Comes with a 24 pp. booklet. In May 2014, Chinese experimental musician Yan Jun arrived in Montreal carrying little more than his voice, a few electronic devices, and a radical proposition: that the most profound music happens not in concert halls but in living rooms, kitchens, and bathrooms. Montreal Spy Diary/Nothing/Living Room Tour Montreal, released by ORAL Records, documents this month-long residency that would redefine both performance and documentation in contemporary sound art.

Yan Jun has spent over two decades investigating what he calls "non-music"—sound that emerges from the spaces between intention and accident, between performer and environment. Born in Lanzhou in 1973 and based in Beijing, his practice encompasses feedback improvisation, field recording, and what he describes as "temporary mandalas" created in domestic spaces. His philosophy is deceptively simple: "the concert is a temporary mandala, a metaphor for the world" where "there is no difference between large and small or professional and amateur."

The Montreal project emerged from Yan's "Living Room Tour" concept, initiated in 2011 as a response to China's inadequate sound systems and inattentive audiences. Curated by Eric Mattson as part of "Les Voisins / The Neighbors" series, these intimate concerts took place at Nicole & Eric's place, Nikki's place, Belinda's place, Sophie's place, and Victoria's place, as well as Casa del Popolo, in taxis, and on Montreal streets.

Montreal Spy Diary presents this documentation as a double album with profound conceptual depth. CD1 functions as "a sound diary," mixing field recordings with performances using found objects—kitchen sinks, furniture, snacks, coins—whatever each domestic space provided. Track 11 employs "big ears" created by Catherine Béchard & Sabin Hudon, while tracks 9 and 10 capture Yan's performance at Casa del Popolo, recorded by Mattson.

CD2, titled "Nothing," represents perhaps the project's most radical gesture. All feedbacks were "set up & interrupted by Yan Jun" but "initiated & recorded by Steve Bates" during a residency at MINUTE. This collaborative approach dissolves traditional authorship—Yan creates the conditions, but the space itself becomes the primary performer through feedback loops and acoustic resonance.

The accompanying 24-page booklet, featuring texts in Chinese, French, and English alongside photographs, functions as both documentation and artwork. Six additional digital releases provide expanded documentation of individual living room concerts, each capturing what "recordings are much different to the live sounds been heard by the audiences."

This isn't mere site-specific performance but a fundamental questioning of musical hierarchy. Yan's approach treats domestic spaces as equally valid venues for sonic investigation, creating what he calls "revolutionary commonality" that liberates "the event of sound and the event of listening from the socialized division of labor."

Montreal Spy Diary stands as essential documentation of experimental music's capacity to find profundity in the everyday. By abandoning traditional performance contexts, Yan Jun reveals how the most intimate spaces can become laboratories for reimagining the relationship between artist, audience, and environment. This is sound art that truly lives up to its name—work that transforms ordinary domestic life into extraordinary acoustic experience.