China's Underground Music Is Weirder Than You Think 

Hey thanks for watching and I appreciate the comment! I’d love to get in touch for a future video. Can you shoot me an email to indiecelebritybingo@gmail.com ?

@@Bandsplaining hell yeah

I’m in a slam metal band called Infantectomy and we definitely want to tour China. A lot of great death metal bands are from there.

I went to a couple metal shows in Hangzhou late 2021 and the crowd went absolutely bananas. Packed house in a 1,000+ venue makes for hell of a time. Not under the impression metal is on the downturn here either

@@hamilfun I’m in the States, in Hollywood of all places, and extreme music is alive and well.

Plus the fact of being authoritarian country / isolated from the world in some ways

ok lol

@@notamoonraker It's not isloated at all in terms of music.

i can't even begin to imagine how music actually means, guitars. i've made vst for over twenty years, computer music exists in china. come on token thick rim glasses and college hair and guitar music guy. this is nonsense.

"eccentric" isn't really the chinese way. you actually try your best not to stand out too much.

Can you make some recommendations please on some of your lesser known Chinese bands, and where we can listen to their music in the West?

Can you make some recommendations please on some of your lesser known Chinese bands, and where we can listen to their music in the West?

That's so cool. I wish I understood the political intricacies of china to understand the bands on a deeper level

As a zillenial I've noticed underground music becoming much more popular in the US too. Like a worldwide mass rejection of manufactured pop music

Any suggestions for a noob trying to get his hand on niche indie weird Taiwanese artists/bands?

草东没有派对，deca joins，落日飞车，老王乐队

do you have any playlists to share?

@@adrianlie94 溫蒂漫步 blueburn 溫室雜草

I’m also excited for recommendations :) I seem to remember having found experimental noise music made by a Taiwanese student, but I’ll need to go and hunt for that lol

Awesome! Do you have any of your music on YT or any other platform? I wish more Chinese musicians would come to Australia. I've seen Carsick Cars & their amazing alter ego WHITE (one my faves)... SUCH a thrill. Thank the Gods for YT & Bandcamp tho!

好吗？

This is the first time I've heard of the Chinese indie scene and it sounds wonderful! I'll have to go look hard for some of these bands.

@@theheavenlyoption There is a lot of good stuff to dig into man, my band signed to Maybe Mars but unfortunately broke up last year, but playing underground shows all around China and becoming friends with a lot of the bands. The Chinese underground scene definitely has some of the most creative and talented musicians playing today

@@plasticband9253 Can you give me recommendations for some Shoegazer, dreampop or indiepop from China? Would love to hear from someone who's in the scene. I'll search for them on bilibili. Oh, sorry to hear about your band breaking up :(

that sounds awesome, i love youth rebellion. this vid gave me hope in China and the world!

Yeah a lot of it is like that, or was

Damn....

I bet you was glad that bus broke down.

It's changed, haha.

Whoever you are, wherever you’re from, thank you for the recommendations!

I love Omnipotent Youth Society, will check the other bands too, thank you very much

Chinese Football even opened for American Football during their 2019 tour in China lol. It was amazing.

Excellent suggestion.

thanks for the recs!! I knew chinese football, they're great I'll give omnipotent youth society a check

4AD was home to some of the best shoegaze/dreampop bands so I don't think your comparison is a negative one. I'm happy to see that the indie scene in China is thriving despite all the barriers. Any especially good bands that I have to check out?

@@theheavenlyoption I’m pessimistic as the dude in the clip:”Second handed Europe,second handed USA”(to me the underground music sounds more “second handed Japan” tho).I’ve never been a big fan of indie/shoegaze but you may be interested in: Dear Eloise, Gatsby in a daze, the Molds, Chui Wan

We're isolated from them.

@@roy_for_real2674 well said bro

For the ones who seek for something more obscure&underground, I’ll leave some names here: 1. more-or-less ethnic : Liang Yi Yuan, Lao Dan, Mamer(IZ), 朱芳琼，Li Daiguo & Huan Qing 2. Noise/Electronic/Drones: Torturing nurse(Junky), Mei Zhi Yong, MaFeiSan, Xiaohong & Xiaoxiaohong, Ronez, Ruo Tan, Sun yizhou 3. ProgR/Folk/Avant-Garde/Improvise: Wu Tun, Xiao He, Glamorous Pharmacy, 木推瓜，Wang Ziheng, The other two comrades, OTMF(一次性交朋友）, Wang Lei, Dawanggang, Tongue，盘古，Wang Fan(王凡) 4. Psychedelic/Krautrock(they’re one of a kind): Eryang, 鸭听天, 水门汀（Shame There aren’t any recordings available yet), 粗糙影像，Khunathi（丘瑙底河）,酸鲁磨，and a stoner band called Electric Lady …And the list goes on (Tho there is still a gap in jazz music

Hey it’s an honor to have you comment! It was an incredible documentary and I’m excited to check out more from the series. I’ll give you a shout via email!

