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[ CD REVIEWS: TAIWAN ]

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Black Hand Nakasi Workers’ Band (黑手那卡西工人樂隊)

Black Hand III (黑手那卡西工人樂隊第三輯)

Self-released

www.nakasi.org



Black Hand Nakasi Workers’ Band (黑手那卡西工人樂隊) is a group of labor activists who devote their musical talents to their cause. They see themselves as a bridge between folk music and social activism: they regularly hold music workshops to help Taiwan’s working classes “use their ‘language’ to sing out, speak out.”

On this third album, Black Hand Nakasi acts as a backing band for people like Chang Hsi-chu (張錫助), a truck driver who wrote and sang Monologue of a Truck Driver (司機的心情).

The song begins as a mournful nakasi melody, with Chang crooning in Hoklo about his grueling work shifts. The tune grows into a loud rock tune full of heavy metal riffs, with Chang swearing to carry on for the sake of his family.

The liner notes include passable English translations and provide information on each song, which often consists of personal testimonies from the album’s participants.

Do My Music (老子搞音樂), written by parking attendant Wang Ming-hui (王明惠) with the help of Black Hand Nakasi, could serve as band’s theme song.

Wang sings about discovering songwriting: “What’s a ‘note?’/I don’t understand ‘key’/Then there’s ‘chord’/Add to that ‘beat’/What are these things?” (啥是note/不動key/他們到底是什麼東西?/還有chord加上beat這些又是什麼玩意?).

In the song’s chorus, he sings that Do Re Mi Fa So is a “good weapon that you can keep on using.” The tune is spirited and its nakasi-flavored rock instrumen-tation has a “Taiwanese flavor” that taike (台客) rockers could only wish for.

In addition to the slightly dated folk and rock that dominates the album, a few modern idioms get thrown into the mix, such as I Want My Day Off (我要休假). The tune is an electronica/hip-hop number with rousing choruses from Indonesian, Vietnamese, Thai and Filipino workers, who each take turns blurting out the song’s title in their respective languages.

Although a few songs are rough around the edges, this album could be seen as honest folk music without romance or pretense.

— David Chen



Tizzy Bac

If I See Hell I Won’t Fear the Devil (如果看見地獄，我就不怕魔鬼)

Wonder Music (彎的音樂)

www.tizzybac.com



Tizzy Bac has always been one of a kind in Taiwan’s indie scene. The band’s piano-driven pop has made it stand out among noise-loving punks, metal heads and post-rock shoegazers. The trio’s third studio release, If I See Hell I Won’t Fear the Devil (如果看見地獄，我就不怕魔鬼), shows a band more comfortable than ever with its quirky but catchy pop-rock sound.

The title track, borrowed from a sentence written by a 10-year-old girl in her grammar homework, best expresses the overall mood of the album. Playful electronica beats and synthesizer sounds evoke childlike innocence, while the eerie hum of the musical saw sets a fearful tone in the background. The song builds into a rocking crescendo and resolves with wistful melodrama worthy of a Queen song.

In a recent interview with the Taipei Times, vocalist and pianist Chen Hui-ting (陳惠婷) cited pop culture movies as one of her songwriting inspirations. This is evident in the album’s cinematic opener, Iron Bac (鐵之貝克), which rocks with dreamy wonder and builds into a series of emotional bursts. On the refrains, Chen’s graceful piano riffs grow chaotic and bounce back and forth between bassist Hsu Che-yu’s (許哲毓) driving, distorted bass lines and drummer Lin Chien-yuan’s (林前源) exuberant cymbal crashes.

A band without a guitarist can be a relief but also a challenge, and Tizzy Bac does well in this regard. On Heather, Chen’s piano adds a sense of flowing space to the half punk-, half prog rock-flavored backdrop by Lin and Hsu. Hsu employs electronic trickery on 1.000 Whites of My Eyes and The Last Confession by using an electric guitar simulator on his bass, but the effect blends in seamlessly with the song.

Chen’s siren-like voice and flawless delivery is showcased in Danny is Gay (丹尼爾是Gay) and Playoff (季後賽). She sings with intensity and precision, yet has a touch that always comes across as light and soothing. While the English lyrics to the rock ballad Shall We Dance may not immediately resonate with native speakers, her voice remains captivating.

— David Chen



Three Day Bender

Truce

Self-released

Myspace.com/threedaybendertaiwan

Three Day Bender, an expat trio from Taichung, offers a taste of its blues-flavored pop rock with this debut offering.

The six-song EP opens and ends with two versions of Mac, featuring a soulful vocal duet sung by drummer, guitarist and songwriter Pat Reid and bassist Catharine Brown.

Reid, who produced the EP, keeps Taiwanese audiences in mind with a Mandarin song, I Have Love (我有愛). Its heart-on-sleeve lyrics look cheesy on paper (You are beautiful/I can’t be without you/Love me/I love you, 妳是很美麗，我無法沒有妳/Love me/我愛妳), but the song works. Reid avoids being sappy and delivers the vocals dark and sweet.

Christopher Bailey’s impressive electric guitar playing is showcased on the EP’s title track, with hair-raising vocal harmonies from the band. The band cooks on Bender, a funky swamp blues written by Brown, with some searing harmonica solos by Greg Ford.

At the end of the day, Truce feels thin, only because the songs are catchy and leave you wanting more.

— David Chen



Rice and Love (愛吃飯)

Hohak Band (好客樂隊)

Wind Records (風潮音樂)



Rice and Love (愛吃飯), the new album by Chen Guan-yu (陳冠宇) and the Hohak Band (好客樂隊), derives from a worthy ambition to celebrate the simple life close to nature and to push away the artifice and toxic environment of the big city. There is a combination of music and an ideological imperative of a better, cleaner life that is made amply clear from the list of organic rice farms listed as part of the liner notes.

It is a useful and interesting list, more so indeed that the postcard-perfect pictures of Chen in various farmer-like poses in the paddy fields of Taitung.

Rice and Love (愛吃飯) is more about rice than it is about music, and though it is pleasant enough to listen too, the album has such a total lack of urgency that it is in constant danger of becoming elevator music. This is exaggerated further by the bossa nova rhythm behind the rather anodyne acoustic guitar, which is the dominant musical style on the album.

Even a number like Stamping the Rice Fields (採下去), with its attempt at the repetitive beat of a planting song, fails to generate much energy.

“I’ll push my trouble into the ground,” Chen sings, but clearly the troubles are not very great, and the comparison has a preppy self-regard that verges on the annoying. Despite its ideological commitment to a return to the land, the music has none of the ties to traditional rustic music that can be found in the early works of Labor Exchange (交工樂隊), in which Chen started his musical career. The tag line of the album is “Rice: a staple for the body; Music: a staple for the soul.” Unfortunately, Chen provides listeners with a pretty thin diet.

— Ian Bartholomew

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