Celebrate 3 Years of Rambling Art Endeavors at Loreli's Anniversary Bash This Sunday

With a steady stream of interviews, articles, and events bringing the creative minds of Beijing together, online art, music and literature showcase Loreli has become a crucial part of the scene here in Beijing and has only grown and evolved since its incarnation. This month they turn the ripe age of three and they’re celebrating in style, and by style I mean, unhinged lunacy and debauchery at DDC this Sunday, Nov 18 with sets from Struggle Session (making their debut at DDC), Boss Cuts, SHAS, and Rainbow Machine.

I spoke to the wide-eyed, caffeinated, and delightfully mad wizard behind the curtain, Daniel Rothwell, about pedal-mania, collage-based mayhem, and Catabolism ahead of the show – you best believe things get weird.

Alright, so what the hell is going on with this poster? My eyes are literally bleeding out. 
Try looking anywhere but your ugly mug and maybe you'll have a more pleasant experience. I am only half joking. You're right, it won't be a pleasant experience. My friend Chris (Peak/William Scratchner who made the occasional Dada poster a couple of years ago) and I started a “Craft Hutong Organic Poster Design Firm,” and I suppose I was reviving that long forgotten dream? 

Inspired by previous conversations with Ugly Girl's Ceridwen about her collage-based designs, I thought it would be fun to trawl through the various social networks for images of those performing on the day. And design my own pedal. And get some Comic Sans in the mix. And then put it all together.

What's more fucking EXTREME though, is that I'm actually putting set-times on there!

Pitch the Rainbow Machine to me. 
It's Earthquaker Devices' most ridiculous modulation pedal. Michael Cupoli (Noise Arcade) and myself have often joked about one day owning such a pedal until one day, when I actually bought one. I have only slightly regretted it since. 

Hip-hop producer “Yan” was having a launch party at Jiang Hu, and my friend who was putting on the show asked if I could contribute in any way, shape, or form, as I've actually played with him before at another one of Slow Pulse's jazz/hip-hop nights. I was going to do some sort of ambient loopy thing, but thought it would be better to ask for the help of someone that actually does that as a full-time career. Unfortunately, they couldn't help, but Noise Arcade was free. 

We've played a few shows, to a collective audience of about twenty people, but since then have already been involved with two upcoming cassette releases (Nasty Wizard/Spit-Tunes, and LoReListen), collaborated with members of Europop sensations, "Guiguisuisui," Power Ballad Brass Band of the year 2017 “Boss Cuts,” and freakishly talented hip-hop goddess Fishdoll for the DDC fourth anniversary. Pretty good going for a pedal porn project that started as a bit of a joke.

What’s going on with Loreli these days? What has been the biggest shift in how it operates compared to last year? 
There's slightly more caffeine involved. 

Loreli has become infamous as of late for their rambling, stream-of-conscious, technically-suave, multimedia-heavy posts which equally baffle and delight – is there any order to your madness?
Depends how much coffee and TV I've recently consumed. There's no other way to approach the tender topic. I tend to write them on a Sunday. Sunday's when I tend to put aside time for writing, to the end, end of a century; for tomorrow is for the girls and boys that have yet to experience the bad heads of “shouldn't have drunk that oily water last night,” and are yet to escape the clutches of the pop-scene. Tomorrow's not for number one, it's for song two. It's all a bit of a Blur. At least it's not an Oasis. 

The evening will also mark the release of Catabolism – a concept tape that’s really unlike anything else. Could you describe the idea behind it?
I've got a job, a job I enjoy, with people I enjoy sharing the workspace with. I play in bands, bands I enjoy, with people I enjoy sharing the practice room with. I put myself through physically strenuous activities, which I don't really enjoy unless they're with people I enjoy sharing sensuous activities with. What does this leave me with, apart from time that needs to be filled? 

You know, I say it's all a joke, but it takes time. It all takes time. It always takes time. You know this as well as anyone else. I suppose it's a bit of a defense mechanism? 

It's silly, yes, of course, it's silly to release a C.I.Y. (Colour It Yourself) zine based on stories created by unnamed authors with no real purpose and on very little notice. It's even sillier to commit hours of my time to transcribing, illustrating, printing, folding, and stapling the stories into a zine format, only to give it away for free. What's even sillier is that before any of this was even done, even more hours were spent composing soundtracks to the stories, and hours on top of that were spent making them sound... cheesier, and... worse? What's even sillier than that is that only about 5 percent of people that have had the URL of that audio for the last year have actually heard it. It's literally, right there, on the front page. 

To try and rectify this, it made ultimate sense to put it on a cassette, because everyone has a cassette player. I spent money on going down to Shanghai to spend money on other people's cassettes at Cassette Store Day 2K18, but decided to give mine away, because some people just want to watch the world burn.

What surprises are we expect this Sunday? Did I hear something about yoga?
It was meant to be a surprise, but I'm terrible at keeping secrets, and I'm also worried that if we don't expressively say “RAINBOW MACHINE HAVE REHEARSED WITH SOME INCREDIBLY TALENTED YOGA FRIENDS WHO WILL BE JOINING FOR AN AUDIOVISUAL COLLABORATION THAT'S NOT REALLY ANYTHING TOO ORIGINAL, BUT JUST SOMETHING THAT MAYBE HASN'T BEEN DONE BY US YET, AND WILL LOOK PRETTY COOL, AND WE WILL BE STARTING AT 9pm ON THE DOT, OH YEAH, REMEMBER THIS SHOW IS ON A SUNDAY, YOU SAID YOU'D REMEMBER, TRY NOT TO BAIL!” then people might not remember, or might show up at 10 o'clock and get moody that they missed it. There are three more bands! Good bands! Struggle Session are having their DDC debut, this is much more important than anything else happening in the scene since Teknoprisoners.de.

Loreli's third birthday bash takes place at DDC this Sunday, 9pm. Ticket price is TBA. Click here to read more.

Wanna know what else is going on this weekend? Read this week's Noise Pollution with Glory of the City Night, 10 Hours of Music at Antipodes, The Molds, and WR/OC Fest

Images courtesy of the organizers