Are you still in Chicago??

lonely leary is pretty good

Steve Albini is a legend. Big black and shellac!

This just seems like a universal experience really lol, the venue shutdowns sounded like how it is in Austin

In before, people who dont know anything about Chinese cultural fabric, socionomics trying to make it a typical political rant about the CCP.

Strangely enough, in the west we saw a peak of melodic songwriting during the sixties and seventies as young musicians translated the general high level of musical skill in society attached to the culture of musical production for entertainment at home (where people traditionally played an instrument and gathered around after dinner for a sing song) before TV, radio and more recent reproductive entertainment medium technological developments eroded those skills out of the general population and we were left just a single generation after the peak of a century's worth of musical skills being honed and handed on domestically, with a generation in the early eighties, nineties and today instead with far less inherent ability to play and compose music than the previous generation. These 'modern musicians' were often computer production enabled only which, like visual art programs offering the ability to create pictures to even those with no drawing talent, they were all able to purchase for a few dollars instant musical access to anyone who wanted to try, even without any musical training or an ear, a situation leading to much the same as the situation you describe in China today, that is, not very good songs being listened to by the musically naive who haven't heard enough of brilliant melodies from the recent past to discern what's being foisted upon them as 'good' (through that conformity of ignorance in listeners) is really musical garbage with a small smattering of often overlooked talented musicianship sometimes shining through here and there to remind those of us with a discerning ear what good music is supposed to sound like. Whereas once musicians recognised each other through their interests in certain styles and a mutual recognition of playing and writing talent inspiring them to create a musical group and seek to have their own interpretation of the genre that inspired them heard via their musical expression by others, too many of today's youth see playing in a band as a right and a rite of passage that you do because you must. Like getting a tattoo tho, it's not always going to look good, nor in the case of those talentless music producers aided by computers permitting them the ability to record an entire album (often compromised of loops they've purchased from actual skilled musicians who are forced to sell the component parts of songs to others, in lieu of the availability of money making opportunities quashed by a false social media account manipulated industry which is talentless musician swamped with bad songs saturating a market dictating public taste via the proliferation of bot armies and thereby offering hardly any any other way to profit form their real musical talent) and, since talent isn't necessary to create what looks like valid musical composition output, it's not always going to sound good either (which it very obviously more often than not does not). The 'one hit wonder' is a common phenomenon mainly due to some accident of production where a talentless buffoon stumbles across a riff that's accidentally melodic and, with dollar signs guiding, they have the ambition to exploit it t a point of market saturation in a spotlight where even the slightly decent composition appears to excel. But most modern pop music stinks, (even though 2 years of enforced lock-down in AU, UK EU and USA from COVID19 has seen some of these less than adequately talented musicians forced by circumstance to practice their instruments and hone their songwriting skills so that recently there's been a discernibly noticeable spike in quality leading to the impression modern western pop music will again reach the zeniths of the 60's and 70's, a few more years and these lessons will, in the majority through hard drug and alcohol use, combined with a shifting of motivations for creating the music, the famous '2nd album syndrome' where unlimited sex, drugs, desire for more money and disillusionment with the initial success garnished by their rebellious, anti-work pass time that was playing music for fun, now having become a routine, demanding job with innumerably greater pitfalls than one flipping burgers for minimum wage and afterwards blowing a joint during band practice in the garage with a romantic partner which constant long distance touring often denies the capacity, all of which combine to cause a creative numbness to what is, and isn't, worth listening to in the minds of songwriter and other band member performers who also haven't any longer a clue what sounds OK, with their endorphin receptors saturated artificially to the max 24/7. For the real musicians and those long established in the associated industry there are upsides to this culture of kids expecting themselves to be rock stars, as my sound engineer friend told me once, "Rich kids whose parents have bought them all instruments for Christmas and who now want to record an album (in a professional studio) are my bread and butter!"

