Taiwan’s indie kids have been packing out shows by Prairie WWWW (落差草原) for much of the past year, but the band’s excellence received an unexpected confirmation two weeks ago after they opened for New York math rockers Battles at The Wall, when Battles’ guitarist Ian Williams told the crowd, “They’re the best band we’ve played with on this tour, and we’ve played with quite a few good ones.”
Drummer and beat programmer Hu Yi-chih (胡一之) said they’ve been longtime fans of Battles and saw them during their first visit here in 2008.
“Being able to open for them, and to hear them say that, was something we almost couldn’t imagine,” he added.
Photo courtesy of Mile End Photography
In case you’re wondering, the four Ws in Prairie’s band name are not to be pronounced, serving as a pictogram for a waveform. The techno-naturalism is in keeping with the group’s brand of indie rock neo-psychedelia, which mixes computer-programmed beats with hand drumming, tribal face paint, group harmonies, folk guitar picking, field recordings and a sort of space rock experimentation that every once in a while coalesces into a marvelously tight, magical and catchy tune — almost a pop song.
Prairie released their first album, Soil (泥土), in September and, after several highly eclectic gigs, will conclude the release tour on Saturday at Basement Cafe in Taipei with a performance designed around the release of an accompanying book of poetry, printed on top of colorful abstract images of morphological forms created by Hu.
The poems — like every song on Soil — relate to words or phrases that band members wrote on slips of paper to determine the creative direction of the album.
Hu and multi-instrumentalist Wu Wei-hsiang (吳唯祥) started playing punk rock together in high school under the name Prairie (草原). But the band didn’t really begin to take shape until Wu, while studying at National Taiwan University of the Arts, met two more members, Apple Chang (張怡齡) and White Wu (吳柏廷).
This was around 2010 and 2011. All members agree they were influenced by Animal Collective as well as new music-making technologies like Ableton Live, a program for making beats.
“We knew we wanted to do something different from post rock,” White Wu says, noting the dominant trend in Taipei’s band scene at the time. “Something more humanistic, and more experimental. We wanted to be drum-driven music, not guitar driven music.”
What evolved was a sound driven by collective vocals and rhythms, with multiple members singing and drumming. In addition to bass, guitar, drums, keyboard and programmed beats, Wu Wei-hsiang and Chang both play the Chinese flute. The band also makes use of a toy store of small instruments ranging from African thumb pianos and mouth organs to talking drums and other percussion devices as well as incorporating field recordings of natural sounds.
One of Prairie’s most striking innovations, however, is the way they structure gigs. They create an extra stage inside a venue, so that when bands play over the course of a night, one can start just as the other is finishing, making for one continuous performance. As a result, the audience is constantly shifting around. Often, one or both of the “stages” are at ground level, so there is minimal separation from the crowd. It’s an ingenious way of breaking down the stage-audience hierarchy.
In keeping with the band’s we-could-always-be-more-experimental ethos, Hu says that tomorrow’s show won’t feature any of the songs on their new album, nor any from their first two Eps, but is rather designed around the poems in their book.
The other four members of the group, sitting around a table with us at Mos Burger, mumble assent. A few more words pop out to describe what’s coming: “poetry reading,” “ambient” and “improvisational.”
That may sound pretty hippy-dippy, but don’t be put off. Prairie has adopted experimentation as a way of doing things, much in the way that for many jazz musicians, improvisation is simply the way to play jazz.
To be honest, I’m not really sure what this next Prairie gig will be like either. I just know that from this band, you can always expect an interesting scene.
■ Prairie WWWW will host a special book release party tomorrow from 5pm to 7pm at Basement Cafe (樓下咖啡), 3, Ln 40, Andong St, Taipei City (台北市安東街40巷3號). Tickets are NT$300 at the door, one drink included.
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