Carsick Cars are in Austin, playing SxSW with Queen Sea Big Shark courtesy of Converse. If you want to see them when they get back from the US, you may have to go somewhere different than normal. For the first band of Chinese alternative music are playing somewhere very strange indeed. Hangzhou Stadium, to be precise, on April 9, with Wang Xiaokun and the actress Wang Luodan, all courtesy of Coca Cola.

Is this brave or foolhardy? For a band affectionately dubbed the Chinese equivalent of Sonic Youth, it seems like a bizarre mix indeed. Has Coke thought context, or have they pulled in a band that they think are famous but don’t understand why? Will a stadium full of mainstream fans of the famous actress and the famous pop star be turned on or off by a band that take their cues from noise and avant garde rather than honey and sugar, or will Carsick Cars become the first truly mainstream alt band in China? It’s certainly something we will be watching with interest – it could be genius: what do we know?

FYI, they are the guys and girls with coke bottle tops over their heads.