Xiao He

ARTIST: Xiao He

COUNTRY: China

GENRE: Avant Folk, Free Folk, Outer Limits

DESCRIPTION: Avant free folk guitarist/singer

MORE ABOUT: Xiao He first attracted serious attention in the late 90s with his experimental band, Glamorous Pharmacy, a fluid ensemble that mixed folk, jazz, experimentation, improvised performances and action art to create a strangely surreal sound that never seemed to settle anywhere before turning around and heading of in a different direction.  At the time China’s musical underground was small and fairly homogenous, but the playful and anarchic spirit of the members of Glamorous Pharmacy suggested several new doors into various styles that were eagerly opened and pursued by other musicians.  Glorious Pharmacy glorified in the creation of new “branches” of Chinese underground music, variously called among other things “introverted”, “weird”, and “malicious” music.

At the same time Xiao He, which is the alias he settled on for his folk and improvised music performances, played guitar, drum and accordion at River, a legendary old Beijing folk bar. Between these two projects Xiao He quickly developed a serious following among artists and music fans in the China music scene. In 2003, Modern Sky, China’s largest independent label, released his first CD, a live recording called “The Bird that Can Fly High Landed on the Cow that Can Run Fast”.  Almost immediately this was received as one of the most important recordings in contemporary Chinese music.

Except for a very few special performances with Glorious Pharmacy, today Xiao He only plays solo performances. Calling these multi-faceted improvised performances “Free Folk”, as much to express his anarchic playfulness as to suggest the total freedom which he approaches musical instrumentation, vocal performances and stylistic experimentation, he has become the inventor of a deeply weird and immensely moving style of music, mystical and surreal, which abruptly veers from the plaintive cries of Mongolian or Western Chinese music to the barbed and sometimes childlike humor of the avant garde. Complementing his stylistic creativity is a wholly unique way of playing acoustic guitar, loops, synthesizers and any other instrument that catches his fancy.

After his 2009 European tour, Xiao He released his second album, a double CD, with Maybe Mars. The album, “Identity Performance”, consists of improvised live and studio performances and two separate CDs – one for the live shows and one for the studio performances.

His new album is a milestone for Xiao He. The live performances are based on 30 hours of recordings going back three years, which he has assembled as his “personal symphony”. The live performance CD includes selected recording from six different shows and focuses on the irreversible and unrepeatable character of live performance. The other CD was recorded in his studio and focuses on the quality of the sounds and experimentation with the recording process. The studio recording juxtaposes thousands of ways of combining vocal sounds with the sound of his guitar as he wrestles with and reinterprets his understanding of Minimalism.

DISCOGRAPHY:

- “MTV Play” on “兵馬行空 MAYBE MARS 2007〜2009 VOL.1” (Various Artists) (CD, Maybe Mars, 2009)
- “Performance of Identity” (LP/CD, Maybe Mars, 2009)
- “老来難 / When Your Old And Everything is Harder” on “Red Bulldozer” (Various Artists) (2CD, no label, 2009)
- “After Time” on “Noise is Free” (Various Artists) (CD, Kwanyin Records, 2008)
- Glamorous Pharmacy “Rumbling Footsteps” (LP/CD, no label, 2008)
- Glamorous Pharmacy “Please Enlarge a Picture of My Cousin” (LP/CD, no label, 2008)
- Top Floor Circus & Glamorous Pharmacy “骑骡仙 (qí luó xiān)” (EP/CD, Little Sound Records, 2008)
- “Bird and Water” on “Asian Flashback” (Various Artists) (CD, P.S.F. Records, 2007)
- “So Ma Hang“ on “Beijing Bubbles OST” (Various Artists) (CD, Fly Fast, 2007)
- “男厠女厠中間的小房子” on “C” (Various Artists) (2CD, Yuanyin Records, 2006)
- “Beijing Bubbles – Punk Rock in the Chinese Capital” (Various Artists) (DVD, Fly Fast Records, 2005)
- “The Bird that Can Fly High Landed on the Cow that Can Run Fast” (LP/CD, Modern Sky, 2003)
- “我们路过导演 / Passing by the Director “ on “Bad Head 3″ (Various Artists) (CD, Bad Head/Modern Sky, 2003)
- Glamorous Pharmacy “Little Shadow” on “Beijing Band 2001″ (Various Artists) (CD, no label, 2003)
- Glamorous Pharmacy on “Midi 2002 Live” (Various Artists) (VCD, Midi, 2002)
- “快楽時光 ／Happiness Time“ on “楊娃娃① ／ Yang Wa Wa 1” (Various Artists) (CD, Tonglijunhe, 1999)

