Category: Musique / Music

1. 冒險 Realm
2. 愛上你是書中主角 The Library
3. 甚麼時候

What’s the band this week? It’s a Hong Kong trio called “InLove”. I heard of them for the first time in a collab called 看不見的城市漫遊invisible cities journey, released by Hong Kong store Mackie Study.

They sound folk pop rock, and as a trio are somewhat of a peculiarity in Hong Kong’s vocalist-dominated musical landscape. This is the URL to their (promotional) blog: http://realm-inlove.blogspot.com/

inLove won a silver prize for best song (hum?) at Tom Lee’s music contest in 2002. They’ve been together ever since, releasing an EP (with their wining song, 甚麼時候), a full-length album called 冒險 Realm. In 2007, they released an album in the “Lab Yellow Session 03” series by an arts and culture group called 89268.

1. 操縱 (Manipulation)
2. 下午茶 (Afternoon Tea)
3. 膊頭斜 (Giving The Shoulder)

On my trip to Hong Kong in 2005, Tai Tau Fat’s (大頭佛) first album was also a first album of “Chinese independent music” (from Hong Kong) that I picked up. Of the two that I picked up, I totally went by the cover art. Tai Tau Fat’s was interesting because its logo was an imitation of a well-known Hong Kong fast food chain’s called Café de Coral, or “Tai Ka Lok” (大家樂).

Tai Tau Fat, which literally means big buddha head, and means a big mess, has existed since 1997 and is still around today, such as on MySpace. They even released an EP this summer appropriately called “I Love Summer”.

The music from the 2004 sounded a little more fresh, exaggeratedly cute. In fact, they characterize themselves as “cutie rock”, notably because of vocalist Yan, 阿欣. Their inspirations: USA’s Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Japan’s best in cutie rock, long-dead band Judy and Mary, and duo Puffy.

1. 和平之城 (Peace city)
2. Wake Up
3. 存在論

Before I knew what they were called, I really really liked one of their songs, “The Earth gets a fright”, even going as far as thinking it was sung by Natural Q (It was from Recycles, Natural Q’s 2nd and half album after Waa left the band).

No, Bearbabes (熊寶貝) is its own band, yet another Taiwanese indie rock band. My insight is that if Western countries were open to the idea of indie bands from Chinese Asia, it would have the same effect as other Made in China products. But because they’re cultural products, the game is a different one. Japanese and Korean bands, idem – but the former have been around longer and often serve as models for other Asian bands to base themselves from.

Aside from this, Bearbabes is a very pleasant-sounding band. “I could” and 和平之城 (he ping zi cheng or “peace’s city”), the live recording from the first Kafka Urban Folk compilation (look on Indievox). I think it’s otherwise a series that you can buy for specific artists of recordings made by local or other Chinese artists performing at the Kafka By The Shore café, named after Murakami’s novel, yes – it was a big hit among indie kids in Asia, I guess.

Semaine du 7 octobre 2008 / Week of October 7th, 2008

– Get the songs from the WFMU blog.

This week at the show, I’m presenting Sakura and the Quests. They’re from Singapore and the late 60s, and are in fact a pop singer (Sakura Teng 櫻花) and the band with whom she was playing for the time of this recording. In the album (that you can get from here-above url), you will find a cover of Michelle, and various other covers of English songs from that period. Why is it so interesting? The kitschy feel of the sixties in Chinese, of course!

(On the picture, Rita Chao and Sakura Teng lying down.)

Semaine du 30 septembre 2008 / Week of September 30th, 2008

Cette chronique hebdomadaire sur la musique indépendante chinoise est diffusée à Radio Centre-Ville (102.3FM), les mardis entre 22h30 et 23h30. L’émission complète est disponible sur ce fichier MP3, à partir du lendemain de l’émission.

This weekly segment on independent Chinese music is broadcasted every Tuesday between 10:30PM and 11:30PM on Radio Centre-Ville (102.3FM). The full-length show is available at this MP3 file, starting from the day following the show.

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1. Let’s go to Paris (Live in Kenting – Spring Wave)
2. Small steps dance
3. Child

It was my birthday last weekend, so this is a little treat for myself!

