The Door: Live Worship from Beijing, China

The Door: Live Worship From Beijing China was produced during China’s Olympic Games, and is the first officially sanctioned live project to come out of China. It was recorded during a Sunday service at Beijing’s 4,000-member International Christian Fellowship–where worshipers’ identities are checked by government agents before they can enter the hall. Remarkably, authorities gave their official permission, but to be safe, the hard drive containing the recording left China quickly. The main condition was that the recording could not be broadcast before the Olympics. It was a miracle to pull it off, simply because it had never been done before. The Door, captured on both CD and DVD, brings standard Western style worship alongside 2,000-year-old traditional Chinese instruments such as the dulcimerlike yangqin, the harp-style guzheng and the drone pipe hulusi. “We wanted the recording to give the vibe that local worship teams could actually incorporate and redeem some of these ancient instruments. We’re hearing stories from China that in villages all over China, people are sitting down in one person’s home who has a TV and watching The Door project,” says Mark Tedder, producer and worship leader.

List Price: $ 14.98

Price: $ 7.67

Black Blood of the Earth

In the summer of 2001, an unusual friendship was hatched at the going-away barbeque for the then-active PG.99 and MAJORITY RULE’s summer tour. Perhaps born of similar senses of sarcasm, neo-classic video game addiction, and the refusal to lose at anything, punk rock label heads Brent Eyestone (of Magic Bullet Records, then in CORN ON MACABRE) and Mike Haley (The Electric Human Project) hit it off immediately. Eyestone, a towering 6’3 & 34; clean cut half-Chinaman (or whatever the preferred nomenclature), and Haley, a wiley, smelly Amish-looking motherf*cker hovering just around the 5 foot mark, became inseparable that evening, running the table versus anyone who dare challenge their collective and individual video game prowess. The bond became cemented for life when the duo were paired on a pickup basketball team at the end of the night. Intended to be an “ironic” or “whimsical” party activity between a bunch of punk kids who were trained to think that sports were “macho” or “part of white male subjugation over the working class” (or whatever vocabulary terms picked up at “workshops” at More Than Music Fest), Eyestone and Haley just weren’t having it. With Haley running point and Eyestone crowding up the paint, a friendly game of basketball quickly devolved into a two-man exhibition of unrelenting physical domination. As Haley would slash and hip-check his way through the defense, Eyestone was always there to catch laser passes and alley-oops from the guard, throwing elbows and converting on easy dunks and lay-ups all night long. It wasn’t a pretty picture. Through the years, the pair kept in touch and wreaked similar havoc at various music festivals and conferences across the U.S. Haley would book shows for Eyestone’s FORENSICS, Eyestone would do art and remixes for Haley’s solo project WETHER, the two would do split releases between their labels, and so on. Then, one fateful day in 2006, perhaps stoned, wasted, or both, Haley approached Eyestone with a collaborative concept that would take their teamwork to an entirely new level. “Dude, you like ‘Lost,’ right? Well f*ck man, we should do a BAND that sounds like it. And we’ll call it BIG CHINA & LITTLE TROUBLE because it’s based on the sweetest movie ever and you’re all big and Chinese and I’m all little and crazy.” Eyestone was in from the word go and the pair set a 4/20 “release date” (coinciding with their annual trek to Virginia’s Macrock festival) for their first releases, a pair of tapes that, in spite of the duo’s chipper demeanor in “real” life, contained some of the most truly haunting and sinister soundscapes ever collected for such a dead and obsolete format. Word spread quickly concerning the captivating depth and overall eeriness of the recordings and it took less than a week for the entire edition to be snatched up (with notables such as Thurston Moore and members of Wolf Eyes being among the first to get hip to the band/recordings). Intended to get all material back in print and away from collector prices, “Black Blood Of The Earth” compiles these original recordings (for the first time available in digital format) with last year’s “Fur & Teeth” sessions, which were originally issued as a limited 3″ CD in a jewel case that contained ancient shark teeth and bear fur. All selections have been remixed and mastered for maximum effect and mark the start of what will be another productive year for BIG CHINA & LITTLE TROUBLE.

List Price: $ 9.98

Price: $ 3.82