SELECTED VIDEOS:

SELECTED PRESS REVIEWS AND QUOTES:

“On his latest double album “The Performance of Identity” Xiao He combines acoustic guitar with unlikely guttural vocal sounds. Live he creates intricate multi-layered soundscapes, or plays a Peking Opera clown.” (Jeroen Groenewegen, Modesti New Music Online, USA)

“First up was the experimental indie musician Xiao He, who in a felt hat fiddled with backing tracks on an Apple laptop and then set into playing dreamy, obscure acoustic guitar over which he layered guttural weepy vocals. The effect is a kind of dreamy, surreal sound-scape — the musical equivalent of a rippling pond. But at other times, like on the track “PangPangPeiPei,” Xiao He goes a bit loopy, speeds things up — and becomes the Shugo Tokumaru of China. I had only ever seen this guy play in a courtyard garden lit exclusively by candles — and in this different atmosphere, his music seemed to invoke that setting. After a quick set — 20 minutes — he bowed out and handed things over. The free-beer Brooklyn loft atmosphere was perhaps not best for such a cerebral musician, but he still managed to hypnotize everyone. Listen to his stuff on his MySpace. The track “Berlinmano” is absolutely heartbreaking.” (Adriane, MTV Iggy, USA)

“It’s a crowded room when Xiao He starts his set, and it’s almost impossible to get close to him” (Tim Franco, SmartShanghai.com, China)

“Last time I saw Xiao He perform, I wrote that the highlight of the set for me had been when he’d recorded himself, looped the sample back and then accompanied himself on the drums. This time round, for the release of his latest album 身份的表演 (The Performance of Identity), the self-sampling and experimentation was there from the start. Instead of just a straight-forward semi-acoustic, he also had what I believe is technically known as “this cool little box thing” on the base of his guitar which enabled him to switch the sound produced by it. Sorry, I’m not really down with the technical lingo on these things. What I mean is, by pushing a certain button on the keypad of said box, he could make his guitar sound like a piano for example. It was cool. Added to his looping and building of vocal layers and guitar tracks, it made for a fascinating show with incredible depth given that he was performing solo.

The thing about Xiao He’s performances is that they appear to be mostly improvised. They’re not the sort of shows you go to hoping to hear your favourite song or to have some hits to sing along to (although at one point he did burst into a bit of Hallelujah as well as a classic Chinese ballads medley). His improvisations are long, meandering songs rather than three minute bursts of catchy pop and you therefore need a bit of stamina to get through them. Not that his shows aren’t captivating, but the crowd did thin a little as the gig went on. Those who stuck with it witnessed a memorable performance however, with Xiao He demonstrating his full vocal range, a sharp wit and an incredible creativity in his use of self-sampling and the layering of his music.” (Jake Newby, kungfuology.com, China)

“He Guofeng (also known as Xiao He) — a well-known musician — played a piece on his laptop that incorporated the sounds of howling wolves and falling rain; other of his works bore the influence of Beijing opera” (Janet Foo, The Wall Street Journal, USA)

“I’m looking forward to tomorrow night at D-22: a release party for the latest by Xiao He, one of the most enduring names in Chinese folk and art rock. Less ostentatious and written-up than their indie and punk counterparts, China’s folk musicians fall between those who consciously ape westerners like Bob Dylan in their work, and those who mine for influences the native folk singing traditions of rural China, a style that was particularly popular in the early years of the Communist regime which took power in 1949: tales of peasant struggles, these are the stuff of Woody Guthrie but without guitar accompaniment.” (Mark Godfrey, Beijing Beat, China)

