Converse Love Noise Tour, China

Dazed Digital are chronicling the Converse-branded four-week music tour around China that includes the making of a branded documentary. On the details:

The Converse Love Noise tour aims to give Chinese rock a bigger platform and will try to distract attention from the Olympics by taking two Beijing bands, PK-14 and Queen Sea Big Shark on a specially-designed tour bus through six cities, beginning and ending in Beijing. Along the way, the bus will pick up local bands, and documenting the ups and downs of the entire tour and the climactic event in Beijing will be two brave Dazed Digital correspondents.

On filming:

P.K.14 got kitted out in ripped Converse, the sky was dark above a large expanse of concrete, and the graffiti-ed bus squatted behind the band as the equipment van edged in on the stage to point its headlights at the action. Remarkably, a group of service station staff came to watch the band disturb the peace, as did a stray praying mantis. Praying mantises have been known to kill small birds, said Queen Sea Big Shark guitarist Wang Jing Han, as he held one between his fingers. (A brief aside: we asked the Chinese Converse blogger Lua why graffiti in her country often contains numbers. She told us that it’s not graffiti, these numbers are hasty adverts for lines to call if you’re after some sort of forged document.)

Dazed