Carsick Cars were formed in 2005 and have earned their reputation at the pinnacle of Beijing’s live music scene – something borne out by the invitation to open for Sonic Youth at their idols’ 2007 Beijing show. Influenced by Sonic Youth, Velvet Underground, Suicide, Glenn Branca, the Stooges, and Joy Division, Carsick Cars gigs are riotous explosions of pent-up energy and frustration. There’s a certain fearlessness to their music, one that is born of the confidence of the talented: they are not afraid to write perfect, instantaneously catchy songs, and they are just as unafraid of detonating them midstream amid a howling wall of guitar noise.

Live, this tendency towards violated beauty knows no bounds: anyone who was at D-22 in early December 2006 will remember the eleven minutes it took for Shou Wang (at only 21, already a veteran of Glenn Branca’s guitar army and a collaborator with avant garde alumni Elliott Sharp and Alvin Curran) to move between the final primal teenage-kick howl of “COME ON!” on Carsick Cars’ version of I Wanna Be Your Dog, to being sat dazed and bewildered on the floor, guitar unstrapped, shards of white noise spitting from his poor abused amp, wondering - just as the delirious audience was - what the fuck had just happened. Such ecstatic flights, such abandon, is rare these days, so get in on the ground floor and catch it while you can. As the graffiti in the D-22 toilets says, “I love my mom, I love my country and I LOVE Carsick Cars.” And you know graffiti never lies.