Snapline

Snapline have become, almost overnight it seems, perhaps Beijing’s fastest rising young band, in the last year they have taken on an identity all of their own, earned full page interviews in the local media and released their first 7” single in the US.

The band consists of Li Qing on guitar and keyboards and Li Weisi on bass guitar, who met while at students the Beijing Institute of Technology. They had originally joined fellow BIT student Shou Wang to form the seminal Beijing underground band Carsick Cars, with Li Qing playing drums and Li Weisi on bass. Their music was dedicated to working out in a contemporary Beijing context the sounds and ideas produced by the noise and minimalist musicians of the 1970s and 1980, especially focusing on the New York scene of that period. Wanting also explore the dark, industrial music coming out of England during that period, especially from bands like Joy Division and the Cure, the two created a side project, which performed strange, drum-machine-driven music over dark, minor chords. Snapline was soon joined
by Tsinghua University student Chen Xi on vocals and drum machine, who bought a softer, more fluid sound to the band with his delicate and slightly otherworldly singing.

When producer and ex-PIL drummer Martin Atkins came to Beijing in late 2006 to check on the local scene, he was delighted with dozens of bands, but wholly awestruck by Snapline’s uniquely weird melodies, and immediately insisted on producing their first CD. Within weeks they had laid down the tracks in Beijing and over the next few months began the mixing process in Chicago, at one point flying Chen Xi to Chicago to add additional tracks.

As snippets of the recording filtered through the scene in China, the band’s shows started drawing larger crowds, and they soon began to develop a very strong following. A series of concerts at D22 established them as one of the central bands in the scene, much loved by critics and musicians, although difficult at times for audiences to follow. They are not the easiest band to love, but their followers are passionately loyal and their music keeps growing in strange unexpected ways. In October, 2007, the performed a stunning set at the Modern Sky festival, driving away half the audience in bewilderment and keeping the other half rooted to the grounds, mouths open, as Chen Xi danced and stumbled frenetically onstage while Li Qing’s strange and ugly noises dueled with Li Weisi’s relentless bass lines. After that show it was clear to many that Snapline was one of the key bands in the musical explosion emanating from Beijing.

The subject of many articles in the Chinese press, the band was listed in the September 2007 edition of That’sBeijing as one of the ten best bands in China and in an article in Rolling Stone that same year Li Qing was listed as one of China’s four major guitar innovators.

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