Cheer Chen is a singer from Taiwan, and she is the queen of this brand of folk rock. I made a trip to Kenting to listen to her (as well as other bands), and biked in the dark countryside just to get to the venue, at the Maobitou park, closeby (10-15km) the main town of Kenting. In fact, the whole experience afterwards was quite memorable: going down a slope in the dark towards the sea, then encountering some village straight out of one of those slow Japanese movies (because Taiwan, at many respects, resembles Japan a lot) with old folks hanging out or playing some local game at the roadside outdoor bar or seafood restaurant…

The Spring Wave festival, a more commercial festival (sponsored by big labels and featuring Taiwanese music stars like Mayday), was nothing like Spring Scream and not my cup of tea. I recorded the first song tonight from Cheer Chen’s performance at some point past 10pm. It was a song called Let’s go together to Paris, that doesn’t feature on any of her albums, and which only release is sung by a Taiwanese artiste.

This poster here above was a reproduction bought in a shop called Mackie Study in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. There is another shop nearby that had a large advertisement panel. Comparatively speaking, Cheer Chen is relatively unknown, and a singer that indie kids tend to like.

(And, thanks Ly for saving the segment!)

Semaine du 23 septembre 2008 / Week of September 23rd, 2008

Cette chronique hebdomadaire sur la musique indépendante chinoise est diffusée à Radio Centre-Ville (102.3FM), les mardis entre 22h30 et 23h30. L’émission complète est disponible sur ce fichier MP3, à partir du lendemain de l’émission.

This weekly segment on independent Chinese music is broadcasted every Tuesday between 10:30PM and 11:30PM on Radio Centre-Ville (102.3FM). The full-length show is available at this MP3 file, starting from the day following the show.

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1. 太陽餅 (live) “Sun cake” (live at Kafka Cafe, Taipei)
2. 小美人魚 “Beautiful little mermaid”
3. 阿呆 “Ah-dull”

We’re once again going for cute Taiwanese band who like to think that they’re Japanese! In fact, it’s not surprising that the Taiwanese take so much from the Japanese, since they were a colony of the former for almost half of the past century… Taiwan looks a lot like Japan.

This band is also recently deceased, since the end of August, while remaining a one-woman band. They’re the Freckle 雀斑, from Taipei, a band that I like, but which I should better consume in small doses. The female lead-singer’s voice is high-pitch on purpose and can destroy your sense of listening if too much of it is taken at once.

I guess that they were a big thing for the year since releasing their only full-album, which you see here above. The first song that I am offering comes in fact from a live album that I bought on Indievox, while the second comes from 像星星一樣 Like a Star, a compilation made by a Kaohsiung rock festival.

As I was looking for songs to download from Kaohsiung band Orange Doll 橘娃娃 (some v. obscure band – but I fell in love at Spring Scream 2008), I found the most remarkable website for Chinese indie since Neocha.

This website is INDIEVOX, based in Taiwan. Unlike Neocha, Indievox is also (and foremost) an online music store, on top of being a community-based website à la MySpace (also just more well-designed). According to the infos that I am able to parse, the site was founded by Pochang WU 吳柏蒼 (see his Indievox page), a lead singer and guitarist for a band called echo 回聲樂團, and a one-time NYU computer science student.

Its most interesting feature is certainly that it offers MP3s free of DRM, which you can buy with domestic methods of payment (a Chunghwa phone, the 7-Eleven payment system), but also through internationally recognized means like Paypal. I live in Canada, and had no trouble “adding money” to my account.

I got the lowest increment, which seems to be 5 USD, or 157.6 NT, or 5.25 CAD. Most songs will cost 15 NT, which is 50 cents. Considering that Taiwan has a similar cost of living to Canada, this is definitely a steal. I saw full-length MP3 releases of albums published by big labels, like this Cafe Kafka Unplugged Volume 2, for the expected price of 300 NT (about 10 CAD).

According to these posts, Indievox seems to have been launched in March 2008. Just browsing the site, I managed to find many big names of Taiwanese indie like Nylas and Freckle 雀斑, Bearbabes 熊寶貝. I found one Hong Kong artist, aniDa, and there is also a whole range of Western pop to choose from.

To the IT professional in me, even the choice of technology is commendable, with the Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP combination, and generous use of URL rewriting.