We Are Shanghai
Posted by gunsella in Uncategorized on January 13th, 2012
This weekend sees the double launch party of the new compilation, We Are Shanghai. This set has been put together over the past few months by myself along with Ivan and JC from Twin Horizon, and Bren and Nichols of Zang Nan Recordings. We got a great response to the initial call for tracks, so good that we had to cut two tracks from the CD release, though they are all available on the digital version, found here. You can download all the tracks for free, or pay what you want for the whole record.
If you come to one of the two launch shows, you’ll get a free CD too. Entry is free though a donation is requested.
Tonight at Yuyintang there’s compilation openers Duck Fight Goose, along with Dragon Pizza, Pairs, Naohai and DJ Eurotrash Atheism.
Tomorrow night at Logo the lineup is: Battle Cattle, The Horde, Monochrome Safety Society, and iAmalam.
\m/ \m/
River South Arts Festival – your last chance to see Solar/Lunar
Posted by gunsella in Uncategorized on November 29th, 2011
The River South Arts Festival is this Thursday through to Sunday and features a bunch of really cool shit. Most notable is the final performance (at least for now) of Solar/Lunar – The Legend, that fabulous rock opera by The Illumin8tors (which I am in, for those who are new to the blog). If you’ve already seen it, come on down for one last hurrah. And if you haven’t caught the spectacle yet, why not come on down for one last hurrah.
Here’s a quick rundown of what’s on, night by night.
Thursday December 1st, 7pm – Shanghai THRONES
Redic is both a singer and a visual artist, and he’ll be exercising both facets of his personality on the opening night of the festival as he puts on a show, and shows of his artwork – 12 reclaimed chairs. The show is called Shanghai Thrones and will be on display until the 15th. It’s free.
Friday December 2nd, 8pm – Solar/Lunar
Yup, this is it, the big one, the final rock opera performance. There will be a support set from Hello Money as well as some collaborative performance poetry from Renee Reynolds. 80 RMB, and worth every jiao.
Saturday December 3rd, 7pm – H.A.L. Publishing Book Launch
Those crazy cats and HAL are launching their new book, Middle Kingdom Underground, and they are also hosting a poetry slam event, SLAMHAI 3. For 100RMB you’ll be entertained all night and you’ll also take home a copy of the new book.
Sunday December 4th, 2pm-6pm – Brunch, open mic and poetry.
120RMB.
Full details on the flyers, I hope you can make it down there.
Rock Opera Updates
Posted by gunsella in Uncategorized on November 13th, 2011
The Illumin8tors’ big show at Mao last Thursday went really well. Here’s a few pics:
Sun Dude, Emperor Yao, Wu Gang, Moon Lady and Chang-E singing Chang-E Takes the Pill
Wu Gang, Moon Lady, HouYi, Chang-E, The Queen Mother of the West, The Cassia Tree performing the finale - The Moon Always Comes Around
The Cassia Tree performing Cassia Tree
Xiao Zhong of Pairs fame was good enough to record a few songs on his infamous camera. He has uploaded it to tudou – check it out here. The songs are the end of Climbing the Stairs, a brief interlude, Cassia Tree and Allende (Houyi has it) featuring Jamalla.
So the good news is that if you missed the show last week, or if you saw it and just can’t get enough, we’re doing it all again this Friday at Dclub on Changyang Lu in Yangpu Qu. And we’ll be filming the show for posterity and a DVD release. So if you’d like to be immooooooortalised , come on down and dress to impress. Before you freak out at the distances involved in getting there, I read somewhere that if you show them your taxi receipt for 40RMB or more, they’ll give you a free drink for your troubles. It’s also very close to Dalian Lu station on line 4 – google maps link here. And that’s not all – we will be joined by the extra awesome DJ Global Ruckus from Portland, Oregon. This is his soundcloud. And here’s a killer set he did a couple of months ago in Sydney, Australia.
Dialectic Radio 180 feat GlobalRuckus (Portland) LIVE at Uber Lingua Sydney by uberlingua
He plays crazy, eclectic shit from all over the world and really brings the party.
