Music:
Member Since: 7/3/2006
Band Website: tagteamrecords.com
Band Members: Lonely China Day
Riding the wave that began with 2006's critically acclaimed eponymous EP, Beijing quartet Lonely China Day go straight for the jugular on their full-length debut Sorrow. Where the EP rested like a leaf in a millpond the album rages like the Black Sea in a hurricane. Songwriter/vocalist Deng Pei fully utilizes his band to construct mechanical bouts of beauty and fury with subject matters ranging from emotional despair to criticism of Chinese political oppression all packaged and beamed to Earth from atop a mountain on the moon. Each track bursts with surreal minimalist lap tops speaking alien languages inside an indie-rock cocoon with Deng Pei cooing then roaring Mandarin poetry until the whole thing blossoms into a single rose upon a snowy dessert landscape.
Sorrow is the result of a band pushing their sound further into the abyss of an abstract ocean. Lonely China Day are out to prove there is legitimate musical art coming out of China with a debut that lulls and dances like a giant robot in a vast poppy field shouting sparks into a bullhorn.
Engaging and challenging, Sorrow is the sound of an ancient society just waking up to the modern world with eyes and ears wide open. Strap on your headphones and prepare for a life changing conversion!
Arrows Made of Desire
Singer/songwriter/DIY engineer of Arrows Made of Desire, Joewi Verhoeven began writing songs on piano and guitar at the ripe old age of 15 while growing up in the small Dutch town of Zeeland. Upon graduating high school he packed up and caught the first flight to Beijing, China to study Mandarin and film directing at the Beijing Film Academy. In his free time he manages to record infectiously peculiar lo-fi indie-pop. Since his story is awfully similar to Tag Team Records founders, it's no wonder we felt a kinship to young Joewi right off the bat.
Arrows Made of Desire's debut album Songs That Sell Fish hits us with 10 shots of lo-fi melodicism truer and rawer than anything heard in quite some time. Verhoeven self-recorded this collection of songs before even assembling a band. The album manages to be wildly eclectic, veering from the lo-fi folk of "Lady Nutshell" to the gritty indie rock of "Truism" and all points in between, whilst at the same time being undeniably consistent. Verhoweven wails, croons and shouts like a young man with something to say - about passion, pain, joy, or even cigarettes. While Verhoeven’s music is absolutely lo-fi indie rock, it is also laced with an underlying pop sensibility and a sense of musical history - blues and jazz motifs are conspicuous in their presence.
Distinctly different from other indie solo artists, both melodic and noisy, soft and edgy, sweeping yet focused, Verhoeven and Arrows Made of Desire strike with considerable force, subverting rock clichés to write astonishing and original music. Songs That Sell Fish may well be the start of something beautiful for indie-rock.
Everybody
Jim Walsh and Matt Bruns are Everybody, hailing from Bloomington, IN.
Drawing on such diverse influences as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Nick Drake, Simon and Garfunkel, the Animal Collective, Olivia Tremor Control and childrens literature, Everybody make space age chamber music for luddites - re-examining life through a prism of childlike wonder and revealed truths. Friends since childhood, Jim and Matt have been recording together since the age of 12. At the last count, Jim claims that they have amassed 232 demos, recorded in various bedrooms and continents. Frankly we think he's lying about that, but dont care - were so excited by the demos we have heard.
Du Yun
For all her fancy-pants qualifications, Du Yun produces perfectly formed accessible pop music. If forced at gun-point to bandy vague adjectives around, we'd use words like 'electronic', 'soulful', 'sexy', 'jazz-inflected', 'bilingual', 'crisply produced', 'blip-poppy' and 'evocative'. We could go at some length here [go figure!], but frankly the demos we've received so far outstrip our ability to adequately verbalize the emotional response they generate. And that's just the demos!
