🐣 FELDERMELDER — SHANGHAI (SHAO REMIX) [初演 • PREMIERE]

⌾ LISTEN TO FELDERMELDER, SHANGHAI (SHAO REMIX) ⌾

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By the trundling false-starts, erratic thuds and empty scrawls of shining synth and vocal sample etchings, it certainly does seem that in 'Shanghai' Swiss producer Feldermelder achieved the goal of reflecting a late night walk through a deserted area of the Chinese megacity. Based on a visual recording of that experience ("an attempt to capture nightly nothingness," wrote Feldermelder), 'Shanghai' glitches, squawks and buzzes throughout the track, a noisy, gleaming morsel with a mood ripe for remixing.

On that remix is long-time friend, Beijing-based producer and sound designer Shao. "It was last summer, on a rainy morning, I was drinking on the rooftop beside my studio," Shao remembers. "I got the message from Manuel [Oberholz, aka Feldermelder], asking me to remix a track that he did in China."

⌾ THE ORIGINAL 'SHANGHAI' BY FELDERMELDER ⌾

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Creating the remix was as simple as stripping the original track bare and then processing them with "some effects pedals, some delays" whilst adding a drum beat that matched the atmosphere.

"I just followed the feeling and the atmosphere and made a relaxing track," Shao, formerly known as Dead J, explains simply. Though focused recently on techno-flavoured production (see Shao's Doppler Shift Pt. 1), he decided to change things up for this remix.

The result is unrelaxing. A doomful doppelganger of the original, a doped dirge of surging drama like an undersea cave, a mirror to the mire of irony of lonely deserted streets in a huge city, crushing isolation told in drawn out growls of distortion and warped glitter.

And the beat, a sparse march of organic thuds, gives it a feeling of techno deconstructed, four-to-the-floor-minus-two, simultaneously creating – along with the teasing rise and fall of the synth waves – a sense of something about to teeter over the edge.

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• 🔔 This Shao remix of 'Shanghai' arrives ahead of Feldermelder's The Sound Of Remixes, out tomorrow 19th April on Zurich label -OUS. This release sees three tracks from the Swiss artist's 2018 The Sound Of EP. You can pre-order the remix EP here.

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☟ Feldermelder Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ official site ⚘ twitter ⚘ instagram ⚘ songkick ⚘ spotify

☟ Shao Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ bandcamp ⚘ official site ⚘ instagram ⚘ resident advisor

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🐣 BOD [包家巷] — EMPTY MOUNTAIN WEEPS ALONE [空山独哭]

The screaming cosmic synth that hits at the start of this track, it arrives scathing and scorching, but shot through in the midst of its scratchings and scrapings is this plasma modulation, a sense of the steel and unbridled progress of the present and its outstretched hands craving the years ahead and beyond. The decayed whistle and muffled impact of a bomb, the PA system speaking to the crowd as you embark a ship to a future industrial megacity. This is the scene-setting power of two-thirds noise one-third classical in 'Empty Mountain Weeps Alone [空山独哭]' by LA-based musicmaker Nicolas Zhu aka bod or Baojiaxiang[包家巷] ('Baojia Alley'), presumably named after the same street in Chengdu. Maybe not.

Halfway through this short sharp snippet of sound we are introduced to this gargantuan construction site, the glitching beat like heavy machinery working in unison clashing together cranes and cement mixers and all the movement and drills and hammers and metal and muscle carving away at the surface of the earth and constructing a cradle of consumerism. In the background the silken tones of a traditional Chinese lute-like instrument (there are many so to name one would be a guess), like a sigh of nature drowned out by the grunts of advancement, reminscent of the hole-boring mall-making and gaudy grandiosity at tourist destination Yangshuo. Nature as stomped on by humanity. And it ends, the rush of cars in the rain, piano sounding a gentle shrug as protest, a casual hands-in-pocket lonely lament.

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• 🔔 This wonderful experimental piece arrives from bod's upcoming release for Zoom Lens called Piano Compositions: a 17-minute piece of which this snippet is in fact the 3rd movement. It's out and available tomorrow (15th December).
• 🔔 Read about the strange carnival that is Yangshuo right here, which we wrote about as part of our Visits travel series.