November is now being shared with The Illumin8tors
Posted by gunsella in Uncategorized on November 6th, 2011
That’s right – contrary to my previous post, November this year is being jointly occupied by Friend or Foe and The Illumin8tors. In less than a week my band, The Illumin8tors will do a full scale performance of our rock opera, Solar/Lunar – The Legend. This performance will be massive – we are going to take over Mao Livehouse and totally rock out. The last show we did at Logo was a huge success, and things are only going to get better from there. There will be support from Upnavala Groove and Jammalla. Not to be missed.
This Thursday 10th November. 50RMB on the door, 9.30pm. Mao – 308 Chongqing lu near Jianguo lu.
November is Friend or Foe month
Posted by gunsella in Uncategorized on November 2nd, 2011
My Claw is Never Limp is the new album by Friend or Foe and it’s coming out next week. Rabshakeh, Manhadan and Bill II are really excited about it – so excited that they’ve decided to share a track with you before the actual release. Luwanrock is very proud to present track 2 off the new record – Lie to Me. Just hit the Play arrow on the player below.
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As you’re probably aware by now, the album was co-produced by the Acid Pony Club and Nichols from Rainbow Danger Club. They’ve all worked really closely to bring you a simply awesome sounding disc. And it looks good too – the graphics have all been hand drawn by Ivan Belcic of Moon Tyrant. Here’s a little teaser of the artwork:
So if you can’t wait until the official launch party on the 12th of this month, there’s a listening party at Dada tomorrow night. Here are the flyers for both:
Rocktober v2.011b – Halloween Tribute Show
Posted by gunsella in Uncategorized on October 25th, 2011
Any questions?
Rocktober v2.011a
Posted by gunsella in Uncategorized on October 19th, 2011
The remainder of Rocktober is looking pretty exciting. On Friday night Three Chord Truth brings us a ‘Bossa Nova and Samba Party’ at Brown Sugar in Xintiandi. This party features an apparent legend of Brazilian music, Toninho Horta. He didn’t invent Bossanova but from the praise of Pat Metheny, it sounds like he’s amongst the giants of the style. Metheny says “I’ve often described him to other musicians as the Herbie Hancock of bossa nova guitarists.” There’s gonna be a full samba band and hot dancers. It’s 120RMB on the door – see you there.
And on Saturday night, the real excitement begins. It’s another gig from my band, The Illumin8tors. We will be in the support slot at the next installment of Trash-a-Gogo at Yuyintang – headliners are The Fadeaways from Japan. The other support is former Beat Bandits’ Toshi’s new band, The Macaronians. The Illumin8tors will not be performing our whole show – we only have a 30 minute slot. But you will be hearing a bunch of the tunes and maybe even seeing some sexy choreography.
Fear not, for the following night, Sunday 23rd, we will be performing the first (almost) full presentation of Solar/Lunar: The Legend at Logo. There will be singing, dancing, capoeira, costumes, sitars, masks, stories, the whole she-bang. It’s free and it’s something of a warm up for the big gig coming up in November at Mao. Come on down, you will be entertained.
Music China Expo 2011
Posted by gunsella in Uncategorized on October 18th, 2011
Sorry, my dear readers, about the lack of posts lately. As Break for Borneo once sang, sometimes life gets in the way. So let’s go have a little look at what’s been keeping Luwanrock so busy lately – the Music China Expo at the New International Expo Centre in Pudong. It was four days of more musical instruments than you can imagine, all in one place. Obviously I was mostly concerned with guitars and effects but here’s a few other things that caught my eye.
Firstly, the pinkest piano I’ve ever seen.
Then there were a couple of instrument demonstrations of personal interest to me. If you’ve been to luwanrock HQ, you’ve no doubt strummed on my kuai lu, a four-stringed melody machine that anyone can play. Here is an electric five-string version that was pretty awesome.
The strings are all tuned to unison. You just strum it on the right hand side and push the keys with your left hand to select the notes.
Here is Jeff Loomis shredding in a chair.
And here’s another long-haired (facial) rocker shredding:
Almost as big as the show inside the halls was the impromptu er-hu expo on the pedestrian overpass outside the expo centre.
