Review: AV Okubo – The Greed Of Man / AV大久保 – 大时代

We’re here for the title today folks. We have two champions fighting it over nine rounds, the prize at stake is Beijing “institution” Maybe Mars’ credibility. In one corner we have Lu Yan, Tan Chao, Zuo Yi, and Liu Chang, better known as AV Okubo. These upstarts from Wuhan have made a name for themselves through a provocative live show and a unique sound. In the opposite corner is the the veteran and current champion, Martin Atkins, also known as “The Producer” or “That guy who was once in Public Image Ltd.”. His complete trouncing of 24 Hours recently has established him as a force to contend with.

The referee steps into the centre of the ring. Oddly enough, his only remark is “Number six space ship!” The bell rings, and the fight begins.

Okay, enough boxing analogies for now (mainly because I don’t know the first thing about boxing). Reviewing 24 Hours’ debut album recently I commented on what I felt was some odd production work. I was unsure if that was on the bands behalf, or the producers behalf. Having listened to AV Okubo’s The Greed Of Man, I can help but feel it was the latter. I watched AV Okubo play only three days ago. I saw what they are capable of achieving, what these songs could, and should, sound like. And they have gotten so close.

For the unfamiliar, AV Okubo are a band with a sound that is hard to place a finger on. They have poppy songs, such as the appropriately titled ‘Love Song’ which sounds like a more coherent (but only slightly) Happy Mondays. For the most part, however, they stick to a more aggressive, fast paced style. ‘Old Game’ exemplifies this sound, and also proves that AV Okubo is no “three-chord punk band”. Each member of the band is technically skilled, and rarely does an element of  one of their songs sound out of place. ‘Break Wave’ is a perfect example of these. Lu Yan’s synth hook embeds itself in the memory, Tan Chao acts as a counterweight on guitar, and the rhythm section of Zuo Yi on bass and Liu Chang on drums really earns the “break” moniker of the song.

It is difficult to identify a standout song in AV Okubo’s reportoire. On The Greed Of Man, ‘I Want The Smurfs’ is the only one of AV Okubo’s better songs to actually improve in the recording studio, with it’s techno/hard rock sonic freak-out. But other songs don’t fare so well. 大字报, probably the bands best song, is hampered by poor vocal mixing and the return of that “construction site dub” we heard on 24 Hours’ No Party People. This doesn’t take away from how good this song is though. The interplay between Lu’s synths and Tan’s riffs lends an incomparable energy to this song, and the mid section break/reading of The Little Red Book is arguably the best 30 seconds of the album. ‘AV Terminator’ and ‘Shaolin Kungfu Is Good!’ also suffer from horrible mixing, with the latter sounding utterly flat.

Yet for all the production issues on The Greed Of Man, there is no taking away from the quality of AV Okubo’s music. With a half decent producer (or even with no producer at all), their sophomore album could be something of a landmark in Chinese music. The Greed Of Man is not quite that, but it is a solid album that stand up to multiple plays. So the winner of the fight? AV Okubo!

Preview

大字报 (Live at Yugong Yishan, April 6th)

Links

AV Okubo

Maybe Mars