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📠
☟ bod [包家巷] Internet Presence ☟
facebook ⚘ soundcloud ⚘ official site ⚘ instagram

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🌏 VISITS — KUNMING

Way down south at the bottom of China is Kunming, the cool capital of Yunnan province. Kunming's border with Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar has helped shape the provincial capital's destiny as a travel and business hub. But with an under-the-radar, laid-back South East Asian vibe to match its cool summer climate, is there more to the Spring City than first meets than eye? Smoke and grit ballooned out of street side eateries, blurring red neon streets signs and permeating the night with a ting of otherworldy eeriness. Salivating smells of grilled meat filled the air. After a long, emotionally tiring journey, and a kind introduction to the city by two students we met on the train, our time in Kunming had begun. Just as we hit the streets on the search for a late night beer, food stalls were emptying and shops had shutters pulled down. It felt like we were too late, like it was the city's closing time.

We pushed further on a quest to quench our thirst. Through the haze that hung over the river blurred shapes of people emerged, girls and guys dressed in effortless eveningwear were moving from days spent hanging out in coffee shops and malls to come together in the city's clubs, to enjoy their lives and the student scene that is soundly submerged in the skin of Kunming. Kunming has gone through a lot for a fairly obscure city: it was used as a Chinese military centre during WWII, an American Air base, and a hugely historically important transport hub for the road to Burma, but it was in 1910 when the railway to Hanoi was built that Kunming's economic fortunes started to change. The city has undergone vast modernisation since the late '90s—now the streets are wide, office buildings are high and business districts have spread. Tourism has also become a huge focus for the area with the Chinese government pushing for a 'green city' status, as well as promoting the whole of Yunnan province as a clean and natural travel destination for native and foreign visitors.

The true strategic importance of the unassuming city is highlighted by the wildly adventurous plans for a 'Pan Asia High Speed Network', a high speed railway that aims to connect China, Cambodia, Loas, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. This is a huge project and will bring a lot of prosperity to the area, but of course comes shrouded in the nagging doubts and proven unsavoury interest that China has in the neighbouring developing countries. Questions of China's ethical practises and of their dubious presence in countries such a Laos where there is undeniable mass logging and damming of the Mekong primarily for Chinese profit. There are also plans to construct a highway linking Kunming with Bangladesh though Myanmar, another example of increased Chinese interest in surrounding developing countries. The borders with South East Asian countries not only affect Kunming's business fortunes, they also have a large impact on its cultural makeup, with a tangibly different feeling to other Chinese cities. There is a fashionably forward fresh feel to the streets. The city exudes a youthful student buzz, two universities and a medical college mean that there are a lot of cool kids hanging out all over town. Universities have long played a key role in shaping the city—the National Southwestern Associated University(国立西南联合大学) was founded in Kunming in 1938 during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and was a bastion for harbouring modern day Chinese democracy and liberal education.

We were in Kunming during Chinese Valentine's Day, which turned out to be an entertaining time. Cute young couples wandered around malls arm in arm, roses in hand. At dinner, groups of friends chatted and events were held to commemorate the romantic day outside the shiny malls. The students here have a fashionable edge that legitimately cemented our love of Asian fashion, unfussy stonewashed denim teamed with minimalistic '90s sportswear silhouettes, an unknowing Chinese twist on US sports luxe with less of the over-branded Korean ulzzang perfection and more of a kick back 'who cares' against their hardcore focus on education and overbearing government.

The young are knowledgeable and increasingly aware, so is it that through fashion they are able to show how they really feel? In the university-laden streets of Kunming are style and political trends incubated and allowed to flourish? A city to keep a cultural eye on, this could be where, given time, the changing in business fortunes for the growing middle class could rear its revolutionary head. Just give it time. Traditional Chinese aspects are still a mainstay of Kunming's cultural scene. At the Jingxing Birds and Flower Market the weird and wonderful emerge and our Western afflicted minds are put into turmoil as we take the afternoon to experience what we imagined to be an interesting old-time flower market. Strange succulents and ornamental orchids are proudly displayed by ancient sellers, ladies laden with pandan leaves and tobacco touts go about their everyday routines.

