050TZM
Xiao He - The Performance of Identity/One Man's Orchestra 2xCD
www.tenzenmen.com
No easy tagline for tenzenmen's eccentric 50th!
He Guoheng, known in the world of music as Xiao He, is one of the most creative and influential artists in the Beijing music scene. Besides his recordings and his solo and ensemble music performances, he is active in drama, writes incidental music, and is a creative force in the underground movie industry. He is also the head of Maybe Horse, a Maybe Mars sub- label dedicated to supporting and developing Beijing’s and China’s most innovative folk and ethnic musicians.
At the same time Xiao He, which is the alias he settled on for his folk and improvised music performances, played guitar, drum and accordion at River, a legendary old Beijing folk bar. Between these two projects Xiao He quickly developed a serious following among artists and music fans in the China music scene. In 2003, Modern Sky, China’s largest independ- ent label, released his first CD, a live recording called “The Bird that Can Fly High Landed on the Cow that Can Run Fast”. Almost immediately this was received as one of the most important recordings in contemporary Chinese music.
Except for a very few special performances with Glorious Pharmacy, today Xiao He only plays solo performances. Calling these multi-faceted improvised performances “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, he has become the inventor of a deeply weird and immensely moving style of music, mystical and surreal, which abruptly veers from the plaintive cries of Mongolian or Western Chinese music to the barbed and sometimes childlike humour of the avant garde. Complementing his stylistic creativity is a wholly unique way of playing acoustic guitar, loops, synthesizers and any other instrument that catches his fancy.
After his 2009 European tour, Xiao He released his second album in China with Maybe Mars. Consisting of improvised live and studio performances and two separate CDs the new album is a milestone for Xiao He. The live CD is based on 30 hours of recordings going back three years, which he has assembled as his “Personal Symphony” and, selected from six different shows, focuses on the irreversible and unrepeatable character of live performance. The other CD was recorded in his studio and focuses on the quality of the sounds and experimentation with the recording process and juxtaposes thousands of ways of combining vocal sounds with the sound of his guitar as he wrestles with and reinterprets his understanding of Minimalism.
tenzenmen proudly presents Xiao He's 'Performance of Identity' double CD available for the first time in Australia in all good independent record stores, via mail order at www.tenzenmen.com or digitally via itunes.
follow tenzenmen on facebook
not the latest raved about american indie rock band!
in stock at rocking horse, repressed, beatdisc, missing link and dada music.
I only like jungle these days
i'm glad i was always out of touch with the kids...
have a monday morning listen!
Xiao He is a Chinese talent who specializes in vocals and string instruments as incorporated into highly performative stage shows. Besides his work with the dadaistic art-rock group, Glorious Pharmacy, he is also engaged in numerous experimental (improv) solo performances, and collaborations with musicians from the Beijing Peking Opera Troupe, among others. “The music emerges from my body. I never know exactly what I’m going to do before I go on stage,” He points out. “Music for me is as natural as eating, sleeping, or going to the bathroom.”
Xiao He hates artificiality and has expressed his affinity for folk music and culture. He is not unlike a troubadour who accompanies himself on acoustic guitar. But he also explores various electronic options and does not reject the use of samples and loops. Many of his songs lack lyrics and are “sung” in a “bird language,” which offers him some room to pursue his vocal antics. Meanwhile, some of his other songs sound like hundreds of chanting monks where the overtones emerge from the prevailing lower tones. When he does use lyrics they are often playful and theatrical. His successes are found in the unsuccessful. Regarding the fusion of Chinese and Western music, he once observed that “while combining a bed and a toilet may seem like a good idea so that one can shit in bed and sleep on the toilet, in actuality, the results are a bit disappointing.”