Taichung’s indie music fans have a choice of post-rock bliss or emo rage this weekend, as Sugar Plum Ferry (甜梅號) and The Hindsight (光景消逝) hit town tomorrow.
The groups, which are associated with Uloud, the music label affiliated with Taipei live music venue The Wall (這牆), have been doing the rounds of the country’s live music venues to promote their new albums.
Sugar Plum Ferry, a pioneering post-rock band that formed in the late 1990s, plays at the Taichung Corridor Cafe Theater tomorrow at 7pm in support of its third CD, Islands on the Ocean of the Mind (腦海群島).
The four-piece composes and performs instrumentals that have many of the defining marks of the post-rock genre: slow and deliberate melodic themes played on electric guitar that build into droning rhythms, and dramatic spells of distortion and crashing drums. The music can get loud, but ultimately aims to sooth.
Sugar Plum Ferry also appears in Kaohsiung on May 8 and then in Hong Kong on May 22. For more details, visit the band’s Web site at
blog.roodo.com/sugarplumferry
On the other end of the emotional spectrum is The Hindsight, which takes the stage at
Sound Live House (迴響音樂藝文展演空間) tomorrow at 7pm.
This four-piece revels in melodramatic emo-rage, which will probably be best appreciated by fans of Linkin Park or Green Day. Lead vocalist and guitarist AJ is a veteran of the indie scene. He was one of the founding members of Anarchy, a popular group among the emerging punk scene in Taichung in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
On The Hindsight’s new release, From Dripping Tears, He Saw Hopes (在眼淚中看見希望), the band is tight and polished. AJ screams and whines a lot of his lyrics, many of which are delivered in stilted English. But the band’s energy is infectious (if metal and emo are your thing) and the rage feels real.
For either show, earplugs would be a good idea, especially at the front of the stage.
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