Tag Team's great Chinese hope, and big in Kentucky: Lonely China Day.

Tag Teams boss Matt Kagler rather exports Chinese bands to US

If, as visits by Brian Eno and Sonic Youth to the city would suggest, Beijing has a real scene now, why isn’t Tag Team Records signing more bands? “Because they all suck,” says the label’s A&R manager Matt Kagler. Considering that Tag Team is the nearest thing that Chinese rock has to an international label, it’s worrying that the two-year-old label thinks there’s only two bands good enough to be on its books.

“Tell me one Chinese band that you would take to the States.” Fancied local rockers AK47 surely? “New metal music that sounds like Limp Bizkit,” scoffs Kagler, a bulky red-bearded American who doesn’t share the enthusiasm of other Beijing based foreigners for some local indie bands. “I hate Carskick Cars, I think they’re awful,” he says of the youthful Beijing-based outfit which, on official orders, famously couldn’t make their opening slot for Sonic Youth on that band’s 2007 Beijing debut.

One band that Kagler would like to see doing the job is Lonely China Day, “blip poppy with Chinese influences, like Mogwai and Sigur Ros only more atmospheric with really strong vocals.” The group was also the first Chinese band that came to mind when Tag Team was born during a boozy road trip the two Kagler brothers took to Baha, Mexico in late 2005. (Kagler’s brother Michael who had been working for major US independent label Rhino, now runs Tag Team’s Los Angeles office). “We got drunk and spent three days writing down how we’d feasibly put it together...”

Speaking in rapid clip with a habit for chopping words - distribution is ‘distro’ - Kagler talks about betting the family silverware on then relatively unknown Lonely China Day, whom he’d seen play in a Beijing bar. “I figured they would be perfect for our debut release. I thought their sound really had somewhere to go in the west.” And the band needed Tag Team. “They weren’t touring, they were a band that needed a label.” After signing Lonely China Day, Tag Team shipped several boxes of the band’s eponymous EP to the US. “We started with a couple of thousand CDs. Now there's 5,000 in circulation with another 5,000 in storage.”

Being able to spot a good thing is something Kagler learnt while juggling university with a job as publicist for Subpop, the label that famously signed Seattle giants of grunge, Nirvana. After graduating with a degree in education from the University of Washington, the gregarious Seattle-r moved to Cologne. When a marriage there soured the qualified teacher went to visit his parents, diplomats at the US embassy in Beijing. A job as a Montessori School has kept him here for six years. Heike, one of several “big music geek friends” in Beijing became his wife, and Tag Team’s finance director. “She’s a fan of indie rock and an accountant.”

Mrs Kagler also imposed a no-drinking ban during company meetings at the label’s Beijing office, located in the heart of Beijing’s grey-brick old city. A glance at the label’s website and its boisterous blog suggests there’s a commune of musically minded foreigners having a never ending party while churning out music in a Beijing hutong. Aside from A&R manager Kagler and wife Heike the label’s full time crew includes three other Americans and Britons designing album covers and posters and organizing gigs and interviews for the two bands signed to the label.

After taking on Lonely China Day, Kagler also acquired American licensing rights for Retros, another Beijing band with a sound often likened to UK purveyors of spooky gloom, Joy Division. Retros is signed to local label Modern Sky on a four record deal but, seeing talent, Tag Team souped up the band’s recording and took it Stateside. “We said we’d do the publicity and tour in the States but the fidelity of the record was poor, it needed to be altered.” With a subsequent remix at Modern Sky’s Beijing studio and a live reputation already established, the band was ready to join Lonely China Day on an airplane to America. Kagler drew on a thick book of contacts to book the venues himself and hired a tour publicist, Jelly NYC to get the word out.

There followed a month on the road playing pretty large venues - 500 capacity on average. “You get 350 people there and you’re really happy.” Used to playing Beijing’s limited range of cramped but atmospheric venues - most local venues are full at 250 people - the Chinese bands found themselves in a lot of space every night. Buses and bunk beds were shared with American bands 120 Days and Hockey Nights. A slot with the fancied Tapes n’ Tapes got cancelled. “Depending on how the promoter billed it, we opened for 120 Days, other nights we had local bands playing support.” Kagler remembers good nights in Newport, Kentucky and in the 800-seater South Gate House in Cincinatti.

Lonely China Day’s Chinese lyrics didn’t rattle anyone in Kentucky, swears Kagler. “I think they thought it was frigging rad [Kagler speak for ‘impressive’]! I don’t think after the first song they were consciously thinking this band isn’t singing in English.” None of the band members had been abroad or speak English. “A large contingent” of locally based Chinese made the bands feel more at home during New York gigs at the Cake Shop on the lower east side and Southpaw in Brooklyn.

And then there was Austin. Tag Team Records not only got the bands slots at rock music’s most influential networking event, the South By South West Festival. Kagler even got to set up stall at the event, attended every year by labels, media and music impresarios. “We thought it was awesome that we got a label showcase. From my previous experiences they don’t get back to you so fast but they were very excited about having Chinese bands, they had only two in the past.”

Retros duo Hua Dong and Lu Ming had passable English from playing shows in Singapore and Hong Kong, but never on a bill with Iggy Pop & The Stooges and a couple of hundred other established and hopeful artists playing their wares in Texas. Among the crowd, New York Times critic Jon Pareles and the editor of Spin magazine both penned flattering reviews afterwards. A film crew from BBC World covered the show too. “It was friggin crazy,” remembers Kagler, “a debaucherous, really well organized mess.”

Never set to yield huge concert fees or record sales, the biggest pay-back from the tour was in press. “We wanted a massive amount of press, we’ve already got great distro’.” Jelly NYC’s promotion campaign delivered newsprint and ticket sales. “We were always gig of the week in Onion [influential chain of local newspapers] the local free press in each city. There was a fairly large curiosity factor. Everyone we invited came, everyone we needed to be there, there had been a buzz off the tour, so people took us up on invitations.”

Tag Team will build on the buzz with albums: a new Lonely China Day record will hit US streets in early July. “We have ads in the right places, there’s a lot going for us right now.” Kagler has retained Red Eye, the US’ leading independent distribution firm and placed adverts in leading trade and fan magazines like Pitchfork, Global Rhythm and Vice. “We’re marketing as a big release, sort of like Sigur Ros’ marketing, we’re not marketing to Asian Americans per se.” Success would be turning a decent profit on the release. “If we sold 5,000 albums for each band we’d be stoked.”

But could Lonely China Day risk being stuck on a novelty factor, relying on the curiosity of Western music fans stunned to find that there’s a Chinese kind of Mogwai. “We hope not, we’re not marketing it that way. To some degree the press the band got is because they’re from China but it also reflected on their music…”