Further into the rebuilt modern-style market, the daily trade of plants is also a cover for the trade of animals. This was a tough one. Children cooed over polystyrene boxes brimming baby chicks, sullen-faced hedgehogs and unknown reptiles lulled sleepily behind unclean bars of brightly coloured cages. A regular sight for the Kunming residents was a stretch of the moral boundaries for us. The crisp and bright morning was blinkered by the sadness of seeing wildlife cooped up in disturbing conditions. The empathy for animals with a price tag continued as we took an afternoon stroll around Cuihu Park (Green Lake Park), a main park in Kunming, centred around a network of interlinked flourishing lily ponds. Shirkers sat in shaded spots under ornate pagodas wiling away afternoons playing chess and gossiping over tea. Parents entertained children with walks over bridges, boat rides and games.

Animals were on sale here too: tiny terrapins put into plastic spheres with no air or space, living baubles, and sold like candy floss to underwhelmed kinders. It seemed like a simple cultural difference between the West and Asia, but the feeling of the inane wasteful unimportance given to the lives of the small creatures took a while to leave our minds. Cultural differences are just par for the course when it comes to visiting foreign places but for small ethnic communities in China cultural differences often lead to a vast and lasting impact on the the fate of their traditions. The Old Quarter is home to the now practically dispersed Muslim Quarter, an area of huge importance to the cities Muslim Hui population. The old town has been recently redeveloped and, while some of the beautiful wooden buildings of yesteryear remain along with the artfully narrow and curved art-deco Sister Buildings (姊妹楼), most have been replaced with a mall and other glimmering visions of globalisation such as Starbucks. The Hui people are the seventh largest minority in Yunnan – the third largest of China's 56 "official" ethnic groups – and have been part of the fabric of the area for well over a thousand years, with a turbulent past reaching as far back as far as Kublai Khan's invading forces in 1253. Muslim warriors who were part of the Mongol forces that conquered China in the thirteenth century, stayed, married local women, adopted Chinese customs but still retained their Muslim religion that eventually formed the Hui identity, bolstered by trade with Muslim nations on the Silk Road.

Islam is such an integral part of the Hui people's makeup that they are the only minority in China to be classified as such due to religion alone, as opposed to language or ethnicity. By modernising a historically and culturally significant area that is such an intrinsic piece of the Kunming history the city appears to be showing that its focus lies with business and tourism rather than supporting its historical ties. Whilst looking for things to do in the city, we discovered that in 2004 a traditionally Hui district, Shuncheng Jie, had been completely demolished. Development comes at a price and it is, once again, minorities that seem to pay. Regardless of the rapid modernisation, Kunming remains a city with a depth of intriguing alleyways. The district around the university is filled with a richness of edgy creativity and culture with kitsch coffee shops and trendy boutiques. The aesthetic is as cool and stripped-back as the fashion. A western immigrant/expat community lives around the area, presumably attracted by teaching jobs at the university, and there are a smattering of hot spots where students and westerners hang out over falafel plates and wine glasses, an atmosphere extremely reminiscent of a corner of Hanoi where students and westerners mix over snacks and beer. An old slowness still seeps silently around the city streets. Children play barefoot and bare-bottomed in the street while their parents look on, chatting to their neighbour or sitting on duty outside shops that have been selling the same stock since the city was only two storeys high. There is a quaintness to local life woven into the city's tapestry that has been stitched over generations, before the tourists, before the students. Parks fill with Kunming's elderly who dance in the freshness of the evening, families enjoying their time together and friends having an evening drink along the river. Kunming is just another Chinese city in the midst of modernisation, but there is a lingering openness and a sense of chaos that isn't wholly Chinese. A Chinese version of South East Asia with all the beauty, ethnic mixtures and historical connections, it seems Kunming is a grey area. Its kinship with South East Asia represents a tangible difference to the rest of China: historically a political incubator and a university town, it may be following in the same path of other Chinese cities with its malls and metro system, but under the surface it is perfectly placed for the birth of modern day Chinese democracy and a new version of the way in which present day China could grow.

