In under three years, Beijing's bié Records has put out almost 30 releases – a prolific start, but only a first step for founder Meng Jinhui. “We hope that communities connected through music can generate something new within the environment of bié – but we don’t know precisely what that will be. We have to take it one step at a time.”

Hualun
“Cities Of The Red Night 红夜之城”
From Tempus

Although bié Records has only been in operation since 2021, the label’s roster draws from founder Meng Jinhui’s decades of experience within China’s underground music scene. Wuhan band Hualun have been in his orbit for almost 20 years, and their guitarist/synth player MK Zhu has worked for years for bié Records’ parent company, the media operation biede. “In recent years, their creative work has continued to bring us surprises,” Meng comments about Hualun. “In comparison to the past, they are now more free-spirited and have long abandoned the post-rock label that characterised their early years as a band.” bié has put out several albums by the band, including the 2021 film soundtrack Wuhan Wuhan, and the collection of slow-roll closed door improvisations excerpted here, Tempus. (Read Jake Newby’s interview with Hualun in The Wire 450.)

Lim Giong
“Water Wave Stone (Barrio Lindo remix)”
From bié Records Meets Shika Shika

Another longterm contact of Meng’s is Lim Giong, a Taiwanese producer who started out as a rocker in the early 1990s before transitioning to film soundtrack composition. He made an instant splash with the score for Millennium Mambo, the breakout film by Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsiao-Hsien, and has since become a regular collaborator of leading lights within independent Sinophone film, like Bi Gan and Jia Zhangke. “Besides film soundtracks, very little of his personal music has been presented,” notes Meng. This selection isBuenos Aires based producer Barrio Lindo’s remix of a track off Lim’s bié EP Other.

El Búho
“Camino De Flores (Lim Giong Folk remix)”
From bié Records Meets Shika Shika

That track, and this one – a remix by Lim of a subterranean dance track by El Búho — are featured in the recent remix compilation bié Records Meets Shika Shika, which pairs artists from the bié fold with antipodal kindreds in South America. Lim’s intervention is clearly announced by the addition of Taiwanese temple music timbres, ending on an extended sample of reedy suona that is a recurring motif in his works. International cultural exchange along the lines of music is integral to bié’s mission, according to Meng.

Naja Naja
“Copy Of You”
From EP

While Hualun and Lim Giong are both seasoned artists with decades of sonic evolution behind their craft, bié is also dedicated to supporting and amplifying the work of early career artists, like Beijing based kraut-lite duo Naja Naja. This tracks with Meng’s years of experience at the youth culture-oriented entertainment brand Modern Sky and, later, as the director of VICE’s short-lived Beijing office. “The label has consistently focused on young musicians,” he insists, pointing to Naja Naja as well as Otay:onii, Rainsoft, DaYe, Kloxii Li, and others. “Youth culture, for me, is defined not by biological age, but by creativity and inspiration.”

Kloxii Li
“Shui 睡”
From Gentle Impermanence 神​遊​間

Downtempo producer/vocalist Kloxii Li is another member of the younger cohort represented in bié’s discography. Hailing from Los Angeles via China’s Hunan province, and currently working in Berlin, Li’s music embodies bié’s programme of cultural cross-pollination, fusing reflections on the young artist’s heritage and “cultural memory” with ocean-crossing influences from ambient music and triphop (an early break came when her work caught the ear of Tricky, who featured Li on the 2019 compilation Test Of Time). “When selecting artists,” says Meng, “we value those who continuously explore in their music… who create in the present and are not stagnant.”

Du Yun
“Reservoir Of Memory 别字”
From Long May The Water Flow: An Enduring Discussion On The Convergence And Co​-​evolution Of Eastern And Western Music, Sparked By Chou Wen​-​chung’s Musical Philosophies

A hallmark bié release was the June compilation, Long May The Water Flow: An Enduring Discussion On The Convergence And Co​-​evolution Of Eastern And Western Music, Sparked By Chou Wen​-​chung's Musical Philosophies. The seed for it was sown after Meng saw a documentary about Chou Wen-chung, a Chinese-American composer who studied under Edgard Varèse and, over the course of his career, developed a concept of cultural syncretism achieved through modernist music. When selecting for this compilation, one criterion was to choose artists continuously exploring the ideas of “East and West, old and the new”. It collects artists with diverse vantages along these axes, such as Pulitzer-winning composer Du Yun, who contributes this dense bricolage of abstracted referents.

