LAST LIVE

Well today was the last live of the trip. So sad, however, the line up at YYT was quite promising. The three bands playing were Rank, Plastic Chocolate, and Vidulgi OoyoO. For the majority of the lives I attended, I had a penchant for showing up to lives at just the right time--usually able to predict how late the live would start with 5 or so minutes of the live actually start. I was unfortunate this time. Since my cousins had to stop by to drop some stuff off, it was pretty much ensured that I would not make the intended start time or even the typical ~30 minutes late start time. Upon arriving, I had already missed the first band. I was quite disappointed because I had thought that only Plastic Chocolate and Vidulgi OoyoO were playing.

When the next band took the stage, I was quite excited, recognizing guitarist--it was Plastic Chocolate. Previously, I had described Plastic Chocolate as a sort of unrefined Rega. However, I now must recant my statement. I would still say they are similar to Rega but vocals had a larger part this time. This time, the mixing for PC was way better than when I first saw PC at Mao, which is quite strange since Mao usually has much better mixing. In any case, the levels of each instrument were set perfectly for their style of music. Since I was able to hear each part clearly and without any of the instruments impeding on the other instruments' sonic space, it was easy to hear the intricacies of their songs. The vocalist/guitarist kept the chord progression well while the bassist kept the groove with appropriately complex lines. The lead guitarist added flair with equal amounts of riff and effects (in this case by effects, I mean amelodic sounds). The drummer kept in line with expectations with interesting beats. One of their songs(I think it was the second song), was particularly awesome because of how their levels were set. It began with a soft flowing ambiance, and all of the sudden WALL OF SOUND. It was quite the transition, since from where I was standing, the sound instantly filled the room at a level Just below what would start to cause discomfort--the perfect level for wall of sound. It's unfortunate that PC is still a relatively new band and is only going to start putting out a CD next month. PC's guitarist said they will put all their songs on Douban, though.

Vidulgi OoyoO is a Korean band who can be categorized as noisy post-rock band. I would like to say that they are similar to Boredoms (But I don't remember what Boredoms sound like and I'm too lazy to check). Vidulgi's set would be best described as WALL OF NOISE. Now, the difference between wall of noise and wall of sound, is mainly the fact that the levels of Vidulgi's were set at uncomfortably loud levels. Additionally, their extremely high gain settings coupled with extremely sharp treble sibilance made it difficult to hear what the guitars were playing. However, once locking onto the chords the music became interesting. Another issue was that the bassist, whom often provided a more melodic structure to the wailing guitars, was often buried in the mix. Basically, I'm just bitching about Vidulgi's mixing since it was quite a contrast to PC's. In the end, I still bought their CD for a much more reasonable 50RMB(fucka yuuu Quruli) since they did seem pretty interesting if you disregard the mixing.

Damn I missed Rank both times they played, though.

Qururi

It's awesome that a pretty major Japanese band would come to Shanghai to play. It's even cooler that they would be playing for FREE. Tim had mentioned them to me a while ago, but I never really got into them. In preparation, I decided to download some of their stuff. I first downloaded their album Team Rock per Frank's suggestion, however, I was seriously turned off by the amount of UNSK UNSK. Two of the eleven tracks were basically techno while the remainder were not lacking in any synth. Since listening and being incredibly turned off by that album I became to lazy and unmotivated to download more. I was also put off by their collab with Rip Slyme.

What a fool. At the live, there wasn't a single song with synth in it. The music actually was quite good. I would say they are Pillowsy with a bit of Mr. Children and maybe a tiny tiny bit of Tokyo Jihen?(Perhaps it might have just been one song where this was especially true). The vocals were a bit nasal like the Pillows but the way the vocalist sung was very very like MS trying to sing with intermittent cracks and a screaming quality to some of the higher and longer notes.

It was quite funny seeing the vocalist try to MC in between songs, since they knew next to no Chinese. At one point, he tried to relate to the audience by talking about TsingTao, at which point he realized he was not drinking TsingTao. They refused to speak Japanese despite various people including myself shout in Japanese to them. In retrospect, this was probably done out of respect to the rest of the audience.

One thing I'd like to note, is that Mao's sound guy really did a fantastic job tonight. It was amazing. when the drums first came in every note was chest punchingly deep--very defined and not boomy at all. The guitar and bass was balanced well with good definition from each, though I personally would've preferred the bass to be louder for a few songs (I might be just a LITTLE biased though hahah). One complaint I had was about their setlist. It was too short. I got to the livehouse at around 10. By 11 they left the stage. WTF, perhaps I was expecting too much, but I really think an hour is a bit short. They came up for an encore after their show and man, they used the ultimate encore killer: "Just one song, okay?". Though their last song was quite good, the show was too fucking short.

As a final note, 200 RMB for a CD is pretty ridiculous for China. Needless to say, I will be paying a visit to Jpopsuki. I did buy a shirt at an equally ridiculous price since I feel a bit guilty for visiting Jpopsuki.