Global Noise Offline

This is the weirdest thing I’ve encountered today.

When combing through my RSS feeds, I came across a post on Free Albums Galore titled “Red Unit – several albums”, I paid special attention to it because the attached pic features a revolutionary woodcut drawing and four Chinese characters – 红色少女 (literally “Red Girl”), under which there are two English words – RED UNIT.

Because Free Albums Galore is hosted on a BSP which has been blocked in mainland China, I’ll quote a few words from the post:

Red Unit out of the Quiet Lounge netlabel is like that. The artists reside in Shanghai, China and produces dense Industrial Dance music. What sets Red Unit apart from other techno groups is that they used the music and sounds of China’s political past for their base.

That’s already enough to activate my curiosity, so I clicked on the label’s link and found a couple of strange things:

1. The characters on the frontpage are written in simplified Chinese, while the ones in the logo at the top of this page are in traditional Chinese.

2. There are some Japanese scattering around the site, such as the Creative Commons claim.

3. A quirky mixture of various Chinese elements can be found in the site, to name but a few: “Red”, “Maoism”, “Yam Cha”, “Shanghai”, “Commune”.

I don’t have much clue about the label but judging from their link page, it must have something to do with the Beijing breakcore/digital hardcore scene, as a few brand names of the scene (iLoop, Reconfiguration Records) were listed. Since Quiet Lounge is an online label, all the music can be downloaded for free, but it’s too late now so I’ll leave that for tomorrow. In the meantime, any information about the label is appreciated.

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I’ll go on and translate some more blog entries from Junky (CAO Junjun) of Torturing Nurse. These might be trivial posts but they reflect the man and his music’s personality in a direct and effective way, this is something you won’t get in their English language interviews.

For original Chinese version of each post, just click on the respective titles.

Frances and seven sermones ad mortuos

17:28, Jan 17, 2006

Went to dzmz (1) and bought Jessica Lange’s award-winning film Frances, which I’ve watched in my very early years. A re-watching of the film has deepened my loathing towards establishment, now I understand why Kurt Cobain named his daughter after it.

Received email from Simone, he said the album Three’s a Crowd had been finished and he’ll send 10 copies to me this Friday or Saturday. Now Torturing Nurse already has releases in 6 countries: China, America, Britain, Australia, Belgium and Italy! Below is the cover and inner artwork (2), specially designed in the format of a DVD-case, released by the Italian noise label seven sermones ad mortuos!!

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Incapacitants

13:28, Jan 18, 2006

Now playing their New Movements in Cmpd. I own 10 of their albums, plus one split with Two Assistant Deputy Mikawa, one split with Kazumoto Endo (Killer Bug), one collaboration with K2 and four live videos. They’re probably my second favorite Japanoise act (the first is Hijokaidan), totally schizophrenic sound, all kinds of sound waves clashing with each other. I love to see the charming twitching of middle-aged men on stage, with same level of devotion from offstage audience. I feel completely relaxed listening to this sound!

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Weekend

20:26, Jan 20, 2006

Busy for the whole day in my office, in the evening the whole band went to Ben’s place for his African cuisine:) I like Carl Stone, very interesting sound, I’m really fascinated by unique, special sound, I really can’t live without music!

I must go to bed now, very tired, must save my energy for tomorrow’s recording session, will continue the recording for RRR tomorrow, and the 20 mins for the 3 ways split of Belgium!!

Congratulations to http://myspace.com/torturingnurse whose pageview has hit 100, and 41 noise artists have added us as friend. I think we would be better off living in America or Japan, I hate China!!!

Footnotes:

1. dzmz is the initial of Da ZiMingZhong, a well-known pirate market in Shanghai.
2. To see the artwork please refer to the original post.

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Hangzhou-based noisician LI Jianhong blogged about his exposure on WFMU. The original Chinese version here.

Yesterday, Brian Turner from WFMU radio in America emailed me: “These discs are AMAZING and getting nice airplay on WFMU! Thank you and please keep us in mind for future releases!”

Not until then was I aware of their airing my album, and I went to their website to check, so it has already been aired four times. I wouldn’t know if he hadn’t notified me via email.

They boast to be the most influential independent radio in the States, indeed, they play many unpredictable music that you like. I used to be a regular listener of them and did get to listen to quite a few desired but inaccessible music. Later I spent less time with it, which nevertheless remains one of my favorite radio stations.

It is Alan Cummings from UK that hooked me up with WFMU. Cummings is distributing my albums and he recommended them to WFMU. In fact that happened in 2004, but I was too lazy and didn’t mail them the package until early September in 2005. (they’ve sent emails urging) It’s not by airmail and in the end of September Brian Tuner told me that he’s still expecting it, I thought it’s lost and so be it, never knew they already had the whole RTV-702 played through.

Those interested can follow these links for the four programmes. Click on the time codes to choose individual tracks:

1. Nov 6, 2005 (hosted by Mita)
2. Nov 14, 2005 (hosted by Hatch)
3. Nov 28, 2005 (hosted by John Allen)
4. Oct 25, 2005 (hosted by Brian Turner)

Previously about Li on GNO:

• Pics from GIFTS exhibition, Hangzhou (pic of a sound installation by Li)
• PSF‘s Hideo Ikeezumi reviews Li’s debut solo album (in Chinese, English and Japanese)
• Li’s Selected Works 01 – 05 for free dl

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