I studied in Chengdu in 2008 and want to go back soon. What do I ask locals to try to find rock music performances?

@@zendobrendo0001 There are at least ten livehouses every week and there are now more than ten livehouses in Chengdu

Fuckin cool. The Soviets loved their post-punk too. Which Chinese bands could I find on YT?

Wuhan is, as far as I'm concerned, the life's blood of underground music in China. Not to take away from Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, or even Guangzhou, there's nothing quite like Wuhan for its influence on the rest. (The Kingdom of Chu once again sets the pace the rest of China follows! 🤣)

might seen u before in yugongyishan or corner in sanlitun haha

Great información thx!!

Crazy to imagine! Thanks for perspective!

Did you eat any Chinese acid?

Hey man, what's up. You were at our BJ show with Dummy Toys, where Casey slapped a guy in the audience and after the show, Toten Hosen came over from the festival. Good times.

The "underground" in underground music doesn't mean illegal or secret; just that it's "outside" mainstream music. The same term is used in America, Europe, etc. That said, I also cover how indie rock is exploding and becoming more mainstream later in the video.

@@Bandsplaining yeah i see your point

Most westerners think China is super authoritarian and censored but fail to see it in their own countries. The anti communist rhetoric is laughable. Western propaganda is a hell of a drug.

@@Bandsplaining you have a lot to correct in this video regarding censorship and the Uighurs

@@Bandsplaining I'm also from Chicago. Is there a way to get our hands on some of this music on Vinyl,cassette, or CD?

Bro tau gak nama musisi ayo group citypop yg di fiturkan divideo ini?

Yeah, I am surprised someone with as much knowledge as him had never heard of City Pop. It's mostly relaxed Japanese disco. Great stuff. Miki Matsubara was the best. RIP.

Great comment! Chinese hip hop could be a whole other video. There was also a big hip hop reality show that I believe caused some controversy?

@@Bandsplaining yes, The Rap of China, although sometimes I feel like looking to that for hip hop is somewhat akin to looking at The Voice for western pop lmao

@@Bandsplaining Hey man if you’re looking into Chinese hiphop there’s a trove of fascinating groups out there. Yes there are the government-sanctioned reality shows and other cringe bullshit such as “patriotic hiphop,” but also legends like The Higher Brothers and classics from In3. THB got their big international break through 88rising and now we have American college kids partying to “Made in China.” On the other hand groups like In3 and Purple Soul are completely underground with their scathing social commentary - we’re talking about songs getting blanket-banned by the Ministry of Culture and group members going in and out of prison. But you can find everything if you dig deep enough. From mumble rap to old school, from Chengdu to Beijing (and yes the regional genre difference thing is definitely real lmao)

@@The51stDivision Thanks for the tips! Def gonna check out In3 and Purple Soul.

Much thanks for the insight! Do you have any other resources or links you may recommend? I love it how I'm so constantly overwhelmed by finding new & fresh music~ but I love the "classical" or traditional musics too.

Chinese Football definitely worth listening!

Lol named after American Football

You do realize that, because of Wu Hon, our wonderfully free and prosperous country of the USA is under authoritarian siege from the left. The last administration kept the overruling government of China at bay and sympathized with the human rights that the people of China so deeply desire. In short, the western conservatives stand for a free democracy while the leftists try and tear it down with an overreaching, totalitarian government strong arm just like the mask wearing ( keep your mouth shut ) Marxist that currently occupy our hemisphere and try to change it over to government control - your thoughts and actions. So, best fight for your freedoms in any way possible including artistic expression.

Nah, it just means that they're free to carve out their own culture to be influenced by one another and the west being a smaller portion of that equation, they aren't having their culture murdered by rap & pop. You speak about freedom and the United States has the most incarcerated people in the world which is so sad, even if it were number two or three it still makes it a very oppressive place to live

@@motelmicrowave incarceration of the guilty of crimes laid down by a just government is not oppression. It forms rule of law that all societies should have to maintain civility and justice. Of course no government is perfect but the experiment put forth by our founding members gives power to the people to make choices in behalf of themselves not the government.

@@motelmicrowave you lost me at hip hop and pop - nothing wrong the the genres. Yes to carving out your own cultures

What do the "non-monolithic" people do to act against such a tyranny? Music is just entertainment, actions are the only thing that makes change. go ahead, i'll wait.

