#xiaoxinyiyi

A year ago roughly I was gearing up for the preparations for Girls Like Mystery's CD release show - now it gives me pleasure to do the same for XXYY, when we finally bring out our album PM二百五 (PM250) a year to the day of the former, Sat September 13th. As you'll be able to see from the poster, we're once again hosting this at YYT and have as our special guests for the now active, hiatus over, Banana Monkey, who put on a spectacular set at the recent Sinan Beer fest (and check out this video of their mini tour of Mongolia a couple of years back) along with our pals Stegosaurus and DJ Boss doing his thing before, during and after the bands.

We have made a 10 track album and we are pretty proud of it, having recorded it at 72 Studio with production by Raphael Valensi (Laura Ingalls - who also did my other band Girls Like Mystery's album mix and master) , Ryan Baird and Nick Muzyczka, with Raph completing the mix and mastering job. You'll find a mix of tracks taking in punk rock, hard rock, power pop and glam and alternating lead vocals between myself and Mike Bush, as we do live. Not wishing to expose the full album too soon (and also ensuring that we don't overkill it with promo before the release itself), we will only reveal a couple of fully finished tracks at this initial stage (from our newly opened soundcloud page). The first of those is one of our older tracks, All in the Mind:

This track we wrote way back in the early stages of the band and indeed was one of the first we made as a full band. It used to be more of a dreamy pop number, slower and more arpeggio driven. These days, thanks to the input of Jaret and Bush, we've pumped it up, made more edgy and rocking and is one of my favourites to perform (and equally, one that challenges my vocal chords). 

The next track I'd like to share is one of our more recent tracks we put together and has Mike Bush on vocals, thus leaning towards a more punk influence, called Baifumei:

This track is also a fun number to play and I guess our nod to our Chinese culture and to a degree the superficial nature of the "baifumei" (rich woman). A fast and catchy punk number that was born off the back of our Green Day Halloween show and a nice crowd pleaser!

In addition to these shows, we have a number of warm up gigs ahead of it out of town. We'll play on August 16th at Downtown Bar in Qingdao, for Bush's birthday around that time. A couple of weeks later, Wooden House in Huainan on August 30th (a highly recommended venue with a very generous owner who is crying out for more foreign bands to come to play at). Then, September 6th, Void in Nantong along with our long time buddies Gou Shen before we finally do the gig at YYT a week later. Post gig, we'll start to write more material, hopefully have our cover album released and another EP - but live gigs will slow down once Jaret has his twins (we just squeeze in Halloween again before that when we perform as Blink 182)! So, my priority would be to do whatever out of town shows we are able to - Xiangyang Lof being my first priority after the success Shirin had when she visited it and how well they were treated.