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For some years now, I have been running a project with the rather grandiose name of Chinese Postpunk Anthology — a modest, ongoing effort spread across SNS, Substack, note, and a personal website. New releases, band introductions, scene overviews. An attempt to gather and document information about Chinese indie rock, a subject that barely exists in Japanese. Why would someone with no connection to the music industry or critical establishment — just an ordinary music enthusiast — be doing any of this? Where does the knowledge come from, and where does the enthusiasm? Rather than answer those questions directly, what follows is an account of how I got here.

1

In December 2020, I was finding it difficult to engage with the music scene of the time. There was plenty of good music, obviously — but I had no particular desire to go further with it. The only act I was following in real time was The Brian Jonestown Massacre; apart from that, my playlist was largely taken over by britpop and post-punk revival. The sense that I was looking for something new persisted, but I had no clear idea where to look or where to begin.

Gang of Four has long been one of the fixed points of my musical taste. Post-punk sounding like post-punk should sound. Danceable rhythms, a rolling bassline, jagged guitar, lyrics with no interest in sweetness. I set aside the search for new music and went back to the source — pulling up a live recording, intending something like a return to origins. The final concert of Andy Gill’s last tour, held in Guangzhou, China, shortly before his death at the start of that year.

What caught my attention as much as the performance itself was the crowd. There was no reverential distance, no sense of an audience paying tribute to a legend of the past. This was the energy of people watching a band that was still very much alive. When the video ended, a thought surfaced: a country with a fanbase this engaged must have its own post-punk scene, and a vivid one at that. It also brought back a memory: AV Okubo, a Chinese band produced by Andy Gill. I had never looked into them further at the time.

I typed “Chinese post-punk” into Google.

2

The top results were FAZI and Hiperson. The live footage and music videos on YouTube offered no surprises — in fact, they went considerably beyond what I had anticipated. The music I had been looking for was already there. Not a confirmation of something new, but more the sense that a desire I had been carrying without quite knowing it had found its shape somewhere outside me.

The music sat comfortably enough within the post-punk framework I already carried. Motorik rhythms rooted in krautrock, guitar arrangements reminiscent of Television — continuous with what I had always been drawn to, though never quite identical. That gap was not a source of resistance. If anything, it was what kept me listening. Post-punk sonics operating not as quotation or nostalgia, but as something ongoing.

How accurate this reading was, I cannot say. But the experience in that moment was clear enough — accompanied by what I can only describe, at the risk of sounding excessive, as the elation of striking gold. In truth, I had merely stumbled across a gem I had been overlooking all along. Either way, this encounter was the kind that sends you looking further.

3

The scarcity of Japanese-language sources meant that my research naturally shifted to English-language media. Chinese was, for all practical purposes, an unknown language to me, shared script notwithstanding.

The first thing I found was a Bandcamp Daily article on Chinese post-punk. It became immediately clear that my earlier assumption — that China might have a post-punk scene — had been not just modest but obtuse. Within the article, the phrase “No Beijing” stopped me cold. No Wave occupies a considerable portion of my musical life, and the connection to No New York was less a reasoned interpretation than an involuntary reflex. It seemed almost self-evident. This was not merely a case of China having a post-punk scene. Post-punk was, it turned out, the backbone of Chinese indie rock. At least, that was my understanding.

I had the strange sensation of my own listening history rearranging itself into a different configuration. My long engagement with British punk and the New York underground had not caused any of this — it had simply been a dormant trigger, waiting. Without it, the excitement of that live audience would have meant nothing in particular, and the phrase “No Beijing” would have passed by as nothing more than a proper noun.

4

I then noticed that Birdstriking, a Beijing band, had released an album on A Recordings — the label run by The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Further research led me to Ricky Maymi, one of the band’s guitarists, who had become deeply involved in Beijing’s indie music scene and was serving as something of a spokesman for it in the Western world. What I had assumed was aimless wandering turned out, in retrospect, to have been moving along a single line all along. I had been paying no attention to anything beyond the music itself, and this made that plain.

Bandcamp’s regional search function became a way of managing scattered concentration — narrowing the results enough to stay focused. But as the search moved through cities and regions, an awareness of geographical context began to take hold. The habit I now have of noting each band’s location is a consequence of this.

5

My interest, which had been almost entirely confined to post-punk, began to extend into adjacent territory. One point of connection was yourboyfriendsucks!. The artwork — manga-style illustration — looked at first glance as though it might belong among vocaloid releases, and I paid it little attention initially. It was only later that I recognised the same visual style in the artwork of a Chinese Football album. From there, my attention moved towards the southern scene and the style known as shoegaze. For what it is worth: in my own taxonomy, both The Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine count as post-punk.

6

Having worked through most of what English-language sources had to offer, I began to feel the limitations. Chinese-language material came next — via machine translation, the only option available.

What emerged on Weibo, Douban, and Bilibili was something quite different from what I had been reading in English. Comment threads on live footage, label announcements, exchanges between fans, statements from artists themselves — all of it coexisting without editorial mediation. It eventually became apparent that the English-language material I had relied on was, in effect, the product of observation, interpretation, and curation — a version of the source rather than the thing itself. This has nothing to do with the intentions of those who wrote it. It is simply not visible until you reach the original.

The microwave used during Gang of Four’s live performance, as it turned out, is currently sitting in the offices of 琪琪音像 Qiii Snacks Records — the label behind yourboyfriendsucks!. Learning this brought me back, in some oblique way, to the initial impact that had drawn me to Chinese music in the first place. It was that which moved me from the position of outside observer towards the act of writing. It has something to do with encountering the DIY sensibility these artists operate from. Simply put: I saw what they were doing and decided to follow the example.

7

I write from outside the industry entirely. Response is sparse. Influence is negligible. But there is some intention behind it — to put into a form that can be kept something of the picture of a scene that scarcely exists in Japanese. That is perhaps too strong a word for it. And honestly, the work itself is enjoyable. That is probably the closest thing to a reason.