An irresistible Guangzhou band proves how powerful music may come out of low-key living.

words natasha sajnani

“I love rock ‘n’ roll and I love performing, but our standards of living are not like the clichéd rock bands, where drugs and alcohol invade our lives.” They hardly seem like the type to trash glamorous hotel rooms, party hard by day and even harder at night or even to have raging arguments about the most miniscule things. On a typical day, you’ll find them curled up with a good book or enjoying a friendly game of football under the warm sun, sometimes even engaging in a captivating computer game. Jim enjoys cooking as a hobby. Hz reveals, “If he weren’t a musician, he’d be an awesome chef!” Not very ‘rock’ at all. “I don’t understand why we are so different to other rock bands,” says Hz. “We live our lives like every other normal person.”

The vocalist and guitar/keyboard player is talking about The Swamp, a band who style their music “sentimental, ambient, imaginational, emotional and fancy”. Other band members are Jim (guitar, effects, sampling and keyboard), Sean (drums, hand sonic and sampling) and Roy (bass, keyboard and backing vocal) - an awesome foursome which came to be a quintet when, a year ago, they were joined by Despairada, the soon to be Live VJ.
Hz is the band leader and perhaps it is his outlook based on the motto “think independently and free your mind” that puts this band on the fringe of the stereotypical rock ‘n’ roll band experience. How far on the fringe may be gauged by their answer to the question what they would like fans to know about them. “We don’t want them to know about us, we just want them to connect with our music and watch us live.” Where are you, Pete Doherty?

And so through a style of mixed genres - post rock, electronic and progressive rock - The Swamp are a co-operative in songwriting and music arrangements: “We are like one big happy family, and we work as a team. Sometimes we do argue, but that’s usually resolved with a voting system we use,” says Hz.

Inspiration comes from their everyday lives and artistic minds. The songs communicate messages of love, care and nature, though they also write lyrics based on society as they find it. All touched by a common personality trait - sentimentality.

The band has already released several albums in China, but only two in Hong Kong. The first was a double album called City Swamp and the second is their new CD Lost Dream, the title itself, hinting at a symbolic, not altogether unpleasant, nostalgia. Lost Dream, Hz explains, explores how dreams become disoriented or forgotten. “Everyone has a dream, if not now then at least they had a childhood dream. Sometimes they lose these dreams. Basically the CD is about what would happen if people were reunited with this ‘lost dream’, what would happen if they had the choice to pursue this dream, or if they could go back in time. Would they make that dream a reality?”

So what, then, is the band’s dream - perhaps not yet lost - to give their music more edge, to take The Swamp into the future? Hz’s answer looks again at the past - and lights on Chinese music of another age: “Maybe we’ll mix more of a traditional sound into our music soon. It’s simple, but also moving and full of poetic imagery.”

Catch The Swamp - LIVE at Videotage on Saturday, August 4 at 8:30pm. Ticket outlets are located at the concert venue Videotage (No 13, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Rd, To Kwa Wan, Kowloon. Tel: 2573 1869) and The Panic (2/F Sai Yeung Choi Street South, Mong Kok, Kowloon. Tel: 2396 2608)