Five Favourites
Oren Ambarchi
Australia-born composer and multi-instrumentalist whose work focuses on the exploration of guitars.
What is your favourite album in 2008 so far?
Here are a few cool releases I’ve enjoyed so far: Sissy Spacek’s California Ax, Graham Lambkin and Jason Lescalleet’s The Breadwinner, Shizuka’s Live: Traditional Aesthetics, Vajra’s Live, Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah: Part One, Ferial Confine’s First, Second and Third Drop, Baudouin Oosterlynck’s LP boxset and Hairdryer Peace by the Hospitals.
What is your favourite film?
Impossible to say, though I am fond of Cassavetes, Bresson, Fassbinder, early Robert Downey, Herzog, Makavejev, Tsai Ming-Liang
What is your favourite city?
Tokyo: amazing food, concerts and the best record shops in the world!
What is your favourite track on In The Pendulum’s Embrace?
Ha! Once I make a record I don’t want to listen to it again so that’s a question I cannot answer!
What is your favourite guitar brand/model?
I’m not really interested in guitars. I happen to play them but I’m more interested in the electronics side of things. Most of the guitars I use are really cheap and bad, although I just bought a ‘70s Les Paul.
Oren Ambarchi will be playing at KLUUBB (14/F, 367 Hennessy Road, Wanchai) on June 29. Door opens at 8:30pm and tickets cost $120 from White Noise Records. On June 26, experimental electro duo 10 from Japan and Korea will play at the same venue. Door opens at 8:30pm and ticket is $100 at door.
Sweet Music
 Waa, the former vocalist of Taiwanese indie duo Natural Q’s debut solo album La Dolce Vita blends different tastes in life – the sweetness of travelling in spring (Travel Together), the sourness of a dying relationship (Perfume) and, um, the bitterness of menstruation (When Period Comes). But in her coming show une nuit aiment le macaron with Pixel Toy’s Candy, it will be a very girlish night with only one flavour – sweet. Very sweet, just like France’s macaron.
Waa has been listening to Pixel Toy’s music since it first came out, and when she and Candy met through a common friend, they clicked instantly. But the two musicians do not talk about music – at all. “We usually talk about girlie stuff like fashion, which bags look nice, etc… Funny thing is we both give each other the same feeling. I always think Hong Kong girls are independent and speak very fast, but Candy is more… gentle.”
Their friendship led, however, to une nuit aiment le macaron, a concert solely from a woman’s perspective – be prepared for two nights of sensual and sweet music. Waa explains the show is named after the extremely sweet and colourful dessert because one can hardly forget its taste – Waa and Candy hope the show will have the same effect. And what flavour of macaron would she be? “I would say I am like the original flavour. But when I work with other musicians, my music turns to other tastes,” says Waa.
The duo will perform each other songs and do some covers, but Waa’s brisk and dreamy tunes are quite different from Pixel Toy’s upbeat electronica. So Ho Shan, the second half of Pixel Toy, will need to create some magic rearranging the songs. “We are looking forward to singing each other’s songs… It is just like girls exchanging clothes. I hope the audience can be a part of the performance too. Say if they got some nice clothes they think are good for the show, just put them on and come.”
The all-round artist actually made cheesecakes for her fans during a small gig in Taiwan. Will fans in Hong Kong enjoy the same privilege? “Not this time. Making them in Taiwan and then bringing them over is a bit too far!” she says with her sweet smile. “We hope to serve some desserts before the show though, and I think I will make some lip balm especially for the shows so people can buy it if they want… very girlish, isn’t it?” Yes it is, indeed. “I like doing these little hand-made works, because I always want to get married and have children. So I think, ‘If I can do these things, maybe someone will want to marry me?’”
