Wang Yu-jun (王榆鈞)
The Tracks on the Beach (沙灘上的腳印)
Self-released
music-yujun.blogspot.com
Wang Yu-jun (王榆鈞) is a 29-year-old singer-songwriter whose work thrives in a world of theater. This album, a mixture of noir-ish acoustic folk and electronica, draws from her collaboration with director and actor Hsu Yen-ling (徐堰鈴) and the Shakespeare’s Wild Sisters Group (莎士比亞的妹妹們的劇團). Wang, who formally trained in theater at National Taiwan University of the Arts, performed this music live for a production of The Tracks on the Beach (沙灘上的腳印), a play by the group that was inspired by the work of French writer Maguerite Duras.
Wang’s songs are simple and beautiful, and are marked by a melancholic tinge that covers even light-hearted, sing-songy numbers such as Sweet 3 (Short). She starts by humming the melody on a kazoo while strumming a folk-gospel chord progression on a classical guitar. The English lyrics, written by Hsu, are obtuse (“We point the point now”) and some parts might sound grating to a native speaker (“so we together now”). But Wang’s overall delivery smooths out the rough edges. Her whispery, sweet voice and breath-heavy pauses (one part Nico, another part 1960s Bob Dylan) grab your attention, and her detached delivery leaves an unsettling feeling.
The song also makes more sense when considered in light of the play. Tracks revolves around a section of Duras’ novel The Ravishing of Lol Stein in which the main character, Lola Valerie Stein, is haunted by the memory of her fiance, who betrayed her by falling in love with another woman at a dance. This caused Stein to go mad, and led her to become obsessed with the lover of a childhood friend. Sweet 3 sounds as if it were articulating Stein’s madness. A second version of the song, which appears later in the album, is laced with sampled drums and distorted electric guitars and has a darker, more sinister feel.
Falling Down Vibration, a classical-sounding piano piece, leaves a lasting impression not only for its solitary gloom, but also because there are five different versions interspersed throughout the album. The variations in tempo — and more importantly, mood — make each version unique, thanks in part to the exquisite cello accompaniment played by Jo Luo (羅翡翠). Wang also recruited KbN’s (凱比鳥) Jerry Fang (方宜正, credited in the album notes as Jez. F) to help on drums, sampled electronic sounds and noise. His hypnotic drum grooves help set the album’s overall tone on the mournful and epic opening track Motherland.
Hsu, the director and actor from Tracks, appears now and again to read monologues in Mandarin that add life to the album’s gray-ish tones. Her diction on Perhaps, What Thing (也許,什麼東西) is mesmerizing, and this performance exemplifies the restless spirit of Wang’s music.
— David Chen
Coromandel Express
Self-titled
Himalaya Records
www.coromandelexpress.com
Coromandel Express, named after the flagship train that links northern and southern India, calls its music “fusion within fusion.” On this debut release, the quartet combines two Indian classical traditions, Hindustani music and Carnatic music, along with other influences: singer and flutist Paige Su (蘇珮卿) and her husband, percussionist Cody Byassee, formally trained in classical music and jazz.
The sounds here are unmistakably Indian, though, with the lush droning sounds of the sitar and buoyant rhythms of the tablas, performed by Japanese musicians Ryohei Kanemitsu and Toshihiro Wakaike, both of whom are devoted students of Hindustani music from northern India. For their part, Su and Byassee are also enthusiasts of music from the sub-continent and have studied with Indian percussionist and teacher Poovalur Sriji.
The group members have the credentials and backgrounds to perform this technically challenging music, but you don’t need any expertise to enjoy it. Coromandel Express lures listeners with delicate melodies and pervasive, funky grooves.
Sukhena, written by Wakaike and Kanemitsu and based on a traditional raga piece, is a prime example. The song features Su on flute and Kanemitsu on sitar, with the two trading solo sections, propped up by Wakaike on tablas and Byassee, who provides a bass/snare sound on the cajon (a box drum). The song culminates three quarters of the way through with an exciting, tension-building solo by Kanemitsu that ends with an unfortunate lapse in momentum — it feels like there should be more drama or some kind of climactic change. But all in all, the group puts on an excellent performance.
