He Guoheng, known in the musical world as Xiao He, is one of the most creative and influential artists coming out of the Beijing music scene and is one of the two or three musicians most often saddled with the epithet “genius”. In addition to his performances and collaborations with a wide variety of China’s leading folk and experimental musicians, he is the head of Maybe Horse, a Maybe Mars sub label dedicated to supporting and developing China’s most innovative folk and ethnic musicians. Xiao He first began to attract attention as a member and leader of Glorious Pharmacy, a wildly experimental band that explored electronic music, free jazz, and Chinese ethnic music with equal abandon. The band continues to hold very rare performances that always bring out an entire generation of Chinese musicians and artists.
In 2003, Modern Sky (China’s largest independent label) released his first CD, a live recording called “The Bird that Can Fly High Landed on the Cow that Can Run Fast”, which was almost immediately received as one of the most important recordings in contemporary Chinese music. Xiao He refers to his multi-faceted improvised performances as “Free Folk”, as much to express his anarchic playfulness as to suggest the total freedom which he approaches musical instrumentation, vocal performances, and stylistic experimentation. After his 2009 European tour, culminating in a much-acclaimed performance at London’s Barbican, Xiao He released his second album through Maybe Mars. The album, “Identity Performance”, is a double EP consisting of improvised live and studio performances. The live performance disc includes selected recording from six different shows and focuses on the irreversible and unrepeatable character of live performance, while the studio recordings juxtapose Xiao He’s myriad ways of combining vocal sounds with the sound of a guitar, as he wrestles with and reinterprets his understanding of Minimalism.
This year Beijing-based musician Xiao He will recount twelve musical portraits. Each month of 2010, Xiao He will write a song for one person about him/her, telling a story from their lives. Anyone who wants his or her portrait sung by Xiao He can apply via email to: project@vitamincreativespace.com.
But Xiao He’s the man I want to talk about. His stuff is hard to explain – folk, yes, but also verging towards psychedelic, at least in person. On top of that, alone with a guitar and a computer, he has a magnetic stage presence. His music grows into a collage of voices, without much of meter or rhythm to back them, which conjure up the sprawling, sparse plains of Western China. But, again, he’s no farmer plucked out of the wilderness and given a microphone; as I understand it, he’s a Beijinger, and he spent some time in the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) and has slowly worked his way through the Beijing scene since his first release in 2003. His live shows, while girded in folk traditions, benefit from a range of computer effects – layered parts that he sings and then sets on loop, spotlights trawling behind him. You can’t help but be entranced. All I can say is that, having listened to his music the next day on my roommate’s computer, he’s worth checking out recorded, but a whole different experience in person. For the curious, his MySpace can give you a glimpse.
Plutopia 2010: The Science of Music
An extravaganza of music, performances, art, and talks based upon “The Science of Music”
What was once the (maybe not so) mild-mannered SXSW Interactive EFF-Austin Official After-Party has morphed into a multifaceted extravaganza called “Plutopia”, an exciting convergence of technology, DIY, music, art, and academics. In addition to standard party fare, performance and the arts will play a major role alongside exhibits and talks in presenting the ideas in a way that will make this yet another memorable, stimulating, and fun SXSW after event.
Way beyond the run-of-the-mill “booze and schmooze” after-party mixer, Plutopia is an ever-evolving multimedia experiment of Austin-tatious proportions dedicated to a playful, yet masterful cross-pollination across verticals to bring you an immersive interactive experience event.
This year’s Plutopian theme explores the role of technology, sound and digital media in changing the landscape and narrative of music in the information age.
The science refers to everything from immersive listening and the expanding of audio boundaries and experimentation, to new forms of instrumentation, sampling and remixing and emerging creative processes; and from integrated multisensory systems and interfaces with intelligent networks, to the transformations of aesthetics and the changing rhythm of nature.
Monday, March 15, 2010
7pm – midnight
Mexican American Cultural Center
600 River St. Austin, TX
FREE to SXSW Interactive and Platinum Badge Holders; $15 General Public
FEATURED ARTISTS:
live at d-22
video from sxsw
While it’s true that certain corners of Beijing’s music scene have had more than their fair share of the spotlight, I was surprised to read blogger Alice Xin Liu’s attack on our local music scene in the Huffington Post. In a May 6 post, Liu critiques the shallowness of Strawberry Festival hipsters before concluding that Beijing’s scene has become nothing more than “the mainstream fashion of the day.”
Really? Could she possibly be talking about the same scene that has given birth to acts like Carsick Cars and Xiao He? After sonic soul searching, I decided to respond to Liu by asking Beijing scenesters to recall their favorite moments that have made the capital’s music scene unique.
“In the middle of a piece with bizarre vocals, Xiao He cut the sound and stopped singing, but he didn’t stop performing,” recalls Alex Searson of Beijing Gig Guide email newsletter. “He mimed his way through what I think was a song, or else a conversation with an invisible partner, adding a layer of performance art.”
Xiao He came up a number of times in my research, and the experimental folkie is nothing if not unique. Searson also recommends checking out the less experimental but equally distinctive Shanren. Hailing from Yunnan and Guizhou, the group’s use of various traditional ethnic instruments is unlike anything else happening in folk music today.
Max-Leonhard von Schaper of Rock in China recently wrote a compendium of the capital’s various sub-genres, from punk and metal to rockabilly and ska. He’s particularly enthusiastic about noise artist Yan Jun, who he says pushes “the boundaries for sounds and [musical] definition, the thin red line between noise as instrumental arrangement and as pure harsh distortion.”