“After a short interval Xiao He ambles onstage (face obscured by an eccentric conical felt hat) plugs in his acoustic guitar and starts to sing… Xiao He is an assured yet unpretentious presence, well known in China for his surrealist group ‘Glamorous Pharmacy’ tonight he delivers a polished and quirky live performance – entirely solo and improvised – no backing tracks or support musicians. Xiao He’s music is a rich idiomatic, messy collision of Looney Tunes and a bus full of Mongolian shepherds. Xiao He takes inspiration from Chinese comic opera archetypes; a bewildering array of vocal characters are simultaneously layered, looped and mixed over each other complemented by simple guitar rhythms, and spontaneous acoustic percussion. Despite it’s improvisational nature, the music is perfectly timed with precise edits and split-second changes; a refreshing and welcome change from the usual unstructured loop-and-layer ‘experimental’ approach.” (Simon Crab, DimSum, UK)

“D-22 guru Michael Pettis describes folk/jazz innovator Xiao He as ‘one of two unquestionable great talents’ in the Beijing scene [the other is Carsick Cars’s Shou Wang]. Xiao is most famous as the leader of avant-garde performance art rockers Glorious Pharmacy, who are prone to break into puppet shows and ten-minute saxophone solos, and limit their performances to just one or two very special shows per year. He’s now also respected as a genre-bending solo performer who often appears onstage in lurid face paint and collaborates with everyone from Peking opera troupes to cats and dogs. Though he takes the artiness to extreme lengths – Birds That Can Fly High Don’t Land on the Backs of Oxen That Can’t Run Fast is not his silliest album title – there’s incredible musicianship involved, and his voice has a soaring clarity. A sign of his brilliance is that he’s every bit as captivating when he’s just on his own with an acoustic guitar. Cool is ‘When you realise that bad things are good. I used to fight a lot. I was dangerous. Now when something bad happens to me I consider it as a punishment for the things I did before’” (Timeout Beijing Magazine, China)

“The 34-year-old Hebei native is one of the most dynamic members of Beijing’s local music scene. He’s best known as the founder of folk/experimental troupe Glamorous Pharmacy (美好药店) – imagine a Chinese version of Animal Collective, added with the sound of harmonica and Peking Opera. Call the guy psycho or not, he’s always exploring for new possibilities.” (Wang Ge, The Beijinger, China)

“One of the quirkiest and memorable bands to come out of the Beijing folk-rock scene was Glorious Pharmacy, an almost too-arty-for-their-own-good avant-jazz acoustic band that were notorious for impromptu puppet shows and ten-minute saxophone freak outs. Frontman Xiao He is the nucleus of the band, and his solo stuff is often much more grounded and accessible, with a distinctive, off-kilter catchiness, He’s voice wavering between a folky croon and an operatic wail. Though he hasn’t released a solo record since his debut, Birds That Can Fly High Don’t Land on the Backs of Oxen that Can’t Run Fast, he’s been busy collaborating with playwrights and underground filmmakers, as well as continuing his work with Glorious Pharmacy.” (Gerry Mak, Lost At E Minor, USA)

“He has written many heart-stirring, creative, and unique folk songs. Each of his performances pleasantly surprises fans, who have affectionately dubbed him a “music wizard.” (Zhang Ming’ai & Yang Xi, China.org.cn, China)

“Having gained a fan-base of near cult status people were anxious for Xiao He’s (aka He Guofeng) release of A High-Flying Bird Never Falls onto a Trudging Cow’s Back, a live recording. A folk-rock solo musician his music, at times, is reliant on using his guitar equally as a percussive instrument as he wails intricate rhythms and sings short concise folk songs. On this particular album much of the melody is carried out by an accordion accompanied by a hand drum and his voice swells from whispering to all out screaming. After he took a short hiatus I was lucky enough to see his return in a live performance in the Chaoyang district of Beijing, where I was blown away by the clarity and strength of his voice during a capella songs. He also sings and plays guitar for Chinese blues rock band Glorious Pharmacy.” (Tim Yu, Cool Hunting, USA)

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