

We will announce the list on June 10 at our website.

Sounds a bit strange to me, but they've reserved a place for me, so why not?

Get it Louder: Sound Art Performance. Tango Club (near the South Gate of Ditan Park), Sunday (2005-06-12), 2:30pm-5:00pm.

 Filed Under: Beijing | Hangzhou | Harbin | Live Music
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