"One of 20 MUST-WATCH bands in the autumn festival" - Rolling Stone Beijing
"Example of the great young bands in Beijing" - Rock
"Their answer can never satisfy your explore to a classical post-punk band" - Rolling Stone Beijing
"They're easily the catchiest, most melodic band of the night" - That's Beijing
From Martin Atkins:
What can I say about Snapline? I think I was a few days into this when they hit the stage - I was tired, jet lagged to fuck and really spinning - thats what a 20+ hour flight and massive jet lag will do to a person... they played at the end of one of the days - after 4 or 5 other bands... my first reaction as the drum machine kicked in was some kind of irrational acid flash back where the long lost pet drum machine returned home - I smiled as the sounds licked my face... I've described this elsewhere as simply forgetting that drum machines existed. I was delighted to see a band in a different format than the others and a bit confused as Li Qing seemed familiar - she plays drums with Snapline but guitar with Car Sick Cars!! Fucking awesome!!! Turns out they share a bassist too...
Anyway, a few songs in and I am hooked - already looking forwards to mixing them in the studio... they come to the studio a few days later and I LOVE IT!
Long story short (or not so because theres a dicumentary and stuff in the book and all of this!) we sign an agreement and Xi (the singer) comes over to mix the album with me and hang out for a bit, sings on the new Pigface album and has a blast at Blue Man Group. I love this band, and these songs, there will be some alternate mixes from the sessions up at some point soon...
From LQ of Snapline:
I'm truly glad to hear you say that snapline makes you think of 1979-81. In our imagination, our music may like this... ummmmm... maybe like the Suicide or the Devo or Fad Gadget (State of the Nation) or the Birthday Party... and something have more noise like Killing Joke, the early Einstürzende Neubauten...
In our mind, if our music is a skinny bony man, the drumbeats must be the bone, the skeleton - hard, bulging, extrude, mechanical, underproping the skin - but functioning underneath, instead of on the surface. The tone color of the drum may be close to some industrial music, that's why we use drum machine. The skeleton part of the music may be not only made by the drum machine, some other percussion sounds may also work, just like what we did in the song Spinning.
The guitar part may like the person's appearance. He looks sick but his eyes are piercing and wild open, sometimes he looks angry, sometimes frustrated, sometime ecstatic, sometimes crazy. His face looks pale but full of energy. The guitar noise should either be strong or frangible. The guitar riff should be cattish, eerie, uneasy, wicked.
Then the bass line is his soul, his power inside, steady and prominent. The bass line always be the motivation of the song, it always comes first when we compose a new song.
The vocal may tell the theme more clearly.
We think our music should firstly be post-punk - post, and punk - and synth-pop
Click on the images above to read the article in the Newstatesman
