Yin (音, “music”) is a weekly RADII column that looks at Chinese songs spanning hip hop to folk to modern experimental, and everything in between. Drop us a line if you have a suggestion.
We capped off 2019 with a peek at the upcoming moves of Hangzhou label FunctionLab, and we’re gonna stay there for a minute, as label co-founder GG Lobster and fellow Hangzhou underground music scene maven Yang Ji have just cranked out an early candidate for 2020’s anthem. Here’s “I Miss My Brain,” a debut single/cerebellum-scrambling music video from a forthcoming EP by this duo:
This melange of high-frequency digital racket, screeching vocals and genre-juggling, blood-pressure-testing dancefloor madness isn’t at all out of character for GG, who kicked off last year with a stellar EP of fucked up punk covers, but it’s something new for Yang Ji (pictured up top). The last time we heard from her she was making lo-fi bedroom trap after segueing from the lowkey indie rock of previous projects Qie and Dear John Letter.
This new collaboration is a fitting and intuitive match in a way, however, given Hangzhou’s small but singularly exploratory and clique-averse underground music community. The full release, coming later this month from Taihe sub-label Ruby Eyes, is entitled I Miss My CPU, and promises to mash up hardcore, breakcore, and gabber, gluing fractured shards of sound together with the unifying element of Yang Ji’s frenetic vocal delivery.
Here’s another hit off the album, “Shanghai Anecdote,” to play out the first Friday of the year:
More Hangzhou sounds:
