1. 茘園 Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park
2. 山頂. 公仔. 波板糖 The Peak, The Doll and The Lollipop
3. Girls who don’t want to go home
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Semaine du 27 janvier 2009 / Week of January 27th, 2009
Listen live to Radio Centre-Ville in Montreal. My part plays every Tuesday nights at around 11PM as part of the Chinese Cantonese musical show.
AMK seems to have a certain cult status among today’s indie bands in Hong Kong. AMK stands for Adam Met Karl, where Adam is Adam Smith, while Karl is Karl Marx. They describe themselves as “one of the most influential local indie bands in HK” on their MySpace, which could be agreed upon, based on the fact that a bunch of bands got together and released In The Name of AMK (as seen on the picture here above), a tribute to the band published by Harbour Records and unfortunately out of stock.
AMK’s song topics vary between urban life and politics. They sound a lot like a band from the late 80s, early 90s, because they are precisely that. Their sound is eclectic: they have louder, noisier songs like 納粹黨勇戰希特拉 (Nazis vs. Hitler) and some more melodic ones like 轉轉轉 (Pirouette) that have elements like the chorus and violin that remind me of Belle and Sebastian (although AMK in fact predates B&S). They did a mix of “post-punk, blues rock, neo-classical, noiseike, gothic (and even rap)”.
I chose the songs quickly for the pre-recording last week and even botched my intervention on air where I claimed that Anson Mak was a boy! You can download songs from Mak’s personal website (check the page’s source and you’ll find links to the mp3 files). 茘園 (Lai Chi Kwok Amusement Park) is an instrumental piece named after a now-defunct Hong Kong amusement park.
Then, I chose 山頂·公仔·波板糖 (The Peak, the doll and the lollipop), from their 1995 album 請讓我回家 (Please Let Me Home), a cute indie rock song covered by My Little Airport on In The Name of AMK. Since I did know that In The Name of AMK was a cover album, I was pleasantly surprised when I heard the original. The cover version played on a synthesizer and had even been my phone ringer for a long time.
The last song was “Girls who don’t want to go home” also from that 1995 album, which contains my favourite songs so far. It sounds like the kind of song you’d use as the ending song to some 90s (or pseudo-90s) satirical movie.
Judging on the length of this entry, you could say that I’m presenting one of my favourite bands in a long time!