Yichang at Home Invites You to Livestream Intimate Gigs Beamed in From the Changping Mountains

Yichang Café, the now-defunct cozy hutong café tucked inside 27 Yuan just south of Dongsi, was in its short life home to a number of genre-spanning and intimate events. The organizers, couple A Dan and Elie Rosenberg, may no longer have their city-centric location but that hasn’t stopped them from keeping the mojo alive in an unlikely of places: the far-out mountains of Changping, where the two eloped to last autumn.

“We were missing putting shows together, and our good friend [and musician] thruoutin approached us to see if we could set up a house show, which was just perfect. The idea behind the series is to offer something a bit different, in terms of format and crowd, to what artists playing in Beijing are used to,” Rosenberg says of why they decided to continue the project out in the Beijing sticks.

Yichang at Home, as it is now called, acts as a monthly show and livestreaming event in the village home of the curators that looks to put a spotlight on various artists and collaborators looking to unplug from the urban sprawl of Beijing for something much more slower-paced. The live performance is then beamed back to viewers in the city, across China, and the rest of the world. Essentially, it's a Boiler Room for hippies. 

For their test drive edition, the couple tapped ambient electronic producers Solent and thruoutin, for some ambient-based ethereal soundscapes, first performing individually and then joining for a collaborative, improvisational session at the end. As Solent AKA Dan Lenk recalls – “it was liberating to share with an audience in an intimate setting and experience the strong sense of community which underpinned the event.” Since then, Yichang at Home has become a monthly series, broadcasted over Bilibili, as Rosenberg states, “so people who couldn't make it still get to share the fun from the comfort of their couches.”

Besides changing the theme and acts each month, from the meditative guitar drones of Shenyang-based Russian artist Pool of Light to the foot-tapping pizazz of French rock duo AV, Rosenberg and A Dan like to keep a fresh rotation of guests. “We try to invite different people each time, and keep a good mix between people from the city itself and friends from around the village, who are mostly artists. Last time we had Li Tieqiao among the crowd, turns out he lives just down the mountain from us... it’s a pretty chill atmosphere.”

For their latest edition, that'll take place on Saturday in the late afternoon, the organizers are heading into rockier territory by hosting psych-infused indie rockers Backspace, one of Beijing’s most reliable live acts, who’ll take over the outside courtyard space. Joining them will be San Francisco-reared folk punk mainstay Nathan Borofka. When asked what he expects, Nathan says succinctly, "I think it’ll be a hoot."

As for the future of Yichang at Home, it seems the couple is already plotting their next move. “We’ll be opening an art space in our village in September, very close to our house. The shows will probably move over there but the spirit will remain the same. We're investing in better equipment to provide a better platform for artists visiting but we'll keep the homey feel of it. We also want to do more in terms of sharing that content with the world, with the live stream but also with all the footage and photographs we've recorded so far.” 

And while it might be too soon to pick up stakes and head for the hills (“I wouldn’t recommend moving out here without a car,” Rosenberg recommends), it’s heartening to know there’s a place out there where music lovers can reconnect with nature and take in a wholly different environment with their gig. 

Catch a livestream of the fourth edition of Yichang at Home on Saturday, Jul 6 at 5.30pm via this Bilibili link. For more details about this weekend's show go here.

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Images: Fang Zhou, Anton Bogdanov, Live Beijing Music