New Releases: Atta Girl, Panic Worm, Djang San, Lofimaker

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Slacker dream pop out of Shenzhen, future bass meets the ancestral music of China’s diverse culture, a young post punk band out of Wuhan breaks out, and a Beijing veteran releases his 39th album – it’s the latest music from an array of bands and artists including the newest from Atta Girl, Lofimaker, Panic Worm, and Djang San.

 

Shoegaze dream pop or as China Music Radar has rendered it, slacker rock, continues to infect the Mainland, particularly Shenzhen, where label Boring Productions mines the bedroom pop aesthetic further with their latest catch – Atta Girl. The indie pop duo ‘creates listenable music in the bedroom, but pretty lame on stage’. Modesty aside, there’s some loveably written jams on Everyone Loves You When You Were Still A Kid that ride on an almost idle laid-back charm that sneaks up on you. Fleeting youth has been this appealing in some time. Bandcamp.

The mad Frenchmen, Djang San returns with his latest slice of eastern-flavored 70s-evoking guitar rock, The Fog In Our Hearts. Using the foundation of field recordings collected from a recent tour of Japan and South Korea, the album is broken into four parts – instrumental rock jams, somber acoustics melodies, experimental looped bridges, and live song recordings. And while that sounds like a mess in concept it surprisingly molds well together and the multi-instrumentalist is in fine form here, embracing atmosphere and melody over depth and lyrics, and keep things moving at a brisk pace. A very nice addition to the seemingly endless Djang San supply. Bandcamp.

Lofimaker joins the ranks of Chinese producers bridging future bass and traditional Chinese music to create vibrant electronica that simply fizzles. Very much in the vein of the Do Hits! crew (whom Lofimaker has worked with before), the producer vivaciously blends the old and new – dubstep, glitch hop, and trap alongside ancestral ethnic music from the various regions of China – to create something that glistening with life in Lion Drumming. It’s a match made in heaven really, and while we’re slowly reaching the saturation point for this style of music, I just can’t get enough of it. Bandcamp.

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Post punk finds a home in Wuhan with Panic Worm, the newest band to find solace in the frenetic feet tapping sounds of the genre. The band, an ‘offspring of the thriving Wuhan punk scene’ went ahead earlier this summer and recorded their EP at the second tier city’s musical vortex, VOX Livehouse. While essentially a glorified demo, there’s a heck ton of talent on display in Connection. Lo-fi grit, taciturn vocals that oozes with dangerous allure, and a raucous combustible center. Potential in spades. Douban/Xiami

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