Show Up to 24D Space to Help Nugget Records, Apr 30!
What makes Beijing a magical place to live? The feeling of a tight-knit community, of course. People interact and thrive together by adapting the city’s gargantuan dimensions to a more manageable map of personal and cultural connections where people can thrive together.
The fun events, the exciting collaborations, the friendships and opportunities that emerge from seemingly nowhere…
A key part of this vibrant urban tapestry is brought by beloved spaces such as nugget records.
It’s undeniable that this cassette record label and bar has played an instrumental role in the revitalization of the underground music scene in Beijing. Not only did nugget pick up the baton from legendary spaces that are now long gone — they also excel at doing their own thing.
This dream team is formed by Jen Rao, David Carey and their spirited diva pug, Baozi, and they’ve turned their tiny but powerful quarters into a hub for creative souls that meet weekly for live gigs, craft nights, edgy parties, vintage films and screenings. I don’t like playing favorites, but they do have a special place in my heart, and now they need your help!
Small independent businesses such as nugget are struggling in our current times. A terrible combo of pandemic outbreaks and grumpy neighbours has recently prevented nugget from selling online tickets and has forced them to axe their large events. Thus, a bitter truth — the way things are going, they won’t be able to pay their rent due in June. This is a painful first in their two years at Huayuan Front Alley.
Fellow Beijingers, it’s time to wear our superhero capes and have a blast in the process. That’s right! On Apr 30, nugget records will be holding their showcase at 24D Space with four amazing outfits.
Tons of fun, a call for help and a heart-warming interview with David Carey below, dear reader.
Hey, David! Tell us all about how nugget’s gonna put up a good fight.
Well, every year come summer we’ve hosted a major showcase at a series of wonderful local venues. This time, though, we’re hoping to turn a really unpleasant corner with our showcase at the wonderful 24D Space. Don’t get me wrong, it’s no pity party!
We’re sponsored by none other than Slow Boat Brewery, and what can I say about the music? I’ll be debuting with my brand new band, gilded forest (木与金, mù yǔ jīn), and then Sourtower, The Claptraps and Octopus Villain will be there too as three of the most popular bands in the nuggetverse.
I want to give them a well-deserved shoutout because they’ve agreed to jump aboard pretty much just for our sake, so that we may stay afloat. It’s really awesome, and we take neither this generosity nor our audience’s support for granted.
Right! Beyond buying tickets for the showcase, how can we all help you?
Plenty of ways to do that! There’s the showcase for sure, and of course we’d love to see you at our many monthly events. We have a hard time listing everything we do, just because there are so many fun activities. Our vintage film nights, the campiest drag queen shows we can get our hands on, our drink and draw events, open mic nights, tiny stage gigs… for the craft nights we actually enlist members of the local community as guest hosts, and they’re tons of fun.
We have our select cocktails and drinks… I mean, guys, we even have Avotaco. You can grab our cool tapes and merch, too, and right now we also have this “Friend of nugget” pack available for purchase at our Weidian. It’s RMB 300 for a ticket to the showcase, a gilded forest tape and our eternal gratitude for your support during this tough time!
The tape truly is bonkers. It has glitter and everything, and the music inside, oh wow. Tell us more about gilded forest, your newest project, and the pairing with the rest of the bands’ styles.
gilded forest came about through happenstance, like all great music projects do. A singer called Queyue had played with her folk band at nugget a few times. I thought they were great and wanted to sign them to our label and release a tape for them. However, when the time came and she arrived at the studio it turned out her entire band had fallen apart overnight! The drummer went to study in England and the violin player went to the south.
So as a result, the two of us started working together. It was a lot more collaborative and different from my normal writing style, which usually involves me alone in the studio with the door locked so no one can hear my constant fuck ups, haha. It’s ended up a lot heavier and rockier than my other projects, a little Radiohead-esque in parts too. We found a drummer and became a full band recently, the show on the 30th is actually our debut as a 3-piece!
Style wise, I think gilded forest is something nugget needed as a bridge between some of the folkier or poppier stuff we release and some of the darker, heavier stuff we also have. With it, there’s a logical path from lost memory machine to the Claptraps. And yeah, the tape is suuuuper pretty! Jen did such a great job with the artwork too.
We’re dying with excitement. As a final statement to close this piece, why is nugget so important to you and to our community?
Opening a business in Beijing has been one of the biggest challenges of our lives. As we grew and took on more staff and held more events, the pressure grew to maintain something we knew was special. But despite all the hardships, I’ve never thought for a second about doing anything else. In recent years we’ve seen some changes that have made our wider community a little less open and accepting, maybe just fewer places left catering to people who inhabit different niches. As a result, it’s more important than ever for us to persevere and keep our little home open for as long as we can.
Thank you so much to everyone for your support!
The nugget records Showcase will be taking place on Saturday, Apr 30 from 8pm at 24D Space. Pre-sale tickets are RMB 100 for one, RMB 180 for two, and RMB 120 at the door. A "friend of nugget" package is also available for RMB 300, which includes one ticket and a gilded forest cassette. Scan the QR code in the poster to purchase.
READ: Q&A: Nugget Café's Founders on Opening an Expat-Owned Business in Beijing
Images courtesy of nugget
