Meeting up with Wukong, the Monkey King

It's strange how one event can relate to another. We met up with an upcoming, promising talent in Hangzhou after getting tattooed. In the tattoo shop, Tang Feng played us the demo's of his friend Wukong (The Monkey King). It was an interesting mix of electronica and acoustic instruments, nice Chinese loungy soundscapes.

We met the same evening at our concert on the opening ceremony of the 11th International West Lake Expo. It was great to meet Tang Feng, Wukong and Sun. They all digged the music and Wukong seemed fascinated by Steven's omnichord. We partied all night and did a jam in one of the oldest clubs in Hangzhou, the Bartender. The unforgettable night finally ended at a tattoo master's house underneath a massive bridge complex (Lange Wapper X3). It would be great if we could do something together in the future, to be continued!

12 hours in Shanghai, before take off

Driving into Shanghai again strikes us with a feeling of having entered a sciense fiction movie. The dazzling network of high bridged junctions over some spots in the town is mindblowing. It's hard to go back to the hotel here, we can still catch up some sleep in the plane...

Back in China 2009

We just got back from our second China tour. This time our blog wasn’t accessible, nor facebook or youtube. We had to wait until we got back to get it all posted. Nevertheless, it was another big adventure and we

all had the feeling we got to know a few more pieces of the big China puzzle. The trip went smooth, we caught a beautiful sunrise. Arriving at midnight for us, Shanghai was just waking up but we headed straight to Hangzhou. Nice sunset, no clouds in the air.

However, on the bus to Hangzhou we got the disappointing news that some of the concerts had been cancelled, due to the swine flu, while others were still under discussion. On the other hand, it's hard to get bored in a city that never sleeps, so we got to known Hangzhou better and visited the new build town on the other side of the Qiantang river. Amazing how fast this city changes, new blocks keep popping out of the ground at the speed of light.

By the time we got used to the local traffic, food and beverages we flew over to the south of China, to what's supposed to be the 3rd large town Guangzhou. The climate here is much warmer, up to 35° C at this time of the year. Consequently, the food's a lot hotter too! It might be true that Cantonese food is the best, we discovered a whole array of different cooking here and we enjoyed a lot and at the end of our meal we drank a delicious snake wine liquor. Unfortunately, our best Mandarin didn't help us out over here, the people speak Cantonese and it was hard to detect some common vocabulary.

Our first concert in the Mini Theatre of the Culture Museum of Guangzhou was dedicated to the Wall street journalist Daniel Pearl, who was murdered in 2002. It was on October 10, which was Daniel's birthday. We tried to explain to the people that on the same night all over the world, musicians were playing in good memory of him. Steven dedicated especially the song he wrote for his son Jaco to this event, as he was impressed by the strength of Daniel's parents to make something meaningful, beautiful and positive out of a very negative and meaningless act. Several people in the audience told us afterwards they'd had been touched by the profound extra dimension of the concert.

Footage of our Shanghai Concert

Final gig in Shanghai

Off to Shanghai the next day. We're booked into the Live Bar, a small underground club that reminds Jasper of New York's Knitting Factory, with a crazy waitress called Tiny. Not much bigger than an average living room in Belgium, but the PA is okay and you feel this club is breathing out Music!

It's hot again in Shanghai and we play our 2 longest and sweatiest sets on the tour and have our friend Irina as a guest once more. Awesome final concert! Statistically, there is an overrepresentation of Belgian and beer drinking customers and Chinese harmonica players that night.

One more day left to visit the SWFC-observatory the next day, currently the highest building in the world, 492 meters. We stay on the highest floor during the twilight zone to see the lights of Shanghai being switched on and turn the city into an amazing postcard. Shanghai is such an impressive place. Last drinks in the Cotton Club, watching Sugarmama do her thing, do we really have to leave? Belgium is waiting, one long flight away...

Fuyang

After a shaky 12 hour trip on the night train with hardly no sleep, we arrive back in Hangzhou. You have to do this at least once in your life. The train is about 400 meters long and blows his hooter on every crossing. There are about 10 times 6 beds on every wagon. We met some cool people on the train, but in the morning we all felt like worn-out T-shirts in the bottom of a backpack. Pieter forgot his wallet on the train, but a few phonecalls later it has been found and will be delivered back to us in Shanghai without any losses.

In a van and a cab we take off to Fuyang. Only a small hour away from Hangzhou, we get the chance to see once more the nice mountains in the area. The club in Fuyang seems to be another trendy dance bar. The waiters are getting their instructions in pure army style. Only problem, they have only one karaoke microphone. We explain to them we cannot play without a PA, but they seem to have a different opinion. Finally we pull out an ultimatum for them and leave to visit the nice old town in a bike-cab. At 5PM we get the news that the mikes have arrived. Off to the soundcheck, but all mikes seem to be Yamaha karaoke mikes. We can't believe our eyes and ears. Our sound-engineer Pieter makes a confronting comparison between his own mike -made in Europe- and the club's mikes -made in China.

Because we are eager to play and don't want to cancel another gig, we decide to pull it off on this set. After a pumping techno dj-set, we start to play and the people seem to love it. There are moments we almost can't hear ourselves in the sheering of the young crowd. This might be how the Beatles must have felt themselves back in Hamburg. However, somehow it also feels a bit like a freakshow. Some of the people here obviously have never seen Westerners in real live before. Tomorrow is another day. 

Changsha concert 2 & 3

Our second concert in Changsha felt a little bit like a fairytale. The Chinese can be very inventive with special effects. Apart from noisy smoke machines, there were guns with soap bells, floating flowers and off course, fireworks around Tony's drums. We got the crowd to stand up, sing along and dance around us while we were playing. The Chinese band that played before us, asked us how we did it? Don't know how, Steven just asked it with his four words of Chinese and they went for it all the way.

After we heard the sad news that Marc Moulin has left us, we played a little tribute to him last night at our last concert in Changsha. His work with Placebo and Telex has been inspiring us as a band. We've even once asked him to produce our record but unfortunately agenda's didn't fit. After he heard our version of Moskow Diskow, he sent us an Email saying he was delighted by the arrangement. Hope he is jamming along with his heroes right now!

Once more, we were offered a three month tour in China, they keep on saying we're their number one band;-) They don't mean next year, they talk about right now. We'll see what happens...

See new pictures on picassa!