Later on in our travels, we drank a couple of beers in Siem Reap with a Thai Chinese guy we'd met earlier that day. We told him we'd been to China. "Where?" he asked. When we said the South, and Yunnan in particular, he smiled and responded, "That's not China—that's the same as here."

REBECCA ALICE SAUNDERS

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• 🔔 City Star Ji Feng Branch, double room £16.50 (143CNY)
  This is a new hotel with helpful, friendly staff and clean rooms. The location isn't perfect but it's in easy walking distance of lots of the main places in town including the riverside with all its bars and a short taxi ride away from the train station. We extended our stay here with no problems and had room service every day, as well as a decent breakfast included. Lots of Chinese business people and couples on mini breaks staying here (maybe it was the Valentine's weekend).

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See more from VISITS in China:

Guangzhou • Guilin • Yangshuo • Guiyang

⭐

Train travel

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FADED GHOST – TALK TO ME

Disclaimer: this song is three 3 years old. But since it's only been played on SoundCloud just over 900 times... well, you know, u kno. It feels and sounds new to me. Not fresh necessarily because that's a sound in itself, but it is still in terms of fruit or vegetables "fresh" yes it's fresh. I found it when looking up some of the people/artists/acts who played at this year's JUE | Music + Art festival in Shanghai I liked the name Faded Ghost so that was one of the first musicmakers I checked out but then I just ended up trying to find the sounds of the entire lineup. Faded Ghost is the alias of Shanghai-based singer ChaCha.

Anyway! It was an immense surprise to find something so tantalising tucked away a bit of scroll down Faded Ghost's SoundCloud, a lovely gratifying surprise to discover the Ghost Ark EP which is yeah, 3 years old. But it's so experimental and searching forth for new sounds with inquisitive tendrils of exploration yet so stylised and cohesive in the atmosphere which it creates that for me it deserves for a few more people to know about this music, to hear it and breathe it in.

That is what the first track on this EP is like. It's called 'Talk To Me' and from its first wooo-eee-oooooooooo soft misty eerie chords gliding from note to note, cool and spectral, it is entering a new world, a portal of simultaneous chill and psychic reverberations. Ghostly glittering sounds, cracklings and sumptuous rainstick percussion, humble sub-bass rounding things off, those icy chimes throughout sharp and shivering, the vocals of ChaCha suddenly lancing up through the fog of sounds – growing more intense, more intense, more layers to the voice, vocodering and alarming – the synth chords taking a more abrasive turn, sawing the heavy air and seemingly echoing everywhere, all of it by the end fading out, evaporating slowly into nothingness.

You're sitting lotus position (cross-legged) in the middle of your bed browsing the internet on a notebook. You like a tweet, feels too much to retweet. You never retweet anything.

Your phone hums by your left knee. Picking it up, you note its weight: you always like the weight. Someone's liked a photo on Instagram, the picture of your cat half-asleep in morning sunlight draped over the floor, a study in light and shade. More likes than usual. Notebook forgotten, you trawl Instagram, liking only the crisp, the intentional lo-fi and the well positioned. More likes pour in – pride wells up in you. The cat photo, perfect.

Checking your notifications, it's not the cat photo that's getting all the likes, but all of your photos. Every single photo gets liked in the space of a minute, all from the same account: @ – just @. Blank. Nothing. Your photos are being rapidly liked and unliked, turning on a switch of panic in your mind. You can't block the account. It has no profile.

Your notebook screen has gone black. You press a key, but nothing happens. The power button, mashing the keyboard, nothing, nothing. The phone buzzes uncontrollably.

