“Low always reach such beautiful highs” – NME
“Every single note matters.” – The Sunday Times
Big, simple, raw, and intimate.
Low’s crushingly-beautiful music is a series of dichotomies: stunning and menacing, gorgeous and frightening, giving and desperate, and ultimately, unbearably heavy and unbearably light. To borrow a phrase from their most recent album, it goes from one to six and back again.
For 20+ years, the songwriting duo of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker (married, with kids) and, more recently, Steve Garrington, have created some of the most low-key high-profile music out there. “You know our M.O,”frontmanSparhawk has said with characteristic sparseness, “Slow, quiet, sometimes melancholy, and, we hope, sometimes pretty…”
For us here at Split Works, it’s hard to think of music that’s prettier. We’re enormously excited to welcome Low back to Shanghai, for a special one-night-only performance. Saturday 20 May, at the Bandai Namco Shanghai Base’s (formerly QSW Culture Centre)intimate Future House (formerly Q House). Presale tickets are 180 RMB, with a support act TBC.
They’ve released 12 albums, the latest 2015’s Ones and Sixes, and are currently signed to the influential Sub Pop label. Many of these dozen albums have been quiet and beautiful and silently menacing, but the ‘Low sound’ has taken some interesting detours.
They’ve veered into louder territory (2005’s The Great Destroyer) and glitchy, electronic darkness (2007’s Drums and Guns), and seem to have settled on time-honored strengths: slow-growing, minimal yet expansive songs that just beg for introspection.
“In our 20+ years of writing songs,” Sparhawk says about their latest album, “I’ve learned that no matter how escapist, divergent, or even transcendent the creative process feels, the result is more beholden to what is going on at the moment.”
That relevance is part of what makes Low special. A willingness to hold a mirror up – not just to one’s internal life, but the society they find themselves in. Their open-ended melodic stories are, above all, an experience, at once understandable and mysterious.
Saturday 20 May, at the Bandai Namco Shanghai Base Future House. Expect an evening of subterranean pop with a spectral spark.
Split Works Presents: LOW
【Shanghai】
PRE-SALE LINK: https://yoopay.cn/event/LOWshanghai
* Pre-sales end at 12 noon, May.20th, 2017
Tickets once sold cannot be refunded!
A Low Profile
Members: Alan Sparhawk, Mimi Parker, Steve Garrington
Official Website: www.chairkickers.com
Hometown: Duluth, MN
Born: 1993
Number of Studio Albums to Date: 12
Producers: Jeff Tweedy, Matt Beckley, Dave Fridmann, Steve Albini,Tchad Blake, Tom Herbers
Associated Record Labels: Sub Pop Records, Kranky Records, Vernon Yard Records, Rough Trade, Chairkickers
Mainstream Exposure: 2 Low songs, “Monkey” and “Silver Rider,” were covered by Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant(his cover of “Silver Rider” was later nominated for a Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance Grammy)
Touring Partners: Radiohead, Wilco, Nick Cave, Soul Coughing, Swans
The New Record: Ones and Sixes (2015; Sub Pop Records)
About Split Works:
Split Works has been rocking in the free (ish) world since 2006. Working with inspirational artists from across the globe, the good people at Split Works HQ have been a key contributor to the continued rise of China’s music scene.
Split Works has launched five music festivals and promoted over 400 tours to 30 Chinese cities, always striving to stay true to a familiar refrain: the music has to be special, every single time. From Godspeed You! Black Emperor to Sonic Youth, from Thee Oh Sees to Mac Demarco and Shabazz Palaces, from Black Rabbit to JUE and Wooozy to Concrete & Grass and More Music. We love music, we love China and we love you.
Split Works official website：www.spli-t.com