Tickets have been flying over the 7-Eleven counters for the French band Phoenix, which is scheduled to play Legacy on Aug. 12. Tickets went on sale Tuesday, and yesterday afternoon about 80 percent had been sold, said Jubi Lee (李昀儒) of Earwax, the local promoter. Capacity at Legacy is about 1,200 people.
“We had no idea they would go this fast,” Lee said.
The larger news story however is that this is the first Taiwan concert by the Japanese promoter Creativeman. Creativeman is one of Japan’s largest international rock promoters and organizes the annual Summer Sonic Music Festival, along with numerous concerts and tours throughout the year. Phoenix is scheduled to play at Summer Sonic’s events in Tokyo and Osaka on Aug. 16 and Aug. 17.
Photo courtesy of Physical Chemical Brothers
Earwax has been working with another Japanese promoter, Hostess Club, for over a year and produced bumper turnouts for a string of concerts including Franz Ferdinand, Mogwai, The National, Neutral Milk Hotel, Wavves and others. Given their track record, and especially their ability to get large audiences to pay in the NT$2,000 to NT$4,000 price range, it is a small surprise that they got Creativeman’s attention. Expect more things to come.
In the meantime, there still may be time to get tickets for Phoenix. The Paris-based band rides the pop edge of indie rock, and has proved itself a commodity since it landed a song in Sofia Cuppola’s 2003 film Lost in Translation. They have been label mates with Air and friends with Daft Punk, and their music, while grounded in synth beats, sounds much more like conventional rock songs than the purist electronics of their famed compatriots. It would be better to compare them to MGMT or the Naked and Famous, especially for lead singer Thomas Mars’ boyish, pining vocals. Phoenix just released its fourth album, Bankrupt!, earlier this week, and apparently Taipei fans are super excited about it.
■ Phoenix plays on Aug. 12 at Legacy, 1 Sec 1, Bade Rd, Taipei City (台北市八德路一段一號). Tickets are NT$2,500 while they last, available through: earwaxtw.kktix.cc/events/phoenix
Photo courtesy of Physical Chemical Brothers
PHYSICAL CHEMICAL BROTHERS ALBUM RELEASE
There is a certain frantic quality to 8-bit music. It is not just that it derives from the video games of the 1980s and 1990s, it also tends to reflect their frenetic, over-caffeinated pace and listening to it can be like being trapped in an arcade from hell.
In Japan and the US, 8-bit music, or chiptune, has formed its own subcultures, especially following the release of special game cartridges for Gameboy consoles that allows users to program their own songs. Generally, the production of this music is dispersed, geek-style and DIY, though accomplished music producers have appropriated the sounds for dubstep and a few pop dance-floor hits. It’s like the sounds of Donkey Kong and Super Mario are coming back as a subtle musical virus in the worlds of electronic and pop.
But for Bon Bon Lin (林眧宇), the creative force behind the 8-bit collective Physical Chemical Brothers (理化兄弟), “this is music that puts images into my mind.”
“It’s like you are a child, and it’s the first time you hear some sounds, and they are totally psychedelic, and you are just like, waaaa…” gasps Lin.
Lin and his partner, VJ Huang Chen (黃真), are releasing their first self-titled album as Physical Chemical Brothers with shows last weekend at Room 18 and tomorrow night with a free performance at Revolver.
The 11 tracks on the CD sit firmly in the genre of video game electronica, with plenty of bleepy references to Super Mario, Game Boy, Candy Crush and other low-res pop culture. At its worst the music is maddening Pachinko parlor clamor, and at its best it echoes the fascination with pure electronic sounds that has fascinated generations of composers from Georgio Moroder to Kieran Hebden.
The compositions are all compact, driving and for the most part commercially slick. In any video game, TV commercial or film, they would not sound out of place. In that sense, Lin has tapped chiptune’s potential as one of the most raw, stripped down and addictive forms of electronic music. This is crack cocaine for the audio receptors of the brain, and it will lodge itself there and continue to ring long after it has stopped playing.
Yet Lin thinks of this as a band.
“We have an electronic skin, but rock ‘n’ roll bones,” says Lin. “Physical movement is important to rock ‘n’ roll, so when we perform, we must do that.”
At shows, Lin and Huang use handheld control pads to activate and manipulate their music and video. Last Saturday at Room 18, Lin was standing atop the DJ booth, writhing like a guitar god during a big solo. The video is Huang’s own creation, but looks like 80s video games.
Lin is in his seventh year at National Taiwan University of the Arts working on his four-year bachelor’s degree. He also runs the music programming at Revolver.
Lin started the Physical Chemical Brothers as a concept group, with no fixed goals three years ago. His first work was a short video, a sort of conceptual prank for which he and several friends filmed themselves taking turns smoking a single cigarette inside Taipei’s Eslite Bookstore, then exhaling the smoke into a large, clear plastic bag. The bag eventually puffed up to a cloudy balloon, at which point the video ends.
From there he turned the project to music. Both on his own and with other musicians, Lin was already making noise, hardcore, drum ‘n bass and speedcore.
“I was playing all this crazy stuff, but I felt bored,” says Lin. “Chiptunes was a new start.”
Is this otaku music?
“We are not really otaku. I don’t even play video games,” says Lin. “Otaku don’t listen to 8-bit. They just listen to anime soundtracks. We make 8-bit music mainly because we really like the sounds.”
■ Physical Chemical Brothers perform with DJs Cotton Disco, Sonia and Swingchild tomorrow night from 10pm at Revolver, 1-2 Roosevelt Rd, Taipei (台北市羅斯福路一段1-2號). Admission is free.
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