Rebuilding the Rights of Statues
Born in the shadow of post-Tiananmen nihilism, the collapse of state run industry and a desert that will someday swallow their city whole, Cut Off!, the first E.P. from pioneering Beijing-based post-punks Rebuilding the Rights of Statues delivers explosive, danceable, unsettling energy that leaves you unsure whether you want to take your clothes off and shake the spiders out, or go look for a rope, a closet and a copy of Iggy Pops The Idiot.
This is visceral music built from the bones up, think ubermench rather than Frankensteins monster: beautiful, brilliant and brooding.
Venice Is Sinking
Hailing from Athens, GA, Venice Is Sinking are the newest addition to Tag Teams ever more cosmopolitan roster. The five-piece specializes in lush, anthemic orchestral pop with occasional dalliances into both the Americana and experimental. Venice Is Sinking makes songs about moving out, breaking up, moving on, and dead pets.
Starting as a one-man band project and expanding into a five-piece two and a half years ago, Venice Is Sinking has been an Athens live fixture for some time. In 2005, the band began recording an album at Radium Recordings in bucolic Commerce, Georgia under the watchful eye of ace engineer Chris Bishop (Macha, Circulatory System). Sorry About The Flowers is the product of said sessions.
People have described the Venice Is Sinking "sound" as slightly dark, pretty pop music, heavy on the strings and keyboards. Reference points mentioned have included the Cure, Galaxie 500, Low, Hetch Hetchy (whom none of the band members has ever heard), Ida, Hugo Largo, and the Delgados.
The band's first full-length album Sorry About The Flowers was released Stateside in spring 2006 on the One Percent Press label, and will be released Chinaside in spring 2008 on Tag Team Records.
Johnnytwentythree
Johnnytwentythree is a five-piece band from Cincinnati, OH, playing giant-sized instrumental rock and combining it with powerful filmwork to create an intense viewing & listening experience.
Formed in 2003 as brothers Michael (guitar) and Joseph (bass) Maier, Joseph’s wife Brianne (violin), and longtime friends Stephen Imwalle (films) and Brian Tyree (drums), they have earned themselves a reputation as an incendiary live show.
Their first release, Thirty Pieces of Silver (2004), was a soundtrack to a documentary film by Stephen about an abandoned cemetery for the unknown. Their latest release, JXXIII (2007) is a visceral reaction to war, and includes 3 short films. JXXIII will be released Chinaside in summer 08.
RandomK(e)
Formed in 2004, RandomK(e) are quite possibly the burliest group of dudes ever to assemble on a Beijing stage…ever. The band benefits from the wildly disparate musical backgrounds of its constituent parts. Vocalist/ Guitarist Richard Todd brings slabs of punk and DIY/ post-punk to the party, despite singing like a down-to-earth Ian Gillan with emphysema; Bassist Adam Pillsbury plays his instrument like the bastard child of Bootsy Collins and Charles Mingus; double-bassist/ laptop terrorist/ gadget fiddler/ knob twiddler general Jackson Garland adds unobtrusive electronic textures to the music that you may only notice by their absence and while drummer Jon Campbell's hair screams Grateful Dead, his beats can whisper Buddy Rich or wail Bill Ward.
The Submissionaries
Infamous multi-national mess-rockers The Submissionaries stopped drinking long enough to stumble into Han Tang Studios in Beijing to record what would become the Royal Jelly EP (ok, they drank there as well), a four song opus written primarily by Canadian Kelso Sorensen and American Gregg Vossler and mixed by the venerable Andy Brown and Lonely China Day mastermind Deng Pei. Intentionally lo-fi, The Royal Jelly EP rediscovers territory once inhabited by such luminaries as Blonde Redhead, Val Kilmer, Pavement and Spotswood of Team America fame. Turn these influences on their heads, add Ingela Pelomaki screaming in Swedish and you're left with none other than The Submissionaries. Known around Beijing for their shambolic live shows, which generally contain profane nudity, unintentionally broken instruments, blown PA's and absurdly foul language, these guys ain't foolin' around (with anything but your girlfriend)...seriously!
Type of Label: Indie
