Wo ai ni: I Love You

That is one of the few things I learned to pronounce while in China, along with “cheaper, thank you, please, one cold water, white rice, too expensive, I would like to go to…. etc”.

This was my first trip ever to the Oriental side of our planet Earth, and let me say, I believe it is the best trip I have done up till now. I’m here now infront of my mother’s laptop (mine is still in the hospital) and I do not know where to begin in this post. I have almost 2 Gb in images and videos and 3 weeks worth of anecdotes of this most enchanting bizarre land.

China is… what word could adequately describe China? New? Antique? Gray? Colorful? Communist? Capitalist? I think no one word can fully describe China nowadays. The whole country is busting at the seams with history, dicotomies, yuxtapositions, old and news. After 4 days of having returned I’m still trying to make sense of how everything fits together in that tightly-wound society of Jasmine tea and 88 story high buildings. In China you can admire the new society from atop the world’s most modern buildings or hunker down in your private half a millenia old hutong complete with the ever-traditional center patio…. AND Room Service!

While in China I was able to travel through all of Beijing, Shanghai and visit Inner Mongolia and the Gobi Desert. I permitted myself to indulge in everything from the tourist “have to see’s” to a local party held in a museum turned nightclub for the evening. I feel as though I have to tell you EVERTYING about my trip, every detail and every anecdote, I know I can’t but I just feel like sharing! There’s too much to tell and too little space! I’m forced to SUMMARIZE!! NOOOOO!!!! Well.. I guess all that really matters here is the music, no? So I guess I’ll start with that, ok?

Not only is China’s physical appearance under remodelation, it’s youth is rapidly adjusting to the new resources available to them in every single way, businesses, clubs, bars, bands, art, literature, evrything is being woken up and exploded to it’s maximum potential.

Musically, China was truly encouraging. Local bands are popping up from under the rocks, bands such as The Subs’ (bio), Brain Failure (bio), Junglecat, Tang Dynasty, Reflector, among others to move the young ones into musical revolution, and what better way to start a revolution thank with Punk!? Punk is HUGE in China, youngsters walk the street singing high-speed Chinese punk lyrics while air-guitarring their favorite rifs, it’s just massive. The list for Chinese rock bands are now ENDLESS and it’s not just rock now, it’s all sorts of DJ’s, traditional Folk artists, Pop, Hip Hop, Heavy Metal, etc. etc. etc.

+Streamed Songs: Sorry guys, no available downloads just click on the song to begin streaming

1. Xu Wei – Every Moment Is Brand New
(Every Minute is Fresh, 2004)
2. Xu Wei – Let’s Drink Tea
(Every Minute is Fresh, 2004)

One night in Beijing, I was looking through a local magazine and ran across the delightful news of an Eletronicat concert in a small bar near the Worker’s Stadium called Yogun Yishan, of course I would not miss the chance to see the infamous Eletronicat in action! So I arrived at the bar and what was my surprise? Miss Le Bomb, all this Edinburgh born lady needs to rock your socks off is her laptop , her sensual, quirky -and most of the times- improvised lyrics, her mic and a willing crowd, I just ate her up. Eletronicat was a different story, that man is insane his sounds range from retro to glitch, mindboggling I can assure you! At the end of the night I was able to approach Miss Le Bomb and ask her for a demo CD, she was kind enough to give me an EP she burned from her very own laptop, she told me she was gonna e-mail me the name of the tracks, but I still have not received them :( .

+Downloadable: Enjoy

1. Miss Le Bomb – Track 03
(Unknown EP)
2. Miss Le Bomb – Track 05
(Unknown EP)
3. Traditional Chinese Opera – Treasure house of chinese folk music
4. The Subs – Drew the Line
5. Dou Wei – Hallucination
(Hallucination, 1999)
6. Dou Wei – Harvest
(Hallucination, 1999)
7. Wu Bai & China Blue 200 – 没有头
8. Wu Bai & China Blue 200 – 顽石的飞行

Love,

Lotus

Photo credit: Catherine Buca

Someone once asked me – of all the genres I tend to listen to – what genre really gets to me the most. I’d been thinking about that before but I never can come up with one particular genre. It just doesn’t seem right picking one. Afterwards I realized that the question is just plainly wrong to begin with. It isn’t a musical genre that might or might not get to me. It’s the mood that is portrayed by the music that can really get to me and resonate with my heart. A mood that is ignorant to genres. With this, the answer became clear. Music that feels most right to me often reveals a nostalgic feeling. Like the musical embodiment of autumn rain or old, black and white photographs. This is when I can truly be as one with the music and feel most comfortable.

Maybe I’ve just got a melancholic heart.

