Beijing Brown

February 2023: 2 of 12 mixtapes connecting the music of my childhood (Tamil pop) and the music that influenced me (sinophone indie) to the music of my new home (The Netherlands). This month: A.R.Rahman to Das Wettbüro, via Nazia Hassan and Agnès Gayraud's theory pop. Also: Themes for Great Cities.

Tracklist: A.R. Rahman - Chandralekha (from Thiruda Thiruda, 1993) Yellow Magic Orchestra - キュー "Cue" (1981) Nation of Language - Wounds of Love (2021) Nazia Hassan - Telephone Pyaar (1987) Julia Holter - Everytime Boots (2015) 亲爱的艾洛伊丝 Dear Eloise - 她的歌 "Song for Her" (2012) Yuvan Shankar Raja - Jalsa (from Chennai 600028, 2007) La Féline - Dancing (2022) Folie 2 - SG Suprasound (2022) A.R. Rahman - Kannum Kannum (from Thiruda Thiruda, 1993) Das Wettbüro - Ungerade 19/36 (2022)

Notes:

A.R. Rahman - Chandralekha (from Thiruda Thiruda, 1993) A.R. Rahman - Kannum Kannum (from Thiruda Thiruda, 1993)

'Thiruda Thiruda' was the first music album I remember being impressed by, and some of the earliest music I remember acknowledging as good. I've never seen the film the music was written for.

Yellow Magic Orchestra - キュー "Cue" (1981)

For me, YMO was the band (after Linkin Park) that only access to the internet made visible. For me as a (not upper class) teen in India, there was no local circuit of record shops or alternative radio where I'd pick up on something like YMO. Early dial-up and Napster changed that.

Nation of Language - Wounds of Love (2021) The most important concerts I saw in 2022 were Nation of Language in Amsterdam, and Nation of Language in Iceland.

Nazia Hassan - Telephone Pyaar (1987) I was too young for the "indipop" wave of the 90s but, like Japanese city pop, its the stylistic predecessors of the buzzword that deserve wider recognition, like the extended discography of Nazia Hassan or the work that labels like Naya Beat and Discostan are doing.

Julia Holter - Everytime Boots (2015) I was part of the team that toured Julia Holter in China in 2015, and I was the band's local tour handler in Beijing. The group left a huge impression on me - one of my fondest memories of Beijing is the band singing acapella on the Great Wall under a crisp, blue-skied Beijing winter day. I like to think i left an impression on them as well....Julia did tweet about me once 😳

亲爱的艾洛伊丝 Dear Eloise - 她的歌 "Song for Her" (2012) For two years, I made the daily playlists at Jing-A's bars in Beijing and the only time I've seen someone break down in joy at a song coming on is when this Dear Eloise song played at midnight on a Saturday. Yuvan Shankar Raja - Jalsa (from Chennai 600028, 2007) This song lent its name to my brother's extremely-popular blog, and was really of an era when I learned that the power of the early Internet was its uncanny ability to take the cringe errata of our pop culture and turn them into lasting friendships.

La Féline - Dancing (2022) I love this song so much. I also love that La Feline is the musical project of Agnes Gayraud, a theorist whose Dialectics of Pop is one of my favourite music books. Folie 2 - SG Suprasound (2022) Das Wettbüro - Ungerade 19/36 (2022)

Two extraordinary albums discovered on a recent trip to Dusseldorf, courtesy of local labels Themes for Great Cities and Candomble.

January 2023: 1 of 12 mixtapes connecting the music of my childhood (Tamil pop) and the music that influenced me (sinophone indie) to the music of my new home (The Netherlands). This month: Ilaiyaraaja to Space Fruity Records, via Charlotte Adigéry and boba dream pop.

Track-by-track notes: 1. Ilaiyaraaja - Raaja Rajathi (1988) (from 'Agni Natchathiram') This song - from a 1988 Mani Ratnam film - was a childhood favourite, and maybe even seeded my future love for minimal post-punk?

2. 昏鴉 The Murky Crows - 我們如此超群絕倫怎能居於世俗所見 (2015) One of the first Taiwanese bands I adored, and my introduction to the branch of twee sinophone indie that would define my life between 2015 and 2020. 3. Ilaiyaraaja - Vikram Vikram (1986) I only discovered this classic thanks to the recent remake of the cult 80s Kamal Hasan spy film Vikram, but I was familiar with the writer Sujatha, whose works were serialized in magazines like Kumutham. My literary magazine of choice between ages 7 and 13 was Gokulam, where I submitted many terrible sci-fi short stories that were thankfully never published. Does anyone remember the Undir family stories? 4. Stereolab - Metronomic Underground (1996) Stereolab was the first band that got me into live bootlegs, rarities, B-sides, and "sessions" recordings, now a standard part of how I consume music. 5. METZ - Wet Blanket (2012) METZ was the first band I did a tour poster for! 6. Charlotte Adigery and Bolis Pupul - Ceci N'est Pas un Cliche (2022) Belgian duo. The best, most joyous, and most exciting concert I saw in the Netherlands since moving to Amsterdam in 2022. 7. Gino Cochise - Fo Woa (2022) Amsterdam hip-hop artist. The artist I most want to see live in the Netherlands in 2023. 8. Chaar Diwaari - Kaun Mera? (2022) I get excited by an average of 1 (one) Indian hip-hop song every year. This was the one for 2022. 9. Naujawanan Baidar - Khyber Sound (from Kabul to Peshawar in Fullmoon) (2020) From an incredible album of anti-imperialist Afghan-rooted experimental music, from the now Netherlands-based N.R. Safi. 10. bed - WET (2022) I saw bed play at the back of the Foo Concepts milk tea shop in Rotterdam, the crowd sipping boba and swaying to dream pop. A perfect gig. Normalize milk tea at shows! Normalize shows at milk tea shops!

"time to be something else"

I drew a comic for TANK Magazine about the promise and peril of pop music utopias.

"A mass-produced commodity marketed through its evocation of a world emancipated from consumerist drudgery, is pop music just a distraction from capitalism’s worst evils or potentially something more radical?"

A series of comics I drew late last year about the idea of “bullshit jobs” in China today, using David Graeber’s book of the same name as a starting point. 

Here’s a page I did recently that I really like. 

It’s from what is going to be my first-ever full-length comicbook! 

It’s been a while, Tumblr.