English and Italian language. Texts by Yan Jun, Zhang Cai & Sun Yizhou.
This article was born during a dinner a couple of months ago with Mario Gabola after one of his concerts. During that dinner, while discussing many topics related to improvisation, Mario brought up one that I found particularly stimulating: the current state of improvised music in China. He was well acquainted with the musician and poet Yan Jun, born in 1973 in Lanzhou, owner of the Sub Jam record label, one of the leading exponents of free and experimental improvisation in all of China (1). Mario and I immediately agreed to explore the Chinese scene in greater depth after contacting Yan Jun, who immediately agreed to offer his support: in reality, at a time when experimentation is intertwining musical genres with extracts from more or less ancient technologies, we realized that it was impossible to draw a definitive and comprehensive picture of the creative ferment in China; Yan Jun himself warned against attempting to create a complete map of Chinese free and experimental improvisation given the infinite intersections between genres. Jun was about to tour with Sun Yizhou (born 2000) and Zhang Cai (born 1992), the two owners of Aloe Records, a Beijing-based label with limited releases focused on post-2000 free improvisation, electroacoustics, sonic concepts, and radical practices. Yizhou is a musician, deeply invested in the use of noise (magnetic interference from mixing consoles, feedback on objects, circuit bending, etc.), while Cai is more focused on design and art of the label. Gabola, Jun, and the two owners of the Aloe R. label then consulted on how to structure an article on the Chinese improvisation scene. Ultimately, the decision was made to compile a sort of representative playlist of pieces accompanied by linear notes that would thoroughly explain the
