Thusfar, my investigations into the indie music scene in Harbin have turned up more or less nothing. However, indie music does exist in China, and my internet searches have proved more fruitful.

An excellent source for cutting-edge Chinese music is the artist social networking site Neocha. This is an absolutely awesome site that someone REALLY needs to make a version of for the English-speaking community. Essentially, it’s like a more customizable Facebook for artists both visual and musical, and some of the stuff on there is really awesome. Recognizing that, the people who run the site have started a netlabel (creatively titled “Neocha Netlabel“), through which they’re releasing collections of free music.

You can check out the full collections here, but I’m going to feature some of the songs on this site too, for those of you who don’t want to try to navigate the Chinese. Unfortunately right now Yahoo’s servers don’t seem to want me to upload the song, so check back in a bit and hopefully I’ll have some stuff up. For now, you can check out that site if you have a Neocha account. If not (and you can read Chinese) consider getting one, it’s worth it.

I’ve been listening to some of my music recently for the first time in a while, and came across this little gem. In November 2006, Sarah Clark and I opened for singer/pianist/songwriter Vienna Teng. Since Vienna’s music is a lot more like Sarah’s than mine and we knew the crowd was looking for a concert concert (as opposed to a show-at-a-bar type concert) anyway, we adapted a bunch of my songs into the just-piano-and-vocals format.

Knowing this would be either cool or a huge disaster, I recorded it. It turned out to be very cool, but the recordings never saw the light of day, for two reasons. One is that the gain was set slightly too high on the input so of the six songs we performed, only 3 were even listenable. The other, more important reason was that Sarah wasn’t satisfied with how her voice sounded and didn’t want the recordings out there. I thought she sounded great and still do, but it’s her choice to make, not mine. The songs stayed hidden.

Today, I came across those recordings and decided to listen just for the fun of it. As it turns out, Sarah Clark doesn’t sing on “November Alone”, so she’s OK with me posting it. If you can get by the pops and crackles, I think you’ll really enjoy it.

November Alone [Live]

A few minutes ago I was testing the waters in Baidu’s MP3 search (which is reportedly disabled for those of you living stateside, but works fine for those of us here in China). In the interest of seeing just how deep the rabbit hole goes (and, of course, also in the interest of vanity) I searched for myself, and somewhat shockingly got results.

Anyway, amongst the results I discovered this: a giant album of remixes by producer Gamshooter, which includes remixes of three of my songs (the originals: Just Music, One Sip, and Rain is Gone). He makes them slightly more danceable, which is probably a good thing to some of you and a bad thing to others; anyway, they’re definitely skillfully made.

Actually, the whole album, which is called Obligatory Rap Music for Kids in XXXXXL T-Shirts, is probably worth checking out. I’ve only had a chance to listen to what he did with my songs so far, but I see my friend Point Game is on the tracklisting as well, and his work is always worth peeping.

Veggie Co Records is doing an online promotion right now where you can stream my whole album Roads on the Earth for free. Check it out here if you haven’t bought the album yet, give it a chance!!!!

Believe it or not, the site with all the acapellas from Can’t See the Forest is still up, and occasionally somebody comes across it and does something wonderful. That’s what happened with producer Nerack’s jazzy take on my song “Can’t See the Forest”:

Can’t See the Forest (Nerack Remix)

Apparently he’s working on remixing the entire album, so I’m looking forward to hearing that! If you want to get in touch with him, his email is nerackbeats (at) gmail.

Continuing in the tradition of offering you random little videos I’ve made in my free time, here’s another quickie with some Harbin scenery and a short interview with some of the guys who work at a restaurant near my apartment.

Please forgive my stuttering Chinese and awkward translation, I’ve only been here a couple weeks and I’m still pretty rusty.

And, on a totally unrelated note, here’s a free piece of music for you. It’s a short, extremely simple piano and strings thing that I made a week or two ago, inspired by both my dark mood and the fact that I was watching two episodes of Six Feet Under a day. I don’t know if anyone will want it in this form–it has been adapted into a more hip-hop instrumental format and might appear in some form on my album with Sarah Clark–but in case you do, here it is: Dying (Composition).

Stay tuned for more episodes of “What the Olympics Mean to Chinese People” as well as other music and video features!

Dear cheap bastards who still haven’t bought the new album,
You’re in luck! Veggie Co is putting out a sampler called The Essentials Vol. I. You can download it for free, or get a free hard copy at one of our shows, and it features three songs from my album, as well as three songs by Ghost of a Stranger. The songs of mine that you can’t get free off this site are “Alive” and “Roads on the Earth”.
Enjoy!

The internet radio station Pulse Empire is going to be playing some of my music, and that of other artists you don’t know of but probably would like, like Spoonfull. Specifically, DJ C, whose shows are on Tuesday, 3-5pm EST, and Wednesday 3-4pm EST, will be spinning my stuff, and it’s free, so log in and check it out!

For a limited time (I think), Veggie Co Records has got a stream up where you can listen to two songs from the Ghost of a Stranger album and two songs from my album. One of the songs, “Morning After”, is also available free on this site but the other one, “Roads on the Earth”, should be all new to you unless you’ve already purchased the album, so head over here to listen to it!

They also have posted a free ringtone of my song “Suibian” here and linked a service that will help you get it onto your phone here. Enjoy!

In the midst of all this album promotion, let’s not forget there’s still plenty of good stuff here for free. Here’s a new remix of “Can’t Let Go” by Smarty Jonez that I really like. That was actually one of my least favorite songs off of Can’t See the Forest but this remix has me seeing it in a whole new light. I recommend it highly, you will definitely enjoy this:

Click to download “Can’t Let Go (Smarty Jonez Remix)”

Spread this around while you’re spreading around news about the new album!