It's a hazard of reporting on rock bands that interviews take place after late-night rehearsals in the back rooms of studios strewn with beer cans and cigarette butts. Not so with Aadia (阿弟仔), who cuts a remarkably clean image despite the serrated edge of his music.
Happy with the progress made in rehearsal, Aadia calls it an early evening and steps over to a cafe adjacent to Huashan Music House (華山音樂館), where he'll be performing this Saturday evening. His guitarist Chen Chien-wu (陳建武) and drummer Q-mao (Q毛) tag along for a glass of pearl-milk tea and an interview with the Taipei Times. They stay long enough to make sure their names are printed correctly then leave Aadia to fend for himself.
It's his show, after all. With the release last August of his third album, Balance (平衡), Aadia has secured himself a firm place in Taiwan's small pantheon of hard-core rockers. Chen and Q signed on just before Balance, creating an album that's a distinct departure from Aadia's earlier works, though he's still the one writing the songs.
PHOTO COURTESY OF AADIA
"I did all the work on my first and second albums. When Chen and Q joined, it made for a much harder sound. They're into old-school metal. ? I'm more into hip-hop, rap and new metal," said Aadia, who with a cherub face and fashion frames doesn't look the role of the hard-core rocker.
Joining them on the album is Joe, formerly know as XL, a rapper whose English-language lyrics can bite the ear of first-time listeners; "The world tastes like a box of expired milk/ Take it back cuz the world is ours/ We chinky-eyed slants are getting' up, standin' up/ Fight the power till we see the victory hour/ I speak your language don't mean I'm your slave/ I speak your language cuz I'm about to invade." Joe has since gone to invade America and Aadia picks up the lyrics in his stead.
The hybrid sound they've created juxtaposes English and Chinese rap against Aadia's smoothly sung choruses and lays it all on top of standard metal guitar riffs that provide as much percussion as Q-mao's drumming. Traditional Chinese opera instruments jam along on several tracks to give the sound flesh; an erhu lends a bouncy riff to Map (地圖) and Chang (
PHOTO COURTESY OF AADIA
Perhaps the best description of the sound is found on the cover of the album, which Aadia designed himself. His pen-and-ink drawing depicts an ancient Chinese god angrily shredding on a guitar. "There's a lot musically that we call traditional, but that shouldn't consign it to history, " he said.
Aadia will perform tomorrow at Huashan Music House starting at 9pm. Tickets cost NT$350 and are sold at the door. Huashan Music House is located on the second floor of the building adjacent the parking lot at the Huashan Arts District (北市華山藝文特區), 1 Pate Rd., Sec. 1 in Taipei (八德路一段一號二樓). Look for the green neon sign that reads "2F."
Separately, after the show, a party has been planned for anyone wanting to support global peace. Entertainment will be provided by a host of DJs and organizers will provide interested parties with information on how to "think globally, act locally." Attendees will light a candle for peace. If you're unable to attend but would like more information you can contact Sean at 0953956631.
It is barely 10am and the queue outside Onigiri Bongo already stretches around the block. Some of the 30 or so early-bird diners sit on stools, sipping green tea and poring over laminated menus. Further back it is standing-room only. “It’s always like this,” says Yumiko Ukon, who has run this modest rice ball shop and restaurant in the Otsuka neighbourhood of Tokyo for almost half a century. “But we never run out of rice,” she adds, seated in her office near a wall clock in the shape of a rice ball with a bite taken out. Bongo, opened in 1960 by
Common sense is not that common: a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania concludes the concept is “somewhat illusory.” Researchers collected statements from various sources that had been described as “common sense” and put them to test subjects. The mixed bag of results suggested there was “little evidence that more than a small fraction of beliefs is common to more than a small fraction of people.” It’s no surprise that there are few universally shared notions of what stands to reason. People took a horse worming drug to cure COVID! They think low-traffic neighborhoods are a communist plot and call
Over the years, whole libraries of pro-People’s Republic of China (PRC) texts have been issued by commentators on “the Taiwan problem,” or the PRC’s desire to annex Taiwan. These documents have a number of features in common. They isolate Taiwan from other areas and issues of PRC expansion. They blame Taiwan’s rhetoric or behavior for PRC actions, particularly pro-Taiwan leadership and behavior. They present the brutal authoritarian state across the Taiwan Strait as conciliatory and rational. Even their historical frames are PRC propaganda. All of this, and more, colors the latest “analysis” and recommendations from the International Crisis Group, “The Widening
From a nadir following the 2020 national elections, two successive chairs of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) and Eric Chu (朱立倫), tried to reform and reinvigorate the old-fashioned Leninist-structured party to revive their fortunes electorally. As examined in “Donovan’s Deep Dives: How Eric Chu revived the KMT,” Chu in particular made some savvy moves that made the party viable electorally again, if not to their full powerhouse status prior to the 2014 Sunflower movement. However, while Chu has made some progress, there remain two truly enormous problems facing the KMT: the party is in financial ruin and
RSS