Last night’s show featured a very strong line up at Yuyintang. Unfortunately I missed Pairs and Rainbow Danger Club but I heard both were excellent. As I arrived I was treated to the dirty garage sounds of The Beat Bandits, a three piece pulled together from the ruins of some of Shanghai’s finest bands of the last few years  (Hotter Than Teppanyaki, The Snots, The Dropkicks, Banana Monkey . . .) Mizusu kicks serious ass with his Les Paul. Seriously.

Up next were the quirky, syncopated stylings of Duck Fight Goose. I find this band both entertaining and rewarding. They are making sonic experiments with great beats and some clever ideas.  I’d like to hear these guys recorded. There’s a few poorly recorded tracks on their douban page. There’s also a video, which is a little more rewarding than the audio.

I took the liberty of examining Han Han’s pedals during his set, not expecting to see any surprises. Lo and behold! He has changed his setup since I last checked it out at Culture Clash last October. Last time he was running a long chain of effects (overdrive > distortion > whammy pitch shifter > delay > EQ > reverb) into a small, on-stage mixer which then went into another delay/loop sampler pedal. He also had a microphone (not the main vocal mic) running into the same mixer so it too could be sampled and looped.

Here’s last night’s setup:

Last night he was running two shorter chains, one for the guitar and one for the vocals. From top left to top right we have the guitar chain, featuring an Electro Harmonix Knockout EQ pedal (yellow and red), then the Vox Bulldog dual distortion (big and shiny with a blue light in the back), then two Boss delay pedals (two DD-6′s I think) and a tuner and out to the amplifier. And beginning with the orange microphone cable descending from the top of the photo, we have the second effects chain which is on the main vocal mic, not an additional one. The mic goes into the awesome Digitech Whammy pitch shifting pedal and then into the EH Holy Grail reverb.  This means he can sound like anything from a chipmunk in a cave to a giant in a cave. Now comes the clever bit – Han has done away with the EH mini mixer that he employed last time to send both the mic and the guitar to the DD-6 used a loop sampler. Instead, he is using the true stereo functionality of the DD-6 to accept the two inputs (guitar and vocals), sample them, and then send the still separated signals to their respective targets (the guitar amp and the mixing desk). This way, he has no need to have his effected  vocals come out his guitar amp. He has also eliminated the need to bring the mixer to gigs, making his load a little bit lighter. Very clever.

At Duck’s feet we see a similar setup to last time:

She still has the EH Voice Box harmoniser/vocoder pedal on her microphone. And she has switched out the trusty Tonerider compressor for another Tonerider gem that is also a mainstay in my own rig – their American Overdrive. This one seems to be a collector’s item. As well as the sample label in the lower left corner, there’s also a mysterious switch under the volume knob. I wonder what it does? Is it a high cut? or a 5dB boost? Accordion setting?

Following Duck Fight Goose was The Fever Machine, Dan Shapiro’s new project with Fabien and Miguel. I guess these guys are picking up where The Rogue Transmission left off – it’s fast, it rocks and there are great riffs and some cool hooky choruses. It’s somewhat more spacey though, and the songs have a little more breathing room. I’m still involved with the band, but this time with the sound, both live and recorded. I’m shredding the EQs and reverbs instead of the 6-string on stage. It’s quite satisfying and far less sweaty.