An Corporation (CH)

We’re delighted to unveil our collaboration with Offside Festival, a partnership designed to bring to Gent the best and most forward-thinking bands hailing from China! Following last year’s successful and warmly received sets by Tation and Wang Wen, we are excited to introduce An Corporation, a young quartet homed in Shanghai but a truly multicultural and international mindset! 

One of the most promising bands in the ever-growing Chinese post-rock scenes, An Corporation quickly rose to everyone’s attention (including ours that is) late last year with what proved to be one of best post-rock records of the year. Their self-titled debut introduced to us a band that is ambitious and perfectly capable of delivering on that ambition, with sprawling and eclectic compositions highly reminiscent of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s innate greatness. Despite the obvious comparisons and at times inspirations, An Corporation infuse their sound with a decisively “own” character, drawing sounds and influences from their own vast millennial culture, positioning themselves firmly between the familiar and unfamiliar. The album ends with the sprawling “JiN” an epic 15-minute-long suite which perfectly showcases the band’s ambition and inventiveness through spiralling guitar loops and evocative string passages (did we mention they have a violinist?) before exploding in a climax of true Godspeed-in grandeur! 

The album stands on exquisitely elaborate sonic structures, meant for full immersion and delivering perfect moments of total bliss, unravelling strangeness and tounge-in-cheek playfulness. What truly captivated us however, is their universality and immediate quality. An Corporation possess their unique character, which shines heart-in-hand through these eight composition with a light and force that is truly commanding. These tracks’ sensitivities speak a universal language of self-expression, self-discovery and self-determination through music, which is what convinced us to bring them over to the festival. Behind all the obvious labels and the “easy” categorisations in fact however hides a handful of young musicians with an appetite for grandiosity, and the ambition and skill to propel it with.