2 Kolegas is an interesting venue. Normally, live music venues tend to be centered around the performer stage, so that no matter where you happen to be situated, the band is central to your bearings. Not so at 2 Kolegas, with its spacious outdoor grounds, forcing Saturday’s trio of trios to really work to drag punters indoors.

Xi'an three-piece 24 Hours continued to impress with their infectious brand of danceable, precise indie rock. What jumps out at initial listeners is the slick girl-guy vocal interplay between bassist Zhang Cheng and drummer Li Guan Yu, but what has become increasingly noticeable is the central role that Li plays. His expression suggests someone's wrenching his balls while he's playing, but his ear-blowingly muscular, flexible style is focal to the group’s appeal, providing them with their signature drive and power.

Wu and the Side Effects followed, provided a rousing set of bluesy seventies rock, treating the growing crowd to a more laid back, funky set. Wu is certainly no slouch on guitar, and after so many four note staccato riffs from earlier groups, the crowd was receptive to the axe man’s limber solos, ably shored up by the band’s slap-happy bassist.

By the time Re-TROS (Rebuilding the Rights of Statues) finally came on, the crowd had filled out noticeably. Lead singer and guitarist Hua Dong has remarkable stage presence. He faces further towards bassist and co-vocalist Liu Min than towards the audience itself, and the pair’s sexy dynamic increases the act’s dramatic tension. Hua's speak-sing vocals, at times menacingly enunciated, at others delivered in a manic shriek, gain new intensity in a live setting, his skittish, tic-like movements evoking a younger (and Chinese) version of Ian Curtis or Morrissey.

It’s hard not to consider Re-TROS’ clever acronym appropriate, given how faithfully the band draws from its heroes: namely, late 70s British gothic rock and post-punk acts such as Bauhaus and Joy Division. Their hypnotizing live sound is similarly miserable, each song building slowly and steadily upon drummer Ma Hui's locomotive rhythm and Li's deep, slinky bass, filled in by the raw white noise beauty of Hua's brittle guitar lines. And while it may be derivative in many ways, Re-TROS' sound is at least distinct from many of their Strokes-crazed Beijing peers, and carries an artful, intelligent depth that moves beyond mere primal punky expressiveness.

The tendency, it would seem, is to take Re-TROS gloomy motifs and discontent noise, and cast them upon a "post-Tiananmen nihilist" backdrop, where their music suddenly comes to represent all the pain and displacement of China's current generation of increasingly-globalized-but-still-repressed youth. Maybe, for some listeners, or even the band itself, they do. But such labeling proffers too neat a straitjacket, comes too close to "China can rock too!"-style hyperbole. More importantly, it denies a talented group like Re-TROS the space to simply make great music: music which might very well be "anti-establishment," but doesn't have to wear the label like a Young Pioneer's kerchief.

That's certainly what they did on Saturday, and with the show coinciding with legendary Beijing glam rockers' Joyside's final gig, this listener for one would like to imagine that a baton is being passed towards Chinese bands as ambitious as Re-TROS, groups as eager to scavenge through rock's past whilst making music that helps to describe their society’s complicated present and most uncertain future.

After the main set, the band encored with old single "Hang the Police," allowing the kids up front to work themselves into a heady mosh pit, spurred on by the song's incendiary refrain.

More information:

Venue: 2 Kolegas - www.2kolegas.com

24 Hours: www.myspace.com/nopartypeople

Wu and the Side Effects: www.myspace.com/imnoteasygoing

Re-TROS: Official site: http://www.re-tros.com/face.html Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/rebuildingtherightsofstatue