Red Hot Chili Peppers fans who may have expected chunky, slapping bass lines, explosive guitar and power-plant loads of energy from By the Way may end up staggering in a semi coma to the stereo to press the stop button half way through the first listen of this album.
It's confirmed, the Peppers have irrevocably changed course, and the white boy power funk of Mother's Milk and Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic is dead and gone, buried along with the band's storied heroin habits. This isn't necessarily a bad development for the music, though. If judged without weighing the offense caused to Peppers purists, By the Way is a decent rock album by a great band.
The album's title track will be the most recognizable Peppers song, but it's hardly indicative of what's to come. Some of John Frusciante's guitar riffs sound almost lifted from the Doobie Brothers and Flea's trademark bass work is mixed into the background to the point of being almost inaudible. Things get downright strange when strings come in on Midnight and two tracks later we're listening to Mexican guitar on Cabron.
But the oddest thing about By the Way is that despite the complete transformation the Peppers have obviously undergone, the album is almost perversely catchy and listenable.
For the past two years Jay Chou (
Since his eponymous debut, Jay's music stood out mostly because he'd written and produced the music himself, giving it far more personality than the tired pastiche of musical styles on most Mando-pop albums. Jay is an R&B singer and doesn't even pretend to rock or do the electronica thing.
On Ba Du Kong Jian, Jay gives himself a few more chances to rap than on Jay or Fantasy, but his delivery is more convincing when he's trying to be soulful instead of tough. Jay's impressive vocal range is given a thorough workout that at points has him and his backup singers sounding like Boyz II Men, which is clearly what they were shooting for.
Sections of this album are overly produced with fancy samples and the odd traditional Chinese instrument that detract from Jay's voice, but overall it's a solid step forward that will probably keep any pretenders to the Mando-pop throne at bay for a while.
If you've hung out at Underworld or at Zeitgeist, you may have heard Bad Daughter, one of Taipei's quirkiest rock bands. Now, instead of hearing them live on so-so sound systems, you can enjoy them on CD. And it's just in time too, because Hairless Bear is about as good as it gets for a dog days album.
Anyone who hasn't heard Bad Daughter, should probably best imagine them as a cross-breeding of Shonen Knife and Puffy Ayumi. Sometimes they rock in the classic power chord sense, but even when the distortion kicks in there's never a hint of rock angst. That's mostly thanks to the soothing monotone of singer Hsiang-ru (
Bad Daughter won't knock listeners' socks off with their originality. But, the jangly music and sardonic lyrics hit the same funny bone as Belle and Sebastian's early material, which makes this an addictive sing-along album, or just one to put on while lazing around immobilized by the summer heat.
Let's all hope that some of the local DJs pick up Connect by Mark Farina.
Farina is widely hailed as the best house DJ at the moment and on this CD he's put together 17 supremely listenable and funky remixes. Starting with the first track, the music has a catchy Latin feel to it, from the lyrics to the accelerated salsa and samba rhythms and jazzy horns that characterized his Mushroom Jazz style, which he developed at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s.
But Connect isn't another post-Ricky Martin Latin house album. It's got a lot of the dubby, hip-hop elements of Chicago house, which adds a sharper edge to the sound and gives it more thick, rump-shaking bass lines.
A lot of the tracks have a relatively low bpm range, in the 100 to 110 area, that lend themselves more to lounging than dancing. But even the faster dance tracks are mixed to sound like actual songs to be listened to at home, instead of being long repetitive tracks designed solely with DJs looking for a mixing cue.
In 2012, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) heroically seized residences belonging to the family of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “purchased with the proceeds of alleged bribes,” the DOJ announcement said. “Alleged” was enough. Strangely, the DOJ remains unmoved by the any of the extensive illegality of the two Leninist authoritarian parties that held power in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan. If only Chen had run a one-party state that imprisoned, tortured and murdered its opponents, his property would have been completely safe from DOJ action. I must also note two things in the interests of completeness.
Taiwan is especially vulnerable to climate change. The surrounding seas are rising at twice the global rate, extreme heat is becoming a serious problem in the country’s cities, and typhoons are growing less frequent (resulting in droughts) but more destructive. Yet young Taiwanese, according to interviewees who often discuss such issues with this demographic, seldom show signs of climate anxiety, despite their teachers being convinced that humanity has a great deal to worry about. Climate anxiety or eco-anxiety isn’t a psychological disorder recognized by diagnostic manuals, but that doesn’t make it any less real to those who have a chronic and
When Bilahari Kausikan defines Singapore as a small country “whose ability to influence events outside its borders is always limited but never completely non-existent,” we wish we could say the same about Taiwan. In a little book called The Myth of the Asian Century, he demolishes a number of preconceived ideas that shackle Taiwan’s self-confidence in its own agency. Kausikan worked for almost 40 years at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reaching the position of permanent secretary: saying that he knows what he is talking about is an understatement. He was in charge of foreign affairs in a pivotal place in
Just far enough out of reach to keep big crowds away, but not so far as to make a day-trip an exhausting affair, Jinhuang Hot Spring (近黃溫泉) is a nice winter escape for your next visit to Taitung County. The pools are numerous, the water is the perfect temperature and the walk in is not too challenging, though you will have to get your feet wet. The adventure starts in the county’s Jinlun Village (金崙), which is accessible by train, but you’ll want to have your own car, scooter or bicycle for this trip. If you arrive by train, walk up
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