Underground
Soundtrack to Hellworld #4
Below is the fourth entry in the “Soundtrack to Hellworld” series, covering Chapter 4, “Circle of Madness.” Set largely in an underground market beneath the factory districts of Shenzhen, this chapter delves into the alienated and fetishistic form of appearance of capitalist society and the maddening process of theoretical inquiry required to see through this common sense image to grasp the real abstractions that govern our social relationships and see how they take on a material force both through and beneath their own projected appearance:
The empirically measurable features of our commonsense surroundings are certainly real, but their reality is subordinate to a lower one, invisible, immeasurable, a stirring in the fathomless dark. And the currents coursing through this deeper reality are in essence esoteric, perceptible only by proxy. Though contiguous with the immediate world of economic objects – in fact, both near and as isomorphic to the sensible as a form to the shadow that it casts – such a realm can only be accessed through a winding path. Our tangible sphere and this deeper one are like two surfaces wrenched together into one and strung along a Möbius strip. At any given moment, the two are neighbours separated by a thin veil: the one a reverse of the other and the latter merely the former traced back to its source. The lifting of the veil is the work that we call theory, following the obverse world of economic objects backward down the winding path until we reach these same objects again from their inverse.[1]
Given these themes, the only music that makes sense for this chapter is music that intentionally pushes beyond the bounds of convention and even listenability. For this reason, the playlist below focuses on noise, experimental, and free jazz music from China.
Notably, as the Chinese left has been forced out of the conventional political sphere and retreated into arts and culture, experimental music festivals have become de facto sites gathering together many who, ten years ago, may have gravitated to the worker centers and “worker culture” events described in the chapter. Though obviously linked to political repression, this subsumption of leftwing politics within the art scene is, at least in part, also clearly linked to deindustrialization. As Chapter 5 delves into in more detail, growing distance from production generates a new kind of utopianism in which romantic expressions of art and philosophy at best come to inform and at worst come to displace politics proper. At the same time, however, these artistic ventures can help to preserve and transmit radical sentiments in times of severe repression. After the collapse of the New Left in the US, for example, politics seeped out of society and into the subcultural sphere, centered on underground art and music scenes. These scenes then became the space in which many in the millennial left were introduced to radical politics.
In addition to Concrete Avalanche, cited in the last entry in the series, much of the music in this playlist was discovered by following the Bandcamp pages for free jazz saxophonist, folk flutist, and experimental musician Lao Dan (老丹) as well as experimental labels Share the Obstacles (Beijing-based), Badhead (also Beijing), Old Heaven Books(Shenzhen), and Dusty Ballz (London). Old Heaven Books in Shenzhen is also a physical bookstore and venue, next door to the B10 live space where the Tomorrow Festival (China’s leading experimental music festivals) is usually held. Old Heaven Books often films performances in the space, some of which are posted on YouTube. For example, check out Lao Dan’s session with American percussionist Chris Corsano here:
And an improv set by Mamer here:
Both Lao Dan and Mamer feature heavily in the following playlist, since the two are probably the best-known and most versatile experimentalists in China today. Free jazz multi-instrumentalists Lao Dan is the better known of the two, featured in Issue 439 of The Wire and touring the US in 2024. But Mamer is perhaps the more versatile, his work spanning fairly traditional Kazakh folk guitar to harsh noise. Those with a subscription can check out his feature in Issue 444 of The Wire. But Jake at Concrete Avalanche also has an excellent overview:
Given that Spotify’s selection of Chinese experimental music is somewhat limited, Bandcamp is also the go-to source for tracks that would have been included in the playlist if they’d been available. See, for example, one of my all-time favorite albums, “Once Upon a Time in Shanghai” (上海往事) by Li Zenghui (李增辉) and Yang Haisong (杨海崧):
Similarly, of Lao Dan’s voluminous catalog, only three albums are available on Spotify. Of these, all are essentially saxophone works, excluding his broader opus of folk music and more experimental noise, which can instead be found on Bandcamp. See, for example, this collaboration Mamer:
For his flute work, see:
And for his forays into electronic noise, see the single-track 少林铁腿绝技 (“Shaolin Iron Leg Stunt”):
And for his jazz rock project, Red Scarf:
Similarly, for a wider range of Mamer’s catalogue, see his collaborative folk outfit IZ:
And his more experimentalist solo folk, as on the album 成为切尔铁尔 Xêrtêrmin / Sherter Solo, released via Old Heaven Books:
Similarly, albums by noise musician 筮人 (Diviner) – another all-time favorite – are not available on Spotify at all but can be accessed on Bandcamp. For an impression of the project’s range, see the more conventional power electronics album 虚幻的共同体 (“Imaginary Community”):
And the album 淫祀 (“Lascivious Sacrifice”), where traditional instrumentation is used to generate something sitting between dark ambient and experimental ritual folk:
With these exceptions in mind, here is the playlist for Chapter 4 which, in addition Lao Dan and Mamer, also features tracks by Liang Yiyuan (梁奕源), Li Jianhong (李劍鴻), Nono/Zhang Xingchan(张醒婵), and more:
[1] Hellworld, p.197