Locked in position you feel your stomach rise, the feeling of free-fall, your mind fogs, eyes glazing, panic terror panic. The notebook screen now on but dim shows the vague outline of a face, floating. Its eyes unable to keep a steady gaze you cannot help but stare into it, your head getting closer, closer. Drawing nearer, your forehead nearly touching the screen, the woozy eyes of the ghostly face suddenly lock hard on your own eyes, force power strange. Nothing else now, nothing else but these eyes. The buzzing phone is a steady drone louder not only in your ears but everywhere, all around, in your mind, remembered and anticipated and experienced all at once. Still cross-legged somehow but face down pushing your nose and forehead into the notebook screen, straining its hinges, snapping slowly, still the face, still the face – the eyes saying something. So much loneliness, permeating your skin, seeping into your blood, mind saturated, so lonely, no friends, talk to me please PLEASE talk to me please tell me who you are what do you like doing...

A knock at the door and a muffled voice and someone enters. They see a notebook snapped in half and bedsheets in a mess and have no idea.

Or at least that's the kind of scene I envisaged when listening to this one track. The other tracks on Faded Ghost's Ghost Ark EP are well worth your time, too: there's the piano and double-bass of 'I Remember' and its spooky dark dub atmosphere; and last but not least is the eponymous 'Ghost Ark', a subterranean rumble of sub-bass, plinking purring synth glistening into the dark and night noises reverberating, muffled distorted kicks coming in later as the glitter fades and the track dims.

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• Faded Ghost is the project of Shanghai-based singer ChaCha, who is much more active under her original moniker than this one here, so check out her SoundCloud.

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☟ Faded Ghost Social Media Presence ☟
SoundCloud • Twitter • Tumblr •

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SIMON – 城市車手 [CITY RIDERS] (PRODUCED BY LONG NEK)

For your viewing and listening pleasure, here is something all the way from Taiwan. "Taiwan?" I hear you say, "But what's going on in Taiwan?" Good question. The actual answer to this is that there's a very nice underground rap/hip hop scene, to which the YES/NO-featured beatmaker Luviia and rapper Aristophanes貍貓 both belong; producers work with each other, MCs try their skills with different producers, live performances abound.

It's from out of this scene, pretty much like a circle of friends, that the two artists who make up this song appear: Simon, full name Simon Chen, is an MC who's a part of Lantown (part-creative-collective, part-rappers, part-videomakers, part-local-culture-promoters based in Yilan City); and Long Nek, a producer from Kaohsiung, a city on the south-coast of Taiwan. Together these two have forged a pretty awesome track called '城市車手' (chéngshì chēshǒu) or simply 'City Riders' in English.

Obviously – well, actually maybe it's not too obvious – I don't understand Mandarin. But thankfully Simon has provided the lyrics to the track in the video's description: perfect for google translating. However, google translate isn't that great and you can only get a vague gist of the song. With that said, it's better to sit back and listen to Simon's flow; it's chilled, confident, and clearly skilled as he skips over words in doubletime like it was nothing. Arguably, before anything else, a natural sound on the microphone is the best thing – after this, everything falls into place easy-peasy. The rap sounds great, clear and crisp, thanks to Long Nek's production, which has also given the track a blissfully soulful vibe – thanks to the funk-flavoured guitar, late-nite aching romance saxophone, simple yet accented bassline – with skittering boom-bap hi-hats and undoctored beat reverbing underneath.

It's the first I've heard from either of these two, and hopefully it's not the last. It seems as though, after a brief look around, that both Simon and Long Nek are pretty active anyway, so there's bound to be something more soon. Check the links below and get involved in this exciting underground scene.

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Watch Simon on YouTube

Like Long Nek on Facebook
Listen to Long Nek on SoundCloud
Follow Long Nek on Twitter
Watch Long Nek on YouTube

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食品まつり A.K.A FOODMAN 核 [NUCLEUS] FT. ​ARISTOPHANES 貍貓

It's always a really fun thing to experience a new song from Aristophanes貍貓. She's a rapper from Taiwan who is also a teacher (mainly helping to write children write stories, as I found out when I interviewed her) – the subjects she talks about in her raps range from the politics of Taiwan and the prospective lives of unborn children, to her own versions of Chinese folk tales; her voice is elastic, shaped and pulled by its master to express feelings and passions in each rap very effectively.

