Big Can - Big Can (2010)

'Big Can' (大罐, which I presume one would read as 'Ōkan' in Japanese, possibly 'Dàguàn' in Chinese - but don't quote me on that) is the audio recording of a half hour long romp a bunch of Chinese and Japanese (and one Korean, and one French expat) sound artists had in April 2009 in a huge abandoned oil can in Zhujiajiao, Shanghai. Lots of discrete scraping, ululating and, erm, banging going on here, everything enriched by the amazing reverb provided by this special location, which has since been demolished. Of those present, the 2 Japanese are by far the most well-known here: the ever-reliable couple of Sachiko M (M for Matsubara) and Ōtomo Yoshihide ( 大友良英 - Ōtomo is his last name, by the way, people often get that wrong because many Japanese artists give their first name first nowadays, to accommodate us forinners I suppose). The one Korean guy here, Ryu Hankil (류한길), should also be represented by a couple of discs on your shelves by now. Then there is a certain Olivier Heux who apparently is French-born but moved to China and adopted a Chinese name (小圈), and a bunch of 'real' Chinese: Yuen Cheewai (袁志伟), Yan Jun (颜峻), Yang Ge (杨戈), Xiao Qiang (小强), Hong Qile (洪启乐), Gogo J (aka Jie Sheng, 盛洁), Tao Yi (陶轶) and (骏园). To tell you the truth, the only one of these I'm a bit familiar with is field recording manipulator Yan Jun, whom we'll perhaps hear more about later. I can't say what all these people were doing in that big ol' can (some of them didn't do anything if the label description is to be believed), but it sounds like it must have been a special occasion.
This was released last year on Kwanyin and was noticed by 7 people outside of East-Asia. Ok, I exaggerate, but still - if this had been on a cool Japanese label about 50x as many people would have heard of this, am I right? Anyway.
New link!
320kbps.