DBG #9 Skip Skip Benben | La' Lasta

Totally fresh music and a video made with love straight outta Beijing. Gives me hope. Here's a relevant post from a long distant galaxy far far away.

Skip Skip Benben are a patchwork of different bands and different genres, with Monkey (猴子) on drums, Steven Zhou (周乃仁) from Birdstriking and ½ Heavy Korean on Bass and Benben (斑班 ) from Freckles, Boyz & Girl and Carsick Cars on guitar and vocals. Our meeting with the band was preceded by weeks of anticipation, for a lot of which we didn't even know the name of this brilliant new[ish] Beijing act.

Back on the 18th October 2011, we walked into a surprise show from Beijing indie stalwarts P.K.14, at D-22 in Beijing's university district. Shortly after arriving, our friend Josh of China music and culture blog, pangbianr slid out from behind the bar to say hello. In passing, he mentioned that he knew a Taiwanese folk singer called Benben that he wanted to introduce us to later that evening, "I think she'd be great for your DaBaoGe project," he said.

In the haze of the beer, smoke and distorted guitars, it was another two visits in as many weeks, to the now defunct D-22 venue, before we pieced together the story behind Skip Skip Benben: an appealing blend of alt-folk, psychedelic indie rock and down-tempo, tropicana grooves. Off-stage, Benben is intensely shy and we tried, in vain to convince her to venture outside the crocheted-kitch security of her nostalgically decorated apartment. We could hardly blame her though; it was easily one of the coldest days we'd seen in 2011.

One song. One take. Skip-skip done, done. We reviewed the sound and it was...magical. In fact, we've had the audio take from this recording looping over and over in our music library, listening to it every day since that frigid morning in December. We hope you enjoy it too.

Check out more knick-knacks from the band on their blog.

If you're in Beijing or Shanghai, you can catch them live at one of their upcoming shows:

25th Feb in Beijing with The Pains Of Being Pure Heart @ 愚公移山 (Yu Gong Yi Shan)

8th Mar in Shanghai with Next Year's Love @ 育音堂 (Yuyintang)

Andy & Charles

DaBaoGe

Ron Paul On George Bush & CIA Drug Dealing

Ron Paul on what's the point of having a select committee chaired by John Kerry looking into Bush family drug dealing when both Kerry and Bush were secret society members of Skull and Bones at Yale?

Should they be rounded up and shot at dawn for scratching each other's back while pretending to run against each other at election time?

Or take it back further when Grand Pappy Prescott Bush was funding the Nazis. I pay attention when Robert Phoenix says keep an eye out for Jeb Bush becoming the frontrunner at this coming GOP convention. Bloodlines still run the joint and that's a tag worth spending sometime with either here or anywhere else.

This is not a partisan thing. After becoming acquainted with this information it becomes increasingly credible that Bill Clinton's record for moving a lot of drugs through Arkansas (with Bush connection help) is worth examining.

Miu Miu - Alchemical Magic & Pentagonal Sunglasses

There's been a sharp uptick in the use of, reference to and presence of magic in my life so I thought I'd pass on Miu Miu's 'The Woman Dress' Video. 

I'm too jaded to ignore that it's less about 'The Woman Dress' than about flogging the handmade Pentagon sunglasses. However the all female narrative, use of magic and alchemical transformation, Kubrickesque Eyes's Wide Shut reversed music and speech references are signature Miuccia Prada who I have said before, knows a lot more about how the world ticks than most other designers except for Karl Lagerfeld and the late Alexander McQueen.