I was wandering around Beijing’s 798 “art zone” this afternoon when I found a small record shop – a rarity in this city. Inside they were playing some nice-sounding Chinese rock, which turned out to be Wang Wen’s IV.

(Sidenote: from now I promise to always drop the post- from rock. Every Beijing rock band seems to be tagged with the unfortunate label post-rock.. I’m not quite sure what’s so post about their rock in the first place. It just sounds pretentious.)

To be fair I’d never heard of Wang Wen until I walked into this shop, but I like what I hear. Their laid-back, dreamy guitar sound is perfect for the night-shift I got stuck with today.

From their MySpace page,

“The band was formed in the city of Dalian, a busy seaport in northeast china, in the year of 1999. Wangwen was at first started by two awkward (at that time!) guitarists who were crazy about The Smashing Pumpkins and later joined by the drummer who also brought along the band name, representing the idea of an unknown band and insensibility to what others say. The band began to record their first demo- ‘the animal world’ on their own in the same year they formed. Since then the band members had been changing while continuous creation of new pieces of music and performing. ‘lingshuihe’(‘the IceWaterRiver’)was recorded on their own in 2000 and the third demo ‘the Tenebrous Yinyang Road’ was also completed two years later. During this period the music style of the band had been gradually changing from vocal to instrumental and started to draw broad attentions both from the reviews and the audience as well. It was considered as the one of the leading band from china in the fields of post-rock and acid rock. The band was influenced by: Mogwai, Red Red Meat, Mono, Explosion in the Sky, Polvo, Tortois–GYBE, etc.”

Pretty much sums it up.

Apparently they’re on a European tour this summer and seem to have some kind of a following in various countries outside of China, at least judging from their MySpace comments and some buzz on the web. The track on today’s post is from IV, their May, 2008, release on Fox Tail Records.

The young guy working in the record shop where I picked up this album was quite nice and offered up a bunch of tips, which resulted in me walking out with a bunch of albums. I felt nice actually buying music in China, though I’m not so sure that the artists will see any of the revenue from my buys… but in the very least they’ll help keep this little record shop in business, and the friendly guy working the store in a job.

Wang Wen – 污水塘 (Great Tactic)