But what's also exciting about Aristophanes is how she presents her work: each song is a collaboration with an awesome producer. There's Lidly's blissful beats, the harsh electro of Sonic Deadhorse, canooooopy's experimentalism and Petechan's traditional boom-bap breed of hip hop, and the chill of Luviia (who recently provided a guest mix for YES/NO), to name a few. It's a varied bunch of beatsmiths and trackmakers who help to augment Aristophanes' intense flow sharp, interesting soundscapes.

And it's happened again. She's collaborated with Nagoya-based trackmaker, DJ and painter, 食品まつり aka Foodman (the Japanese, 'shokuhin matsuri', means 'Food Festival') to produce the wildly experimental track '核' – which in Chinese ('Hé') means 'Nucleus' or 'Nuclear' or 'Stone' (just 'Nucleus' – 'Kaku' – in Japanese). Prepare your ears.

I've been meaning, or rather waiting, to write about Foodman for a while, having kept my eyes and ears on his SoundCloud since I stumbled across it a few months ago; right now, it seems a good a time as ever to feature his surreal, noisy music. Screaming into life, his latest work with Aristophanes features endlessly distorted samples, placed in simple melodic patterns that sound like electric guitar riffs put through an industrial blender with a ZX Spectrum. The almost indistinct beat carries with it a juke rhythm punctuated by booming heart-thuds of kick drum, your mind picking out the typical syncopation carried in the genre amidst the atonal white noise screeches and permitting your head to nod a little. It's juicily grating.

The perfect partner for Foodman's fractured sounds, Aristophanes' rap is typically frenetic, marked by burning intakes of breath and the spitting out of sharp syllables in a harsh yet near-lethargic, sometimes sensual whispering. Her flow is vital and colourful, the perfect match for her words which are unique in that they discuss subject matter not typically discussed in rap. Through quantum mechanics and metaphysics she poses existential questions and statements: "Can you get closer to the truth after burning your imagination?" – "You need gods, so you create them" – "penetrate the line between life and death by your thoughts." Thankfully there is a translation of her Mandarin rhymes, and what becomes evident is Aristophanes' eminence as a cerebral, poetic rapper whose lyrics aim to provoke as much thought and cause as much alarm as other rappers do; but being an individual person, she does it her way.

Read through those lyrics by clicking round about here.

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Find Aristophanes 貍貓 on Weibo
Like Aristophanes 貍貓 on Facebook
Listen to Aristophanes 貍貓 on Soundcloud
Follow Aristophanes 貍貓 on Twitter

Listen to 食品まつり aka Foodman on SoundCloud
Like 食品まつり aka Foodman on Facebook
Follow 食品まつり aka Foodman on Twitter

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MARUKAO丸颜先生 SOFA DREAM // HELLO FUNK

Here and now I am very happy to present to you some more well-chosen sounds from the young Chinese label, Groove Bunny Records - these are the same guys that bought us MADPETE's Cantonese Boom Bap, nicely minimal and retro hip hop with raps in Cantonese. How pleasant were those sounds.

Anyway yeah, some more sounds found by Groove Bunny come from Chinese producer Marukao - I am not sure what the characters mean though. If you translate them from the Chinese you get "Pills Mr. Yen" so I don't even know what to say, let's just stick with Marukao. In any case, the songs that have been found and reissued, I guess, are not "new" in the proper sense of the word. You know I'm always going on about when is a new song a new song and blah blah blah, well, both of these are like four years old. So there's old for you. But they're new. No one's probably ever heard them, not least anyone reading this anyway.

First up we have 'Sofa Dream' - it's a chilled number that was made in 2009 sounds as though it could have been made yesterday. It truly is a slow jam sofa dream. Somnolent strings drift in and out like your consciousness in a state of dozement laying on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon as tremolo synths provide that delicate wobble between dreaming and reality. Virtuoso warm solo synth sounds play over the top like dappled sunshine, giving it a good lounge vibe.

The beat is skiffling and plays to catch up with itself at times, adding delicious fills that provide the energy in this otherwise sleep-inducing atmosphere. It's laid-back with a glitchy edge.

On the other hand, we have the older (2008) stylings of 'Hello Funk'. As you might be able to gather from the title, it's pretty funky. Modulating bass synths provide a foundation that verges on cheeky in its sound, one that's certainly sidestepping towards the dancefloor rather than the sofa.

