Pissing On The Bamboo Curtain : Your Way In To The Mysterious World Of Chinese Indie Music

BEIJING - Heard of any good Chinese bands? Probably not, but then again, how would you? Even for people who live here in the ‘Middle Kingdom’, the Chinese independent music scene can be a hard nut to crack. Non-Chinese-speaking music fans have to be much more determinedly hands on in their approach than elsewhere in the world. Indecipherable band names, poorly recorded and hard-to-find albums and lack of English media coverage are just some of the barriers-to-entry, testing even the most resilient of music fans.

New podcast Pissing On The Bamboo Curtain will be a real godsend to anyone looking at making sense of this exciting little scene. Beijing based podcasters Ian Sherman (who also happens to be Music Editor for Beijing Time Out) and Kyle Schaefer’s high-brow, yet somehow low-brow, ramblings will also be a godsend to anyone who enjoys apocrypha, obscure references and general verbosity.

These guys know their stuff. They play good tunes as well. Here are streams of the first two gloriously amateurish installments, originally hosted on the Tag Team Records site:

Pissing On The Bamboo Curtain - September `07
Pissing On The Bamboo Curtain - October `07
Visit the podcast page.

I took it upon myself to send a few questions their way - pulling back the curtain on Pissing On The Bamboo Curtain, if you will. They replied in a typically wordy and waggish fashion. Good stuff. Read the full interview here.

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