Marianne Dissard in China

The lovely Marianne Dissard went to China to play and to record, and she wrote a nice diary about her journey. Below’s an excerpt. Read the whole thing here.

September 19th – We fly back to Beijing. The taxi drops me at my hostel. I am on my own again. I came to China with a mandate to record an album, “Beijing Three Takes”. I raised a bit of money from my friends, promising a collaboration with Chinese musicians on this third installement of the ‘City albums’ series that I’ve been recording while on tour.  But, truth be told, I don’t know who I might be able to record with or even what. But I’ve been thinking and listening to and observing the Chinese bands I met at the Black Rabbit Festival. Today, I know. I make the decision that this album will be different from “Paris One Takes’, different from “Berlin Two Takes”. And this is how I will proceed for the next eleven days : I borrow a Sony Zoom handheld recorder and set out to record the sounds of Beijing. Then, when I have edited and shaped this audioscape, I will ask Hanggai – at this point, you’ve figured out I have a musical crush on them, no? – to create the soundtrack to this movie-without-images. I’ll incorporate some of the writings I’ve done in the Transsiberian, first sketches of future songs. In the evening, I go to my usual hang, YugongYishan, to hear Huun Huur Tu and my friend Song Yuzhe’s band, Dawanggang. The place is packed.

Listen to Marianne’s music played on the streets in Beijing HERE

For French radio, Marianne recorded a track, Fugu. Download from HERE