This particular vibe is helped along by cartoony lead synth noises, like an altered synth-vox, which it some fun alongside the bouncy beat. The latter is in itself quite 80s and it's when I noticed that distinct snare strike that the rest of the song began to sound of-that-time, too. It certainly is funky though. The organs towards the end really give it a drop of condensed funk, each whistling note making your mind melt a little bit - in a good way.

Now, if this is what was happening all those years ago - what will be happening now I wonder?

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Follow to Groove Bunny Records on Soundcloud
Check Marukao on Douban

MADPETE 省广奇兵 CANTONESE BOOM BAP

I go on like all the time about not understanding the lyrics of stuff. It's not the worst thing in the world to not understand what someone is saying in a song. Often, the way they're saying it is just as important - you tell skill from that much, I think. This is probably a dubious stance when it comes to rap, because it's basically all words (lol), but I stand by it. I just think all music, if you like it, deserves to be listened to, regardless of whether you understand it. I can GET a song, even if I can't UNDERSTAND it, if you GET what I mean (GET it?).

Anyway, my most recent thing that I can't understand is a sick new album from a couple of Chinese guys who together go by the name of Madepete. That's their conjoined-twin name. Otherwise, they're known as Petechan, producer extraordinaire, and Madprole, rapper extraordinaire. Whilst you can't listen to the whole album, called Cantonese Boom Bap (released on a new label in China Groove Bunny Records), you can definitely get a very good idea of how it sounds.

And my oh my does it sound good. Like seriously. It IS boom bap. These three songs do indeed show off the talents off both members of Madpete quite nicely. Beginning with 'Paper Plane', it smacks you right in the face - well perhaps it's not the right expression. It strokes your face, very gently, mainly with a sun-kissed guitar riff sampled and expertly looped throughout the song. Madprole's vocals swagger along almost egged on by the skipping beat, turning rich when they're doubled up in the bouncy chorus. I can't help but drift away to that dreamy guitar. Ah...

Samples play a big part in this retro hip hop sound, same goes for next song on the album 'Since We First Met', which glistens with the same languid attitude as 'Paper Planes'. Madprole has a real lazy style flow that is impossible not to fall in love with, despite not understanding a word of his Cantonese rhymes. Electronic blips bejewel the song for a little decoration, too. Perfect for stretching out in the sun.

And then we have 'Ghost Walk'.

Wow the bass. The bassline that Petechan here has conjured up is utterly groovesome, as strong and lasting as something set in stone. It reeks of attitude, becoming the heavy-slabbed pavement that Madprole's rap swaggers over. Again there's sampling, but here it's less pronounced, giving centre-stage to the beat, bass and baritone of the vocals.

It has almost a film noir pastiche air about it, something totally streetwise yet without taking itself too seriously. I don't know if that's what they were going for, but it's definitely the atmosphere that it gives off. Nothing wrong with that. I actually love it. It's like sailing through an old-school landscape in a 1970s style Mercedes or something.

Madpete's brand of hip hop is slow, simplistic and filled with groove - the offbeat rhythms with which their music saunters along are wholly catching. If you don't find yourself bopping your head then... well, I don't know. I can't judge. It's certainly a strong sound, with not even a sniff of overproduction in sight: everything is just so. And just as well. Because any tweaking would take away the really charming heart of these songs - even if you can't understand the lyrics.

This is their first album with Groove Bunny. I'd keep an eye on both these guys and the label - I'm sure there are exciting things to come. Also, if you want to hear more of Cantonese Boom Bap, check this album snippet.

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Listen to Petechan on Soundcloud

Hear more from Groove Bunny Records on SoundCloud
Follow Groove Bunny Records on Twitter

SQUARELOUD B.T.T.B

Gosh golly, my oh my, I haven't anything like this in a long time. It's a kind of sound that I suppose the world was first exposed to when Justice were first on the scene in like, I dunno, 2006/7. Whatever, it was in the past, quite a while ago, at the same kind of time when the joke-genre "nu rave" was being simultaneously reviled and revered. Ahhhhhh, those were the days...

