Clad in a woman's dress, long hair dripping with sweat, Chiu Sheng (秋生) had a statement for his Chinese audience.
"Last night I stayed out drinking later than anybody else," announced the guitarist for digital hardcore band Fish and the Bedroom Riot (床上暴動). He had just destroyed his instrument and tossed the remnants into the crowd at Yu Gong Yi Shan (愚公移山), Beijing's equivalent of Taipei's Underworld (地下社會) music pub. "I got on a bicycle ... turned too hard and wiped out," he continued, and, as the crowd cheered, he lifted his hand in a hang loose sign and said, "But I can still rock!"
Fish and the Bedroom Riot (床上暴動) is what happens when Underworld regulars get together and decide to form a band. Showing the potential to become Taiwan's zaniest, most infectious rockers since the original incarnation of LTK Commune (濁水溪公社), the group played its first show late last year after another band had canceled a weekend gig and Underworld needed to fill the space. Chiu Sheng, a sound engineer better known as the guitarist for heavy metal band Triple Six (666), says they had practiced together for one month before that night. Despite such little preparation, the side project worked. In May they were invited to perform at Beijing's Midi festival after an organizer saw them on Youtube.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES AND COURTESY OF FISH AND THE BEDROOM RIOT
ALTER EGO IN DRAG
"Our band is about destruction, sex, and breaking the law," Chiu Sheng explained over cans of Coors Light with band members Hsiao Yao and Dizzy in front of the Shida-area Mo! Relax cafe. And besides, he added, "I can't wear a dress when I play for Triple Six." Despite his cross-dressing, he appears ordinary on stage compared to his band mates. The singer, Hsiao Yao (小姚) of indie-rock band Varo, wears a Spider-Man mask and star-shaped nipple covers, screams nonsense and pounces around like a shaman. Backup singer, dancer and sampler operator Dizzy wears an S&M outfit he bought off the Internet (he says his girlfriend won't let him use it at home) with a microphone stuck in his mouth through the bondage mask's mouthpiece. Fish crawls around in the background wielding an oscillator, a generator used to convert electricity into sound, and wearing what looks like the mating of a purple burka and a hazmat suit. "When I play for Varo I feel kind of shy," said Hsiao Yao. "With Bedroom Riot there's more passion. Wearing a mask helps," he said, Chiu Sheng and Dizzy nodding in agreement.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES AND COURTESY OF FISH AND THE BEDROOM RIOT
This is a group that, somewhat like the UK's Alabama 3, has welded diverse styles - in this case heavy metal, indie rock, hardcore, industrial, noise, trance and experimental techno - into a sound that is both incredibly raw and extremely danceable, combining the pageantry of heavy metal and dressing up in weird outfits without the kitsch or glam this would normally entail. In both their performances and their music, it is obvious that, freed from the constraints of their respective genres, they are letting loose and having fun.
Musically speaking, the band's most distinctive elements seem to be Chiu Sheng's virtuosic guitar, Hsiao Yao's screaming, and the weird things Fish does with his oscillators and other electronica gadgets, complimented on stage by Dizzy's outlandish theatrics. Though his solos sound like something Yngwie Malmsteen or Steve Vai would play, Chiu Sheng listed his influences for this project as Atari Teenage Riot, New Order, Blondie and Prodigy. Xiao Yao said his were grind core bands like Napalm Death. Dizzy said he channels the Happy Mondays when he dances. "We're trance metal," Hsiao Yao said, inventing a new genre as he tried to define his band's music in a few words. "We're jerking off," Chiu Sheng explained.
Other members include bassist Hsiao Bao (小寶), who is eight months pregnant but played with the band at last weekend's OKGO music festival on the beach in Jinshan (金山), singer and electronica musician Mei-mei (滿延芬), and drummer Da Shi Xiong (大師兄). They've just self-released a CD and DVD, which include footage of concerts in Bejing and Taipei, the band's seven songs, and 10 more electronica tracks by Fish, long a DJ at the now-defunct Spin nightclub and currently a member of DJ Lim Giong's (林強) Her-He Party crew. The two-disc set sells for NT$50 at Underworld and Mo! Relax cafe. It will cost more at music stores. Chiu Sheng said the band is also considering a buy-six-beers-get-one-album-free promotion at Underworld.
NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED
To be sure, Fish and the Bedroom Riot is not to everyone's taste. Their appeal is limited to audiences who like to dance and flail around to loud, thrashing music. Nor are they for the easily offended. Members frequently use metaphors for masturbation when describing their music, and on the first track of their new DVD it looks like that's what they're doing. Finally, it remains to be seen whether the band will sustain the spontaneous chaos of their first performances and songs as they write more material and craft an image.
If they maintain the craziness, however, Taiwan has finally found a worthy 21st century successor to the old LTK.
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