MV Monday: Modern Sky Festival, Zhang Zhi, Meng Qi, The New Masters

New gizmos from Meng Qi for your instrument collection, a recap on Modern Sky’s first foray into the US festival market, a look at this past weekend\’s showcase with Xinjiang artist Zhang Zhi, and a kickstarter campaign for a new documentary entitled The New Masters. Let’s have a look at what’s ogling our senses this Monday afternoon.

This past weekend, Xinjiang musician Zhang Zi, whose world music has won much acclaim in the last couple of years, performed at Mako Livehouse. To accompany the artist’s tour they put together this ‘short but sweet’ promo video for Zhang Zhi and the Travelers. Looks like I missed a damn fine show – let’s hope they return sometime soon.

Not sure how much this falls in line with what I’m usually embedding on Mondays, but hey, it uses a Wang Wen song. Validation! The New Masters, an in-the-making full-length documentary about mixed martial arts in China directed by Christopher Cherry and David Dempsey, is looking for a little economical boost and is in the midst of being kickstarted over here. Looks like a very worthy undertaking. Fellow videographer and LBM collaborator Graeme Nicol is lending his skills to the project, so yeah, another high five.

Here’s one for you tech geeks out there – Jason Hou & Li Daiguo jamming out on electronic mastermind Mengqi’s new device called Squishable. And yes, the device looks utterly insane – not sure how Mengqi was able to capture such a wide range of sounds on it, but color me intrigued. Here’s the low down: “Squishable Modular Synth Workstation is a self-contained modular synth instrument. It has 3 parts that are all essential to the playing and composing experience.” Full details over here – great Christmas gift.

Remember that Modern Sky Festival that went down in New York City? Wondering how it went down? Well, here’s a collection of recaps from various blogs, magazines, and music outlets, including The Village Voice, Brooklyn Vegan, Far East Vibes, as well as the above video from SinoVision English. Seems the general consensus was that the chinese bands got shafted to the early hours with only an opportunity to play four or so songs. Ouch. Well, at least they got a free flight to Central Park.