Most commenters concede that, just as with any other scene, there’s plenty of derivative work in the mix as well. But when I mull over the scene, it’s Rustic’s bare-knuckled mix of butt-rock and punk pathetique, or Subs singer Kang Mao’s gut-wrenching, existential cries that stand out.
My favorites of Beijing’s live moments are often also its weirdest. Once, folk-world experimentalist Li Daiguo and singer Mi were performing together at Yugong Yishan. Li was beatboxing and playing the erhu while Mi, on accordion, mixed together a savant-sounding jibberish scat with stunning, Chinese folk-style singing. For me, this raw moment of miscegenation captured the growing maturity that I find within the city’s alternative scene.
These are moments and sounds one can only find here. Naysayers can bemoan the buzz, but Beijing is simply a city unlike any other.
from artinfo
photo by matthew niederhauser - remember this name!
BEIJING— Beijing-based sound artist Xiao He has a broken foot, but it’s not slowing him down. A month ago, he jumped off a five-foot stage during a performance piece about the recent Foxconn suicides, fracturing the bones in his left heel. ''I overestimated my power,'' he says and smiles.
His apartment on the northern fringe of Beijing seems like an oasis after an hour on the subway and 30 minutes in an illegal cab. We talk about his March 2010 ''China Invasion Tour'' in the U.S., where he traveled with label-mates Carsick Cars, AV Okubo, P.K.14, and Snapline. They played the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. ''There were so many bands playing at the same time in different bars,” he recalls. ''Being there made me feel like a criminal on the run.''
Xiao He usually plays solo, taking the stage with a guitar and a laptop and laying electronic effects over his own voice, which draws on vocal techniques from Tibetan folk songs and Chinese opera. But as I discovered, Xiao He doesn’t stay in the same musical place for long.
What have you been working on lately?
Despite my broken leg, I’m currently working on my third album ''Xiao He: Twelve Musical Portraits of 2010.'' The idea is to audition people on the Internet, picking 12 finalists. I then meet them, talk to them for a whole day, and maybe even live with them, then I write a song for each of them. So far I’ve got six done: a teacher from rural China, a deaf designer, a girl who owns a café in Yunnan, a mineworker in Shanxi, a lesbian, and a poet/busker. By the end of this year, there will be 12, enough to make an album, and then I’ll hold an exclusive concert just for these 12 people.
It’s only going to be first impressions?
Exactly, and that’s what I’m interested in. The charisma of the first impression fascinates me. I don’t care if I don’t know the person well, because the parts I’m missing are spaces for creativity. It’s like the blank parts in a painting, it makes you relax into your imagination.
Are the songs going to be lyrical?
In a way, yes, but it will be colorless and emotionless. I’ve been examining myself through the years, and I’ve found myself overly sensitive to my own emotions, and I just can’t keep relying on “feelings” during the creative process.
Let’s talk about your army career.
I was born in Hebei Province, not far from Beijing. I served in the army for three years from the age of 16. My parents made that decision for me — I probably would have ended up in jail otherwise. To avoid boredom, I started playing guitar and listening to music, mostly pop songs from Taiwan and Hong Kong. But then I fell in love with Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Guns N’ Roses after catching them on international radio — it's not that different a story from that of many other musicians in China. Anyway, I was sharing a dormitory with my sergeant. At first he couldn’t get to sleep with me playing guitar, but as time went by, he couldn’t sleep without it.
Are you still in touch with him?
No. There was no Internet back then, so we just swapped home phone numbers, and we lost contact as soon as we left our home towns. Emotions are great, so are memories, but they’re not that important to me or to my songwriting. Objectivity interests me more. All those twenty-somethings who jumped off the Foxconn building turned into a joke once the story spread by word of mouth. People are cold, that’s what I find.
Do you draw inspiration from the news?
Yes, I do. I read news on the Internet.
What about popular culture? You don’t seem to be against it.
No, not at all. But for a man born in the 1970s, the most beautiful melodies are back in the 1990s — pop songs, I’m talking about, and theme songs from Japanese TV series. That being said, I’m not opposed to other forms, whether it’s singing ''I Love You'' out loud in a Canto-pop song, or expressing hidden emotions through Western classical music and Chinese opera. I like them all.
another page at link
Album Title : Silly’s Ballad – 2011 Xiao He Musical Artbook
Format: artbook + embedded mp3 player
Extras: 233621 custom-made headphone/ three MVs by indie directors/ two beautiful postcards
......this folk album will be released in a brand new format: not on CD, not on tape, but as a ‘musical artbook’. It is perhaps a first in the domestic indie music market. It should not just be a quick “that’s cool” moment, because multimedia truly enables Xiao He’s creativity better expression. This artbook contains 12 different pictures of leaves, drawn by Xiao He in Zurich in 2010. Those leaves lay scattered on the mountain road Xiao He walked along every morning to exercise. 12 songs correspond to 12 different leaves. High-end headphone brand 233621 has generously provided specialized custom-made headphones for this ‘album’. Their unique “INC” technology can reduce surrounding noise, enabling a totally different listening experience. Furtermore, this musical artbook also includes three music videos which were commissioned to three up-and-coming and very talented directors: Yu Liwei, Yang Jin and Zhang Yuedong.
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hope to have some of these available here next year.