New Releases: Let’s Get Naked, The Fallacy, Sad Tears, Flying Horse

At the moment, I’m trying to amass as much music as possible before I jump off the grid. And boy, is there a mighty amount to take in. It’s staggering —- some choice picks this week include the latest compilation of The Shelter’s offbeat electronic guests, a slew of new works from Changsha extreme metal label Cold Woods, a new 7’’ from Xinxiang post punks The Fallacy, and charismatic folk from Xi’an artist Flying Horse. Check it out.

A couple months back I had the great pleasure of attending the Shanghai monthly event ‘Let’s Get Naked and Play a Bunch of Drones’ hosted by Acid Pony Club’s Laura Ingalls over at the city’s numero uno underground club The Shelter. Over the last year, they’ve hosted quite a few talented people in their old bomb shelter with the idea that anything goes, including, well, ‘getting naked’. Laura Ingalls has now compiled said artists who participated and has put out a compilation – ‘Let’s Get Naked and Listen to a Bunch of Drones On Tape Vol. 1’ – which means, yes you can grab it on cassette as well as digitally over here. Quite a bit to like here, including some choice cuts from local Beijingers Charm, thruoutin, Chronmaster, and Noise Arcade. Lotta interesting sounds coming out of this baby – digging the horror aesthetics of Arrebato, the consecrated laments of J+D+C+Q, and of course the pure evil of Nahash. The musk and mildew of Shelter is coming right back to me. Bash in it.

Stumbled upon this cool little production house set up in Changsha – Cold Woods Productions. Founded in late 2009, the underground production label specializes in all facets of extreme metal – depressive, symphonic, folk, darkwave, romantic – if it’s down the less taken dark and dreary path, these folks are getting it out there. And as someone who enjoys the more twisted and atmospheric aspects of metal, this is a treasure trove of goodness – some recent releases from them include depressive black metal outfit Sad Tears, Changchun black Qi metal outfit Black Kirin, Shandong filth metal group Obscure Dream Particularly enjoying Sad Tear’s most recent release, Broken Mirror, which you can take for a spin here. A lot to dig into here. Purchase them at Cold Woods’ taobao page.

Post punk invades Beijing this weekend – one of the acts I’m most pissed to be missing is Xinxiang outfit The Fallacy, whom I’ve been dying to catch since I heard their debut playing at C Rock on Gulou Dongdaijie, and have only gotten better since. Hot off their sophomore release Debris, the band heads to XP this Friday with a 7’’ vinyl from the one and only Genjing Records. The 7’’ includes ‘Time To Kill’ and ‘Painkiller’ two slick pieces of post punk full of dirty charm produced by, you guessed it, Yang Haisong. Grab it over here and pick up your 7’’ this Friday at XP.

Last, we have the debut from Xi’an folk singer-songwriter Flying Horse/Ma Fei entitled ‘当初就不应该学吉他’ . Modern Sky is pushing hard for success with the folk pop artist and it’s easy to see why – dude’s got charm. Self-deprecating, upbeat, full of humor and warmth – it works for the most part. Sure as hell beats the monotone dry folk that has been all the rage back east. Starting to suspect that these cats further west are having all lots more fun – I mean, they’re playing banjos for crying out loud. Join in on the fun over here and purchase it over at Indie Music Store.