Club Culture, the sonic avant garde

Club culture in China began in the 1990s and gave platform to techno and house music. These styles had been around but there were no clubs to perform them. Club culture gradually became more commercial and clubs started to proliferate in great numbers across China. The mushrooming of these clubs became a veritable gold field for DJ’s, both local and international. In Beijing, club venues included disco clubs such as Nightman frequented by both Chinese and foreign expatriates. Local DJ’s Yang Bing, Ben Huang and Mickey Zhang made their debut in such clubs, playing house and techno music and creating a solid fan base. In Guangdong, club culture was promoted almost singlehandedly by one person, Michael Neebing. Neebing took part in a Modern Asia International Music Fair in Hong Kong in 1996 which began a close relationship with Hong Kong-France independent dance music label Technasia. In 2001, Neebing organized a series of parties for Future Mix in Guangzhou’s first dance music club called FACE. According to a list of DJ’’s in China, there are some fifty Chinese and foreign DJ’s performing across China. The top scored foreign DJ’s on the list include Davide Succi and Markino (Marco Bongiovanni). Another active figure in Guangdong in the 1990s was Dickson Dee (Li Chin Sung), a Hong Kong sound artist, producer, curator and music promoter of the Hong Kong independent label Noise Asia. He has made an enormous contribution to the development of independent music in Hong Kong and mainland China. In 1995, Dee invited American experimental musician John Zorn to perform in Guangzhou. 
The current experimental sound art scene in China consists of some fifteen artists mainly in their twenties from all over the country. The incredibly wide range of styles cover everything from plunderphonics, musique concrete, experimental electronics, ambient, sample collage, plug-in modulation, text-sound, sound poetry, mixer feedback improv, hardcore noise, radio art, to post-concrete recording art documenting a family karaoke scene. Artists include Wang Changcun, Zhang Jungang, Jia Haiqing and Xu Cheng.