Redstone and Ontology Research Unit ¦ #укртг 🧶

As someone who works in midst of Chinese underground scene I have to shout it: Chinese independent music needs more exposure to the rest of the world as it deserves!

The current Chinese indie musicians are nuts. They are generations born during the sudden open-boarder of the communist regime, while all the movies and musics overflow to this drought land.

They were raised by Hendrix, Led Zeppelin’s, Queens, Nirvana, The Gallaghers, MJ, Prince, Eminem, 2-Pac, Rihanna, Taiwanese pop musics, Japanese anime songs, and their rip-offs, Backstreet Boys, Beach Boys, Beastie Boys, a lot of Boys! 90s Chinese Rock pioneers, Russian military songs, CCP propaganda songs, traditional Chinese operas......All At Once!

There are bands preaching dark bibles and BDSM, there are fake traditional Chinese music sampling bands, there are post-punk bands (a lot of them), anime bands, grunge bands, hard core punk bands, rip-off Brit-pops (god bless them) and bands that don’t know what genre they are doing but it’s ok.

Bands believing random shit, pro-regime, anti-regime, doesn’t give a fuck but just recreational bands, pretty boy bands, feminist bands, privileged fuckboy band, there are rock stars that’s on the rise, great musicians, great lyricists, poets I’d say.

Gossips, shit talks, fucked up kids doing fucked up things, arrested musicians, social activists, they’d take MTV back to peak if they all were white.

These bands are growing under a not-so-ideal-but-not-horrifying-as-North-Korea type of environment, while gigs got canceled is the norm, but they still find ways to upload, share, and even make a living out of their music.

A music industry is forming, under an existing one tightly (or loosely, up to your opinions) controlled by both capitals and the regime.

At an age of such boredom of opinions, musicians doesn’t dare to come up with their own but rather stick to the safest and mostly alike ones. These Chinese bands creates real diversity and context from a totally foreign angle. They believe in different things, vastly disagreeing with each other.

Now the lockdown is lifted, it’s time for them to be known, properly, in a respectful way that they aren’t gonna be treat as exotic circus monkeys, but music worth to listen (and purchase,) lyrics worth to understand.