Xian Shoegazers Endless White Emerge From the Smog to Play DDC This Friday

Will Griffith | Oct 19, 2018 10:00 am | Add a comment | 1568 reads

As someone who has visited Xian more than a dozen times in the past eight years, I can confidently say the old Qing dynasty capital, isn’t exactly the most charming, or more importantly, the most culturally active city on China's roster. Nevertheless, I’m rooting for the place, so whenever a speck of music emerges out of the smog, I get a little giddy. Enter Endless White – the young quartet who relish in jangly guitar work, wispy vocals, and sublime walls of sound that engulf one's sense. A shoegaze band with an abundance of emotional heft, they have been holding down the Shaanxi fort these past few years, and are now ready to lead the charge on the domestic stage for many up and coming indie bands in Xian. Fresh off their debut LP off of Ruby Eyes Records, the band will be swinging through Beijing this Friday, Oct 19, at DDC as part of their nationwide tour.

With influences ranging from Cocteau Twins to Ryuichi Sakamoto, the shoegaze outfit has been steadily building their fanbase since forming in late 2015. Their Chinese name ‘BaiBai’ rolls even more easily off the tongue. As the band’s singer Zhang Wanyi (nicknamed Yiguai) explains, “The writing and pronunciation are similar between “白” and “百“ in Chinese. Their branches share the same root to some degree, and all the styles and ideas give life to music. I hope we can live in an Endless White state – infinitely pure.”

For their exceptional debut entitled Flow West to You, the band took inspiration from a well-known Japanese novel – Asleep by Yoshimoto Banana. Part of a trilogy of novels revolving around lonesome souls bewitched by sleep, Yiguai found a kindred soul; "There was a time I was just like the heroine in the novel – sleepy, low spirited, and exhausted all the time." An apt metaphor for depression, the band zeroed in on the theme of sleep for their debut. Led by Yiguai's delicate vocals, the album feels in many ways like an inescapable daydream. Nevertheless, the quartet manages to inject rays of light as the record unfolds, with the band particularly brimming with life by the closing track "Hit By Me".

While the band feels Xian has a lot of work to do before it will be able to build a substantial scene, Yifan, the band’s bassist admits it’s a lot better than two years ago, explaining, “There are a lot of young people putting in a lot of effort to make it better.” And while playing two shows every weekend in different cities and concurrently making up excuses to take leave from work isn’t exactly what the band had in mind when they agreed to go on tour, they're still glad they "can meet different music fans and taste tons of different food every week." With the attention their debut has been receiving and fans flocking to get a glimpse of the band, Yiguai hopes of having a "real road tour" isn’t that far off in the endless white of their future.