1. Ingrid Perruche – Lento et Largo – Tranquillissimo
   Górecki Symphonie No.3 (Naïve, 2005)
2. Grace Cathedral Park – Play Delicate, Desire Quiet
   In the Evening of Regret (La Verdad, 2004)
3. Red House Painters – Michael
   Down Colorful Hill (4AD, 1992)
4. Mazzy Star – Flowers in December
   Among My Swan (Capitol, 1996)
5. The Cure – Pictures of You
   Disintegration (Elektra, 1989)
6. Songs: Ohia – Blue Chicago Moon
   Didn’t It Rain (Secretly Canadian, 2002)
7. Tom Waits – Fish & Bird
   Alice (Anti, 2002)
8. David Darling – Darkwood IV: Dawn
   Dark Wood (ECM, 1995)
9. Agitated Radio Pilot – Hold Back the Sea
   Your Turn To Go It Alone (Rusted Rail, 2006)

Stream playlist

Still from Andrei Tarkovsky’s ‘Andrei Rublev’ (1969)

Probably one of my favourite scenes in a motion picture comes from Andrei Tarkovsky’s ‘Andrei Rublev’. The film – a true masterpiece in itself – ends with a shot of several horses in the rain, a beautiful symbolic image. This is what Andrei Tarkovsky himself had to say about this scene:

I’d like to point out the film ends with an image of horses in rain. It is a symbolic image as horse for me is a synonym of life. When I’m looking at a horse I have a feeling I’m in direct contact with the essence of life itself. Perhaps it’s because horse is a very beautiful animal, friendly to man, and is moreover so characteristic of the Russian landscape. There are many scenes with horses in Rublev. Take the scene in which a man dies after an unsuccessful attempt to fly. A sad-looking horse is a silent witness to the scene. The presence of horses in the last, final scene means that life itself was the source of all of Rublev’s art.
Interview L’artiste dans l’ancienne Russe et dans l’URSS nouvelle (Entretien avec Andrei Tarkovsky) with Michel Ciment and Luda & Jean Schnitzer in Positif Oct. 1969 (109), pp. 1–13 [Pol. trans. Zygmunt Kwiatkowski and Adam Horoszczak].

The first track of the playlist below comes from the beautiful album ‘Nostalghia’ by pianist Francois Couturier which is dedicated to Andrei Tarkovsky and his groundbreaking art. Tarkovsky once defined the meaning of Nostalghia for his similar titled movie as `a global yearning for the wholeness of existence’, which seems very fitting for Couturier’s compositions on this album. Accompanying him are Jean-Louis Matinier on accordion, Jean-Marc Larché on soprano saxophone and Anja Lechner on cello.

With this, I decided to make a modest mix that deals with rain and the mysterious ambiance that’s captured in this particular scene. And to me, the most beautiful and thoughtfully written song about rain has to be ‘Rambunctious Cloud’ by Vic Chesnutt. It’s hard not to love a song with lyrics like these:

The same water that the dinosaurs drank
Is the same water that the Persian fleets sank in
The very water that moistened the primordial ooze
Is now hammering on my metal porch roof

~ Vic Chesnutt / Rambunctious Cloud ~

1. Francois Couturier – Andrei
   Nostalghia – Song For Tarkovsky (ECM, 2006)
2. Mountains – Hundred Acre
   Sewn (Apestaartje, 2006)
3. Dirty Three – Rain On
   Cinder (Touch & Go, 2005)
4. Vic Chesnutt – Rambunctious Cloud
   Ghetto Bells (New West, 2005)
5. Steffen Basho-Junghans – Inside the Rain
   Waters in Azure (Strange Attractors, 2002)
6. Slowdive – Country Rain
   5 EP (Creation, 1993)
7. Mark Lanegan – Kingdoms of Rain
   Whiskey For The Holy Ghost (Sub Pop, 1994)
8. Akron/Family – How Do I Know
   Akron/Family (Young God, 2005)
9. Andrey Dergatchev – Rain
   The Return (ECM, 2005)

Stream playlist

The list ends with a track that consists only of the sound of rain and comes from the soundtrack of another great Russian film, called Vozvrashcheniye (The Return). Please see this post for more information about that film.
Return to Sea: As the Waves Will Always Roll

Further reading
Andrei Tarkovsky on Andrei Rublev at Nostalghia.com

I recall certain moments, let us call them icebergs in paradise, when after having had my fill of her–after fabulous, insane exertions that left me limp and azure-barred–I would gather her in my arms with, at last, a mute moan of human tenderness (her skin glistening in the neon light coming from the paved court through the slits in the blind, her soot-black lashes matted, her grave gray eyes more vacant than ever–for all the world a little patient still in the confusion of a drug after a major operation)–and the tenderness would deepen to shame and despair, and I would lull and rock my lone light Lolita in my marble arms, and moan in her warm hair, and caress her at random and mutely ask her blessing, and at the peak of this human agonized selfless tenderness (with my soul actually hanging around her naked body and ready to repent), all at once, ironically, horribly, lust would swell again–and “oh, no,” Lolita would say with a sigh to heaven, and the next moment the tenderness and the azure–all would be shattered.

- Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita.

Spoon – don’t you evah
(Ga ga ga ga ga / 2007)
The Zutons – creepin’ an a crawlin’
(Creepin’ an a crawlin’ 7″ / 2003)
Bill Landford & The Landfordaires – run on for a long time
(okeh post war gospel story 47/62, 1998)
Junior Murvin – police + thieves
(police and thieves / 1977)
Violent femmes – blister in the sun
(Violent femmes / 1983)
Folk Implosion – natural one
(Kids OST / 1995)
Map of Africa – black skin blue eyed boys
(Map of Africa / 2007)

iMage: Kimberly Wlassak