朋友，麻烦你推荐一下几个中国前卫金属乐队给我吧！（我很喜欢末裔乐队，但他们最近没出版新的音乐。。。）

Sounds awesome! Thank you and thanks for covering what you do!

I’ve used your website to find really cool Chinese music! Thank you!!

“Delicious” is a perfect adjective to apply to music when it’s that good and no matter where it comes from.

Great point. I am not knowlegable of Chinese bands, but the bands featyred in this documentary have a gorgeous garage styleof production, very fresh.

Its that more Analog sound imo that makes it so great. It’s like old music from the 70’s 80’s and early 90’s, not a perfect sound but good enough. you can kinda hear small details like pick scratches on the strings, the strings being bend and other stuff. And it’s not homogeneous it’s not the same old whispery chill quiet style we currently have. Its retro but not nostalgia music, It is its own thing not trying to copy the old stuff.

@@user-ol7bt4wp1j "And it’s not homogeneous it’s not the same old whispery chill wave style we currently have." What do you mean? I thought chillwave has been dead since the early 2010s

@@SNegrea Autocorrect replaced the quiet with wave for some reason Anyway what i mean is that music nowadays sounds so over produced and the vocals always sound so whispery and overly chill which with all the effects put on their. It just kinda sounds annoying like everyone slurs their words, sounds weak and too quiet Like SING GODDAMNIT i don’t want to hear your literal breath in my ear.

Yassss I agreed that!

i saw Zhaoze live in a music festival here in Colombia a couple years ago. Awesome stuff!

I'm so glad you have mentioned Wang Wen, I've listened to all their albums before and they're all great, IMO. Definitely worth checking out. And thank you for mentioning Zhaoze, I've never hear of them so I decided to check them out. So far I'm loving their track "See You in Dusk". I feel like they're gonna be my obsession for this month on my newly discovered band's list. For those who uses Spotify both artists are available there. 👍

man I just checked Zhaoze and they are definetely the most beautiful thing I heard in weeks. Im obsessed, thank you!

@@amremorse I listened to them, I like it! Thanks for the suggestion!

Desert blues? Are you talking like QOTSA type desert doom/rock?

@@nineinchrails3361 no, more like Mdou Moctar. I had saharan dessert blues in mind specifically. Btw check them out they're making some great stuff in there!

@@matthewjohnloren1995 Mdou Moctar is incredible, I have Illana the creator on every week at least one since he released it. Bombino is also very good

My faces are Tinariwen and Songhoy Blues!

​@@nineinchrails3361 like Kyuss.

Check out DIE by Iosonouncane. Really good Italian rock album

any ideas on soviet era punk?

@@botz9017 mainly what's called "Siberian punk" -- Grazhdanskaya Oborona (Gr.Ob.) or simply Yegor Letov (insert Русское поле экспериментов into YT search bar, it's a 14 min track). Also Yanka Dyagileva (you can insert Янка и Великие Октябри - По трамвайным рельсам). It's very different from Western punk rock, mind you. It comes surprisingly close to black metal sometimes, lol. Also, there's a lot of emphasis on lyrics, and often not as much on the music. This channel actually has videos about Soviet underground in the 80's. Also, I would recommend Spinki Menta as a primer into the Siberian 80's underground. Just copy Спинки Мента - Эрекция лейтенанта Киреева (Full Album).

Wow , so many options

EXAMPLES FOR THE LAST ONE??? HOLY SHIT THATS A THING??? I GOTTA KNOW A SONG

Thank you so much for your recommendations ! I especially loved White Shoes and Drip :) Here is some nice French music to thank you : 1. San Salvador (neotrad, which mean new traditional French folk music) 2. Saräb (arab prog-jazz-metal) 3. Jacques (electronic music) 4. Bertrand Burgalat (famous french indie producer) 5. Bertrand Belin & Limiñanas (both are french rock) Take care !

@@GreenPlymProduction Wow! I'm a huge fan of French music from Serge Gainsbourg and Jacques Brel to Nouvelle Vague and Air! I cannot get over Sarāb and Bertrand Belin! They are phenomenal! Thanks for the recommendations!

I would like to add to this list my indiepop favs 1. Grrrl Gang 😍(Indonesia) 2. Serenaide (Singapore) 3. Jelly Rocket (Thailand) 4. Sobs (Singapore) 5. Ferns (Malaysia)

@@theheavenlyoption @Elie and all Thank You for Links my Algorithm keep's stuff "U.S.A." Centered now my Vistas Expanding !

