Sound Kapital, Photography by Matthew Niederhauser

September 11, 2010

A new wave of Chinese musicians is taking Beijing by storm. Revolving around four venues spread across the city, this burgeoning group of performers are working outside government-controlled media channels, and in the process, capturing the attention of the international music community. They now constitute a fresh, independent voice in a country renowned for creative conformity and saccharine Cantonese pop. In Sound Kapital, photographer Matthew Niederhauser captures the energy of the performers involved in this innovative orgy gripping Beijing’s music underground.   

Matthew Niederhauser’s involvement with Asia and photography first started in high school with four straight years of Chinese courses and late nights in the darkroom. Greatly inspired by his first language teacher’s own dramatic background during the Cultural Revolution, he became fascinated with China’s expansive history and spent a year living with a host family in Beijing in 2000. Matthew then began his studies at Columbia University where he immersed himself in the anthropology department and continued to crisscross Asia. After graduating, his work covering youth culture and urban development in China has appeared in the New Yorker, Time Magazine, the Washington Post, Photo District News and the Guardian Observer amongst others. One of Matthew’s main projects documents a new wave of Chinese musicians taking Beijing by storm. Revolving around four venues spread across the city, a burgeoning group of performers are working outside government-controlled media channels, and in the process, capturing the attention of the international music community. They now constitute a fresh, independent voice in a country renowned for creative conformity and saccharine Cantonese pop. In Sound Kapital, his recently released book with powerHouse, Matthew captures the energy of the performers involved in this innovative orgy gripping Beijing’s music underground. Otherwise, he concentrates on a large-format project entitled Visions of Modernity that tracks urban development and new consumption.

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