Then there was this guy, Mike Guerrero, lead guitarist of Hirax, a thrash metal band from California. He was demonstrating Nux pedals and doing a pretty good job of it. The only thing I don’t get is why he’s not mentioned on any webpage that concerns Hirax, not even this one, the band’s page on Encyclopaedia Metallum. Impostor? A quick web search reveals that he’s in the Deathriders. Why not put that on his posters instead? It’s not like anyone’s heard of Hirax.
The Illumin8tors present Solar/Lunar
Posted by gunsella in Uncategorized on September 6th, 2011
It is with great pleasure that I announce the launch of my latest project, The Illumin8tors. Some of you may have read an article mentioning the project in City Weekend’s print version. For those that are still in the proverbial dark, prepare to be Illumin8ted.
The Illumin8tors is part band, part acting/dancing troupe and features members from a bunch of other bands including Hotter Than Teppanyaki, The Beat Bandits, Pause and Break for Borneo as well as myself. We are putting on a rock opera called Solar/Lunar: The Legend. The subject matter is the legend(s) surrounding the fast approaching Mid-Autumn Festival. There’s the archer Houyi, charged with the task of shooting down nine excessive suns that make the Earth too hot. There’s his hot wife, Chang-e, who eats the pill of immortality. There’s the even hotter Queen Mother of the West who gives her the pill. And the less hot but still cute (original meaning) Jade Rabbit, floppy ears n all, played by Dave Hampson of Teppanyaki and Beat Bandits fame. We’ll be having a large scale performance at Mao Livehouse in a few months, but in honour of the long weekend for the festival, this Saturday will see our first public performance during which we’re going to preview some of the songs from our show. Also featured in our show and in a support-band role on Saturday night, is Upnavala Groove. This is a superb ‘world-music’ group featuring some members of The Illumin8tors along with the ubiquitous Toshi (Beat Bandits, Instigation, Dropkicks etc) and the almost as ubiquitous DJ Sal (Shanghai Yard Soundsystem). But in this band, Sal is not dropping reggae tunes, he’s playing the freakin’ sitar. Yep, the sitar. I know, nuts, isn’t it!!!
The show is at Beedees (Dagu Lu, Chengdu Lu) and should kick off around 9.30pm. I hope you can make it.
The Week in Rock (and Afro-Reggae-Funk-Soul)
Posted by gunsella in Uncategorized on August 29th, 2011
First up on Friday night at YYT is rocking bill – It’s Moon Tyrant along with Loudspeaker and Fearless in a rarely seen acoustic mode. It’s 25 kuai and set to kick off at 9.30. It should be good. Check the smoking cat poster for all the details.
And the gig that I’m really excited about this week (sorry, Ivan) is at YYT on Saturday night – it’s a one-time-only reunion of The Georgia Sam Blues Band. This band was a mainstay of the Shanghai scene back when YYT was in a shed somewhere south of Xujiahui, Tanghui occupied the location of the old Logo, and the site of Anar wasn’t yet Pirates or Shuffle Bar. Needless to say, Dada and Shelter didn’t even exist.
The Georgia Sam Blues Band was the brain-child of old-China-hand, Rindy Portfolio, and featured all future members of my old band, The Cardinals, as well as three quarters of The Dovetail Joints. Did I steal his band away? Probably. Was he bitter about it? Hell no, in fact, I’ve been invited to reprise my role with them as we rip through two sets of shit-hot blues rock which, let’s face it, Shanghai just doesn’t have enough of. There’s some tasty Zeppelin and Stones covers, as well as bunch of originals. And there’s the added bonus of the fully sick support act – Noukilla. These guys are mostly Mauritian and led by the very talented Mauritian, Gilbert K. They sing in at least three languages and they blend genres like a master chef blends chipotle and catfish.
Here’s the poster.
I hope you can make it.
Luwan Rock- We Are Shanghai January 13, 2012
- River South Arts Festival – your last chance to see Solar/Lunar November 29, 2011
- Rock Opera Updates November 13, 2011
- November is now being shared with The Illumin8tors November 6, 2011
- November is Friend or Foe month November 2, 2011
- Rocktober v2.011b – Halloween Tribute Show October 25, 2011
what are the people saying?