A hypnotic chant lends a playful charm to the beginning of Coromandel Sandalwood, with swirling melodies from Su and Kanemitsu, again on flute and sitar. The quartet pushes it a little too far with an interlude that references the Beatles’ Norwegian Wood, but this part does accomplish the job of providing a soothing change from the song’s dense rhythmic figures.
The album also includes one of Su’s original compositions, Raindrop Still Life (靜止的雨滴). The tablas and sitar fit in nicely with this piece, a sophisticated, beautiful pop number on which Su sings and plays the harp. (She also recorded another version for a solo release reviewed in the Oct. 30 edition of the Taipei Times.) The group ends on a traditional note with an arrangement of Gram Chara Ai Ranga Mati, a lilting folk song written by the Bengali literary figure Rabindranath Tagore.
— David Chen
The White Eyes (白目樂隊)
Dead Boy (死男孩)
Uloud Music (有料音樂)
It’s time to break out that old cassette tape player (if you’re not old enough to have owned one, ask to borrow your parents’). The White Eyes (白目樂隊) have made a brief return with a set of three new songs released as a limited edition EP on cassette, and it certainly sounds like the 1980s and 1990s all over again.
The band says the new songs were inspired by the 2004 British zombie flick Shaun of the Dead, and wrote in a press release for their recent tour promoting the EP that they hoped to see the cassette tape used as a “lethal weapon” in a B-movie someday.
Female lead singer Gao Xiao-gao (高小糕) and her bandmates have inched away from the guitar-drenched garage rock they started with, and have gone all out with synths and drum machines this time around. The brief instrumental XXX is a techno-rock romp; Dead Boy (死男孩) has an industrial/grunge vibe, but leaves room for Gao’s signature sass. In Lust I Lost is an atmospheric and dreamy number that is one of the band’s best songs to date.
My nostalgia trip ended abruptly when I realized that none of the cassette players in my house were in working condition. I resorted to getting the MP3s from indievox.com as the cassette comes with a free download code. The tracks can also be purchased directly from Indievox.
— David Chen
Jay Chou (周杰倫)
Exclamation Mark (驚歎號)
JVR
After making a much-touted Hollywood debut in The Green Hornet and hosting his own talk show here in Taiwan, the king of Mando-pop returns to music for his 11th studio album, Exclamation Mark (驚歎號). With this musically rich and envelope-pushing album, Chou proves he is capable of leading the pop trend for a second decade.
The title track is a heavy-metal pop gem in the vein of his earlier Golden Armor (黃金甲), the theme song for the kung-fu epic Curse of the Golden Flower (滿城盡帶黃金甲). Chou incorporates the Taiwanese slang wakao (哇靠, which translates to something like “holy shit”) into an inspirational anthem. Another highlight, How Are You (你好嗎), is a meaty ballad with an irresistible melody that will likely help it climb the karaoke charts.
The collaboration of Chou and his lyricist partner Vincent Fang (方文山) resulted in two of the album’s most fascinating tracks. With Bewitching Melody (迷魂曲), Chou uses a falsetto as a backup instrument in an electronica track that blends R ’n’ B and urban groove. In Piano Wound (琴傷), Chou attempts an anchorman-like pronunciation to cook up a dreamy piece that merges hip-hop and a hypnotic piano session.
Chou shows diversity by tackling rock in The World’s Not Over (世界未末日), flirts with jazzy grooves in Sailors Afraid of Water (水手怕水) and revisits his Chinese-flavored style (中國風) in the nostalgic track Shadow Puppetry (皮影戲).
Chou penned the lyrics himself for tracks such as Mine Mine and Princess Syndrome (公主病), displaying a fondness for colloquial slang that keeps him connected with today’s youth. He may have been sitting on his pop king laurels for over a decade, but he hasn’t lost touch.
— Andrew C.C. Huang
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would