Yoann Pisterman
“Fluxus 激流”
From Long May The Water Flow: An Enduring Discussion On The Convergence And Co​-​evolution Of Eastern And Western Music, Sparked By Chou Wen​-​chung’s Musical Philosophies

Long May The Water Flow is part music release, part philosophical self-examination: Chou’s work “prompted our label to continue contemplating the role we should play in a broader global context”, says Meng. Berlin based French musician Yoann Pisterman contributes an oblique view of the East-West exchange axis with this track of shimmering, faux-naturalistic synthscape. It’s his third collaboration with the label, following the 2021 EP Almost Religious and 2022’s Tuning Score.

Howie Lee 李化迪 + Liú Pī 刘㔻
“New Tension 新张力”
From Walking On Thin Ice 如​履​薄​冰

Another bié artist who has mined the theme of cultural diffusion/exchange deeply in his work is Beijing’s Howie Lee, who recently contributed a guest mix to an edition of The Wire's weekly radio show. Lee received an MA in Sound Art from the University Of The Arts London in 2013 before returning to Beijing and bringing a bass-throttled, experimental dubstep sound to the club nights hosted by his label Do Hits. “This collaborative album is indeed quite different from Howie’s previous work,” notes Meng – it refracts Howie’s long simmering interest in traditional instrumentation,and represents a deliberate improvisational balance with percussionist Liú Pī.

DaYe 大叶
“A Walk At 9pm 散步晚上九点半”
From EP2

A young and enigmatic member of the bié Records cohort, DaYe has featured on a few compilations and released two short, cryptic EPs on the label. This off-kilter collage of imagined alien lounge music and arpeggiated cat and cricket samples comes from the second, 2023’s EP2. By way of biography, the label offers: “DaYe is not a social type, and because she often feels the indifference imposed by the system on people, she seeks out outlets for her emotions through music.”

Yang Fan
“Eggs 鸡蛋”
From Trip Jigsaw

Back on the more seasoned end of the bié roster is Yang Fan, who initially broke out as a teen playing guitar in the all-female 1990s Beijing punk band Hang On The Box, and later weirded up her oeuvre with the stylistically eclectic indie group Ourself Beside Me. , Her 2022 bié album Trip Jigsaw is a sequel of sorts to her dreamlike 2015 solo debut What Happened After 1001 Nights?. It’s a self-selected album of Yang Fan’s extensive work for film and theatre, which is where she has focused the majority of her talent in recent years, in addition to being a sought-after producer within Beijing’s leftfield indie scene.

Lindy Lin
“Her Insula”
From Her Insula

Her Insula is an outsider set by self-taught music producer and painter Lindy Lin. It’s a cathartic release of pent up emotional energy following Lin’s departure from a “wearisome office job”, according to the sleevenotes. Indirectly resembling some of Yang Fan’s more unguarded and somnambulant compositions from years past,Her Insula is a deeply personal and diaristic, mostly ambient composition shot through with ample field recordings of natural sounds, an acoustic flourish that touches many of bié’s releases.

Valentina Magaletti
“She/Her/Gone”
From A Queer Anthology Of Drums

Italo-British percussionist Valentina Magaletti is one of several artists to file a release with bié from outside the label’s core focus area. She describes A Queer Anthology Of Drums as “a percussive collage of low-fi frequencies documenting a journey that never took place”. It’s a bristling and energetic compilation of free-floating improvisational ideas. This selection is a bonus track exclusive to the bié Records re-release of the album, which originally came out on London Cafe Oto’s Takuroku label.

Yu Su featuring Knopha
“Xiu (​宫​廷 Version)”
From Xiu (​宫​廷 Version)

The inaugural bié Records release was Yellow River Blue by Yu Su, a Vancouver based artist who originally hails from China’s Henan province, also the home of label founder Meng. Hot on the heels of the EP came this remix by Knopha, a producer based in the coastal city of Xiamen in southeastern China. Knopha converts Yu’s structurally straightforward rhythms into a syncopated skitter, softening the low end and weaving Yu’s gossamer vocals sparely throughout, turning the club-ready track on its head for a more cerebral and circuitous effect.

Read Josh Feola's report on bié Records in full in The Wire 478. Wire subscribers can also read the article online via the magazine library.