One-Eyed Panda’s Journal

Yesterday I decided to brave the rain and head out to the 33rd edition of NoiShanghai. It’s a little minifestival put on infrequently by the band Torturing Nurse. Yesterday’s edition was out at Live Bar in Yangpu.

It was quite a trip to get out there -about an hour by subway on lines 1 and 4 – but well worth it. Stepping off a really silent Kunming Lu (and this is with Live Bar being next to an auto shop) it was like I was enveloped by a wall of sound which really reminded me I was in Shanghai – usually my long subway ride would have done this but as it was pissing down rain, most people stayed home and the subway was fairly empty for a Saturday.

The poster for NoiShanghai XXXIII

Due to the weather the crowd was quite small. There were obviously some people who were there for the music and others who had dropped by just to see why Live Bar was open on a Saturday afternoon. Most of the people looked to be Chinese and Foreign students who go to schools in the area.

Unfortunately if you were into the pure wall of noise that was being created there wasn’t much to hold you there. The format was very similar to the last RESO night with Horacio Pollard playing stuff off his laptop that just blew your mind but there was nothing there for your eyes. He was just leaning over his laptop at the corner of the stage and if you weren’t paying attention you could have missed that he was even there. That shouldn’t be a criticism of how he plays as it didn’t take away from the music, it might just been helpful to have visuals or something playing in the background.

Up next were Thursday Club, which offered something more to look at as they played live instruments and they offered more of a free-jazz sound. This was when the crowd was at its biggest of probably 30 people – a decent size crowd for the tiny Live Bar. But it was Torturing Nurse who stole the show -it was their event after all – acting like crazy hiphop mcs while screaming into distorted microphones.

The sets were short and the whole thing was done in an hour and a half, short and sweet and my temporary ringing ears thanked me for that.

J.