In a sense, they were the days, but the days are also now. Each new day that goes by is another day of experiencing the music of the past for the music-makers of the present. They are standing on the shoulders of giants - every creatively inclined person who gets inspired by a sound from the past does this. Perhaps it's a little melodramatic to say that, but the sentiment is there: the past helps to create the future.

Anyway, Beijing-based duo (I think it's a duo, judging from the picture) SquareLoud has brought to the table a wondrous sound, reminiscent of Justice's electro-rock vibe except it's fresh and new, with no memories yet attached to it, more dynamic, epic-sounding, less-dance-oriented. Yes, it really is a fantastic piece of work. Turn your headphones or speakers up and prepared to get blown away, this is 'B.T.T.B'.

Pure electro-rock. It is a wonderfully noisy medley of distorted synths and deep slap bass to begin with, decorated with silver-glistening string sounds piercing over the top of the melting-pot foundations. Many breaks in the song give it great dynamism, with different parts literally grabbing your attention, introducing different sounds like a showcase of just how much they can do creatively. We get different overarching overdriven melodies screeching, with a full, epic sound before we reach the middle, where the distortion becomes brutally crunchy, chopped up to the rhythm of a wild punchy beat that's been twisted and tamed. The second half holds yet more variations, chopped stuck-record sounds and glitched-out synths, an orchestral cacophony of electro virtuosity.

I do not know what BTTB stands for, but as you can tell, I quite like it. The song kinda grabs a hold of you, shakes you, puts you down - perhaps this is what "future rock" (one of the tags for the song on SoundCloud) is supposed to do to you. Either way, I'm excited to hear where they will take this already nicely matured, energetic, and energising, sound.

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ARISTOPHANES 貍貓 THE PEACH BLOSSOM

Well I have to be honest, this is something that I didn't think would exist. It's very bad of me I suppose because any kind of music can come from anywhere. It just so happens that this is quite different at the same time as being unusual, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I found this track the other day and I was blown away by it. Not only by the general sound of the music but by the voice too - it's a haunting, mesmerising voice.

And it is the voice of Aristophanes 貍貓 (I think her real name is Li Mou but those Chinese characters are like a play on words and say... I don't know what they say: raccoon cat? leopard cat? I dunno), a Taipei-based (Taiwanese) MC who rhymes and flows in Mandarin Chinese. It's that thing again of not being able to understand something, yet understanding or actually FEELING the emotion or atmosphere that has been brought across by the way the words have been sung, or rapped in this case.

Also the track has been produced by Tokyo producer Lidly, who makes beats for many people. These particular beats he's made, however, are gloriously chilled, like a memory that moves as a slowmotion skateboard compilation or long pans of sun-tinted afternoon landscapes. A truly beautiful hip hop sound that Li Mou's achingly passionate vocals, starkly echoing, almost nude in the way that they float with languor atop the fluid beats, compliment excellently.

What a chilled vibe, but at the same time there is something agitated and pained in Li Mou's flows, especially in the break where she ups the tempo and lets out a heartrending 'ahhh!' before the beat comes back in, accompanied by a brain-tilting synth solo that sounds as stretched out as Li Mou's earlier vocals. Lovely.

The interesting thing about this song (aside from, y'know, how good it sounds) is that the lyrics actually deal with a take on a classical Chinese story called The Peach Blossom Land (written in 421 AD by Tao Yuanming). In the story, a fisherman sails up a river in a forest made up entirely of blossoming peach trees to its source, where he finds a utopian village of people living in harmony. In the version told by Aristophanes, a man dreams of finding the place, travels a long time to get there, but finds it ruined. Bummer. But you can definitely hear the dreamlike atmosphere in the song, the long journey, as well as the sadness of a destroyed kind of Shangri-La.

Check out Aristophanes' SoundCloud cause there are some other great tracks on there, featuring fresh collaborations with a number of talented producers and of course her distinctive vocal flow. She is also involved with MICRO'Session, a group that puts on nights for Taiwanese DJs, beatmakers and MCs.

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