DUWEI NIGHTS did not really start in China.

There was something before that. Like always. A beginning before the beginning, and then things just continued somewhere else.

And to be honest, there was also a bit of intoxication in all of this. Not just alcohol. A mix of things. A certain state. A kind of energy. Maybe also a need to forget some things for a while.

Anyway.

That is how I got introduced to Dig!.

It was around 2012 or 2013, at a friend’s place. I had already spent more than ten years listening mostly to rock and metal. Loud stuff, intense stuff. I still love a lot of it. But at that time I was starting to feel a bit stuck with it.

Everything felt more and more controlled. More technical. More calculated. Guitars, drums, arrangements, everything had to be tight, precise, almost perfect. It started to feel a bit like a machine.

There was less space for mistakes. Less space for things that just happen. Less emotion, in a way.

So I was already in that state when we watched Dig!.

At first, I thought it would just be a good documentary. You see Anton Newcombe talking big, saying he is going to destroy the system, do things his way. Classic rock attitude. A bit chaotic, a bit over the top. I thought, ok, this is going to be entertaining.

And it was.

But not in the way I expected.

What hit me was not just the story. It was the contrast. The tension between the two bands. Two ways of dealing with music, success, control, and everything around it.

On one side, something messy, unstable, sometimes self-destructive, but still very alive. Still trying. Still pushing.

On the other side, something that worked, that reached a certain level of success, but that felt flatter after that. Less urgent. Less necessary.

Maybe that is a bit rough, but that is how it felt to me at the time.

What stayed with me was this idea of resistance. Not in a romantic way. Just the fact of trying to keep something real in your music, even if it is not clean, even if it does not fit, even if it costs you something.

After that, I started listening differently.

I moved away from music that felt too calculated, too perfect, too controlled. I started digging more into things that felt rawer, more independent, more unpredictable.

That is how I got deeper into The Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Years later, when Revelation came out in 2014, it hit me again. That record stayed on repeat for hours. It felt like something coming back up. Not perfect, not polished, but alive.

At the same time, I did not really find that feeling anymore in what I was hearing from The Dandy Warhols. It just did not connect the same way for me. That is fine. It is just how it landed.

What really matters is what that moment opened.

That period pushed me into a different direction. More underground stuff. More independent scenes. More curiosity. More digging. More time spent going deep into something instead of just jumping from one thing to another.

Bands, sounds, festivals, random discoveries, long listening sessions, weird internet holes. Everything started to connect differently.

It felt like opening a door I did not even know I was looking for.

And that stayed.

I think that is also part of what DUWEI NIGHTS is.

Not just sharing music, but keeping track of those moments where something shifts. Where your way of listening changes. Where you stop just consuming things and start actually paying attention again.

Dig! was one of those moments for me.

It was not just a film.

It was more like a turning point.