On the Record: Keeping Up With Run Run Run
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On the Record is your guide to the past, present, and future of Beijing's music scene.
Name: Run Run Run
Current Lineup: Xiao Dou (Guitar/Vocals), Zhao Kai (Vocals), Xiao Wen (Synths), Mao Te (Drums)
Established: 2019
Record(s): 2 full-lengths
Label(s): Maybe Mars
For Fans Of: Can, The Fall, Velvet Underground, The Stooges
Stream: Hoon (Bandcamp via Maybe Mars), RUNRUNRUN (Bandcamp via Maybe Mars)
Just because you name your band after a particular artist or song doesn’t necessarily mean you have to embody their sound. Heck, US-based group The Bilinda Butchers, who somewhat brazenly lifted the name of My Bloody Valentine’s guitarist, don’t wade nearly as deep into the tinnitus-inducing squall of the 80s shoegaze pioneers, instead opting for its sonically milder counterpart, dream pop. If, however, you’re capable of carrying the torch lit by your namesake without getting burned, then by all means please do.
Such is the story of Run Run Run, named for the song from The Velvet Underground’s seminal 1967 album, The Velvet Underground & Nico. Now, with two LPs under their belt – 2019’s Hoon and 2020’s RUNRUNRUN – guitarist and defacto bandleader Xiao Dou has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he’s not only worthy of carrying that torch but that he’s got plenty of lighter fluid to keep the flame alive.
Some of the Velvet’s best material is the meandering, hazy passages that wander through their more traditional rock and pop infrastructures, and it’s these passages that Run Run Run cultivates into entire landscapes on Hoon. It’s an album that leans heavily into the adage, the journey is the destination, stretching single chords into limitless horizons on which a sun perpetually rises and falls. “Hiroshima,” for example, is a haunting, five-minute mediation, eternally perched on the precipice of the celebratory sardonicism that blossoms out of the Velvet’s track “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” a heavy mass of sepulchral rhythms which thrum beneath a twinkling sky of resplendent mysticism. Likewise, the record’s eponymous closer is the aural manifestation of a mad king’s solemn procession, a devilish and seductive promenade through the ashen remains of all the notes that had to die so the album could fully realize itself. The breadth of Hoon may be characterized as a quiet storm, however, that’s not to say the record is entirely devoid of buoyancy. Songs like “Fireball” and “Curtainfall” are escapist daydreams, momentarily shattering the record’s devotion to hypnotic trance before plunging the listener back in.
Whereas Run Run Run dug ever-deeper into recursive, experimental minimalism on Hoon, last year’s self-titled release sees the band tunneling out of those depths, and ultimately arriving in some pretty surprising places. In fact, within the album’s first minute, it becomes quite clear that we’ve gone through a sort of wormhole, and that we’re in for a much different journey on the other side. At this point, it bears mentioning that a solid 97 percent of Hoon doesn’t have any vocals, a choice the band forewent on their follow-up with the addition of singer, Zhao Kai. As such, the album's opener, “Dictated H,” is a propulsive proto-punk anthem that calls to mind the driving guitar work of The Stooges and Spacemen 3’s blunt lyricism on tracks like “Revolution.” If you thought you were safe in the blissed-out psychedelic miasma of Hoon, then RUNRUNRUN is quick to slap you in the face, pour a beer down your gullet, and strap you into a rocket ship that blasts off to god knows where. In fact, that interplanetary mission carries throughout the rest of the album, with tracks like “Run” and “Upland Electronic” evoking the weightless grandeur of an existence sans gravity, while “7P47DZZ” thrusts us further into the unknown with Zhao’s trenchant monologue echoing throughout the cabin, a Lynchian tour guide on your otherworldly vacation.
Though I’m unsure if it was intentional or not, when taken together, Hoon and RUNRUNRUN seem to be mirror images of one another, the former a subterranean odyssey, the latter an interstellar pilgrimage. Put another way, these two records are the sentiment, “as within so without, as above so below” incarnate. All of which begs the question, what is the final frontier for Run Run Run?
READ: On the Record: The Unpredictability of Snapline, Beijing's Best Intercontinental Band
Images: Guo Zhen, Sitong, courtesy of Maybe Mars
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