Wow our (PH) music really devolved so much lmao. Now it's always those corny love songs but make it indie-sounding pop rock to sound "unique"

Sounds like you're ready to make a video! Link us when it's up

@@myfaveyoutube me? Nooooope, haha. Too much effort, I am a lazy guy. I did the text interviews with them. That's much easier

To dude's credit - It's very, very difficult to dig under the surface unless you spend a significant amount of time in country.

chinese noise isn't underground. it's a niche for 3-4 nerdz and that's it. it dosen't have resonance enough to have impact or a relation with larger culture. that's why the « level » of underground that this video stay's at is much more interesting imo.

@@loumanuelarsenault1663 "chinese noise isn't underground. it's a niche for 3-4 nerdz and that's it" that sounds like a real underground. now I don't know how many Chinese nerds listen to Li Jianhong, but he has racked up more than 1,000 ratings on the international website Rate Your Music, which is where I've heard about him and Yan Jun. The video itself is not that bad, but the title is terrible clickbait. None of the featured bands sound weird. Pretending that VU's Sister Ray is really that weird and hard to like on first listen says it all about the low threshold of this guy.

Do you have any examples of some of the more obscure stuff?

I'd love to hear some really out there stuff like the Japanese bands Endon and Melt Banana.

@@smallpebblesbigripples8636 For the ones who seek for something more obscure&underground, I’ll leave some names here: 1. more-or-less ethnic : Liang Yi Yuan, Lao Dan, Mamer(IZ), 朱芳琼，Li Daiguo & Huan Qing 2. Noise/Electronic/Drones: Torturing nurse(Junky), Mei Zhi Yong, MaFeiSan, Xiaohong & Xiaoxiaohong, Ronez, Ruo Tan, Sun yizhou 3. ProgR/Folk/Avant-Garde/Improvise: Wu Tun, Xiao He, Glamorous Pharmacy, 木推瓜，Wang Ziheng, The other two comrades, OTMF(一次性交朋友）, Wang Lei, Dawanggang, Tongue，盘古，Wang Fan(王凡) 4. Psychedelic/Krautrock(they’re one of a kind): Eryang, 鸭听天, 水门汀（Shame There aren’t any recordings available yet), 粗糙影像，Khunathi（丘瑙底河）,酸鲁磨，and a stoner band called Electric Lady …And the list goes on (Tho there is still a gap in jazz music

@@thelastbluebloodgreaserboy7890 n

if you ever have any more recommendations then I’ll leave this comment :0

Thanks! A solid chunk of this is actually from that first film I did. Haha.

I watched a lot of Chinese movies back when IFC was good with no commercials or political agenda. I LOVED the Chinese movies and could tell thru their writing the Chinese were a very compassionate people. Such a shame the governments are the villains of the people.

❤🌏🌍🌎

@@_JimS I wouldn’t put it like that… yes, there is censorship in china, yes, the people have almost no say in government policies, and yes, the government has made horrible mistakes in the past; however, without it, China cannot be what it is today. The incredibly rapid development of the economy, wide access to healthcare and education all happened because of the five-year plans. So I wouldn’t say that the government is the villain here, it is much more complicated, like capitalism in the US. It provides free market and there is a democratic system, but there is also the huge gap between the rich and the poor, the exploitation of resources in other countries, one can loose their healthcare if they’ve lost their job…etc. it is complicated.

@@_JimS I think you should get more opinions, I've never been more miserable since I moved to the states

@@pengu8734 Sorry PG, I'm not sure what you are meaning, unless you are saying "the States" are worse than China.

Same.

I saw your stuff from Chris Ho, the Singaporean John Peel. If you have a Chinese GG Allin, all the better. They need to have one more now than ever.

Great comment & thanks for watching! At least here in Chicago there still are *some* shows in rundown cesspools, but for the most part it’s all upscale clubs with great sound and comp’d cocktails. Totally agreed there’s something that feels a lot less subversive about it, even tho, admittedly, I usually end up picking that option over the 5 foot basement in a rough neighborhood.

Greetings from the US, I was pleasantly surprised by this!

Any recommendations? :)

Waiting 4 reply

@@brainchild2197 Omnipotent Youth Society 👌

大王饶命 op is good 星游记 op is good 半壶纱 is my style scissors killer seven op is good

and don’t recommend you learn chinese from music. Some music full of poems 😂 it not used to common talk. Just for making music beautiful.

I'm late but I feel this.

Try doom metal next