Beijing Bubbles
July 2nd 2007 04:45
The flourishing contemporary art scene in China has been getting increased global attention in recent years. Less recognised is its underground music scene...
A gem of the Sydney Film Festival, Beijing Bubbles is a documentary of Punk Rock in the country’s capital. Berlin filmmakers Susanne Messmer and George Lindt said they had watched the punk attitude be dispersed into commercial fashion in Germany, but were enthused to find an authentic spirit thriving in the world’s fastest developing country. Chinese society is known for valuing traditions, efficiency, social advancement, family honour and the accumulation of prosperity. In this society punk has found it’s right to exist. The underground scene is explored through five bands who have diverse styles and approaches to music, but all position themselves outside the culture they grew up in.
The raucous Joyside is fronted by Bia Yuan (pictured) who only wants “to sing, drink and fuck” and says, "there is no use to be a hard-working man." The band members have lived together in grubby units and damp basements on the outskirts of Beijing, drinking and listening to The Dead Boys, The Sex Pistols and The Germs all day long. In September 2004 they released their first studio album Drunk Is Beautiful. When asked what he would do if he wasn’t in a band, Yuan says that he would go to Africa to feed the lions, or dance with the devil.
The girl band Hang On The Box (left) discuss being out of synch with the wider society, and how their creativity thrives from that. "We need a quiet mood to think about music" they say. They released their first album Yellow Banana in 2002 and went on a world tour shortly after. But in Beijing, bassist Yilina says, nobody knows who they are and the money they get for playing gigs only just covers their taxi ride and dinner.
The pensive Liu Donghong of the blues combo Shazi takes filmmakers on a tour of Tiananmen Square and points out the Great Hall of the People saying “a lot of bad ideas come out of that building.” The band went into retreat for three subsequent summers to the mountains west of Beijing, renting an old temple cheaply and playing music all day, returning to the city when a gig was lined up. In 2001 they released their first album The Stars Fall On My Head. Donghong named the band after the Chinese word for sand - in a country like China, a person might feel like a minuscule grain of sand among millions of others, but one grain of sand can wreak havoc when trapped in the workings of a machine.
"I have isolated myself for a long time," says Yiliqi, who formulated his band T9 after getting bored of performing angry Grunge music. He began to draw on the Mongolian musical influences that came from his father’s side, and was taught overtone singing (a throat technique that produces two or more sounds at once) as well as Mongolian instruments like the Tobushuur and the Morinhuur. Live footage from T9 gigs shows the effect to be poignant and powerful.
New Pants draw heavily from The Ramones with melodious but spontaneous sounds. The Hong Kong music magazine MCB cited their first (self-titled) album as one of the 10 most important Asian records of the 90s. Their success is surprising in a place where colourful perky saccharine pop songs are pumped out of restaurants, karaoke clubs and bars with very little variety. But like all the bands in the film, New Pants can’t live on their music, and singer/guitarist Peng Lei takes the filmmakers to his day job - a toy shop (which stocks, of course, Ramones figurines).
Joining the growing genre of rock docs, Beijing Bubbles is an exciting and intimate document of society and subculture in China, and left me formulating schemes to get there in the next 12 months, before the Olympics change everything.
The raucous Joyside is fronted by Bia Yuan (pictured) who only wants “to sing, drink and fuck” and says, "there is no use to be a hard-working man." The band members have lived together in grubby units and damp basements on the outskirts of Beijing, drinking and listening to The Dead Boys, The Sex Pistols and The Germs all day long. In September 2004 they released their first studio album Drunk Is Beautiful. When asked what he would do if he wasn’t in a band, Yuan says that he would go to Africa to feed the lions, or dance with the devil.
The pensive Liu Donghong of the blues combo Shazi takes filmmakers on a tour of Tiananmen Square and points out the Great Hall of the People saying “a lot of bad ideas come out of that building.” The band went into retreat for three subsequent summers to the mountains west of Beijing, renting an old temple cheaply and playing music all day, returning to the city when a gig was lined up. In 2001 they released their first album The Stars Fall On My Head. Donghong named the band after the Chinese word for sand - in a country like China, a person might feel like a minuscule grain of sand among millions of others, but one grain of sand can wreak havoc when trapped in the workings of a machine.
"I have isolated myself for a long time," says Yiliqi, who formulated his band T9 after getting bored of performing angry Grunge music. He began to draw on the Mongolian musical influences that came from his father’s side, and was taught overtone singing (a throat technique that produces two or more sounds at once) as well as Mongolian instruments like the Tobushuur and the Morinhuur. Live footage from T9 gigs shows the effect to be poignant and powerful.
Joining the growing genre of rock docs, Beijing Bubbles is an exciting and intimate document of society and subculture in China, and left me formulating schemes to get there in the next 12 months, before the Olympics change everything.
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