A new band to follow

I am in need of some new excitement in my gig-going life.

Ziyo seem to have been playing more infrequently - and much shorter sets! - over the past year, and one rather begins to fear for their future, as vocalist Helen Feng devotes more of her energies to her new, rather lame electro-pop project, Pet Conspiracy.

SUBS are still the best live band around, but they haven't added much new material for ages.

Experimental Uyghur folksters Panjir are breaking up, with British founder member David Mitchell having already left Beijing and their other awesome guitarist Ekber Ebliz hoping soon to go overseas for study.

The best bands to emerge in the past year or two - Hedgehog, The Gar, Fire Balloon - are rather hampered by not really being able to sing. Vocal competence perhaps is Perdel's unique advantage over the current competition, but I fear they may be a bit too glibly poppy for my taste (they did a Coldplay cover at their last show, for god's sake!).

Ah, but on Friday I looked in at Jiangjinjiu and found a big (and just about exclusively Chinese) crowd waiting to hear a folk/rock group called Erguang. These guys could be worth looking out for. I had been seduced into going along to give them a try by the suggestion in one of the listings magazines that they had a bluesy quality to them, but I didn't find that very much in evidence. As with most Chinese bands, their musical experimentation is a bit too diverse, with funk, reggae and other elements sitting alongside each other rather incongruously, and most of the lyrics being spat out in a staccato rap style (which I do not love, although the monosyllabic nature of the Chinese language does lend itself well to this). However, there are lots of good things about this band. The vocalist is powerful and charismatic. There's a harmonica player who does add a certain flavour of the blues at times. My old friend Tianxiao, one of the proprietors of bijou music bar Jianghu, sits in with his alto sax (most of the time squonking away rhythmically, in imitation, I think, of a kind of traditional Chinese trumpet.... whose name escapes me for the moment.... probably more properly classified as a kind of oboe, I guess, since I'm pretty sure it must have a reed in it.... ah, I think it's called a suona). The guitarist has some extremely nifty licks. The drummer is punchy and loud (most of the time battering his kit with the fat end of the drumstick). And I adore the amplified guzheng acting as a rhythm guitar: this is the element that really gives this band a distinctive sound.

Yes, I think these boys are ones to watch. I'm looking forward to their next show.