Males need not be scared of the femininity, though – they are, of course, allowed to the show. “Sometime policemen come up to me and say they like my songs, which I think is the fun part of music. I think boys are becoming more like girls actually. They like dressing up, and some boys do the eye lashing thing now (laughs).” Then talking of why she thinks guys can benefit from the concert, she says, “Boys can come to understand more about girls. For example I have a song called When Period Comes – it is something men can never understand. So it is good to know it if they want to… how to say it in Cantonese? Kau-lui? (go after girls)”
Catch the pair at une nuit aiment le macaron – Waa x Candy@PixelToy Live on July 11 and 12 at HK Arts Centre Shouson Theatre. Shows start at 8:15pm and tickets are $280 and $200 from www.urbtix.hk, 2734 9009.
Thou Shalt Rock
Thou shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God – but forgive me this once, Jesus, because I need to introduce Swiss hard rock/progressive metal band four-piece Djizoes – pronounced Jesus. Hailing from Geneva and described as the prog-metal version of Alice in Chains, the band put out their debut album In The Papers last year and toured Japan. During their upcoming third Japan tour, the band will land in China for the very first time. Get ready for their dark, powerful and wild roaring at The Underground Presents Djizoes in HK on July 8 at Club Cixi. The show starts at 9pm and the line-up also includes Gong Wu, Darkness Pool and Cock Fight. Entry is $100 at door. And a friendly reminder: Do not miss Monogel’s first performance in 2008 at Underground 62. Also playing are F.T.T., Thinking Out Loud and Comaches. It all starts at 8pm and entry is $100.
Monsters’ Story
 Collected Monsters – the hybrid of two concert series Collected Stories and Are We Monsters – is celebrating its 10th birthday with Collected Monsters! 08, a two-night event featuring like-minded local bands. We talked to indie music veterans Alok (the then Collected Stories organizer and now the man behind Lona Records), Are We Monsters’ Henry and Revolver’s YK about creating shows and getting caught doing it.
It has been 10 years since the first Collected Monsters gig. Do you feel different organizing shows now?
Henry: I searched ‘Collected Monsters’ online and read someone’s blog saying they hadn’t started playing in a band when we first organized the show 10 years ago and are now happy because we are doing it again. I am happy to hear that but it’s just scary. I was only 24 then!
Alok: Same here. (Holding up his beer) Cheers! I think we are more calculating now. Probably in the past we didn’t get screwed-up but now I do worry about it. We think of methods to make things work but not to deviate from what we want to do.
Henry: We used to arrange the sequence of playing by lucky draw but now we will think about it, like arranging in term of the bands’ popularity. But still the principle is to gather bands that are like-minded.
YK: It is actually my first time organizing a show. I’m doing it mainly because I want to keep playing music and I don’t want to get old. I believe there are people who still like our music, but I don’t know if they will still bother to come out and watch a gig, or if they’d rather stay home and watch TV.
And I have heard the show had the real DIY spirit – every band needed to share the cost?
YK: I remember each of us needed to contribute $2,000, didn’t we?
Alok: Yeah. Because when you are, say, putting out a show, everyone says they want to play. But someone just stood us up at the last minute. So I thought we had to take it more seriously and share the cost. But this time we are not doing that.
What about promotion? How does the Facebook thing help?
Alok: Facebook is the quickest medium in Hong Kong to spread the news to people now. I think MySpace is for overseas artists. I remember putting up a poster on Nathan Road and immediately got warned. I left the contact number of Monitor Records and got a call asking if I was the organizer of Collected Monsters. It happened that Depeche Mode had a new album at that time so I stuck our posters next to theirs. I thought it really matched!
So instead of doing the dirty job yourself, you are distributing stickers and asking people to stick them around for you?
Henry: Well… we don’t know where they are going to stick them. But the whole thing is for fun. We hope both the bands and audience have fun. Say once the show is over, maybe in a year or two we walk past somewhere and see the stickers still there, that will put a smile on my face.
Collected Monsters! 08 will take place on July 4 and 5. The line-up for the first night is Downer, My Little Airport, The Pancakes and The Yours; while 22 Cats, The Darlings, False Alarm and Innisfallen will play the following night. Revolver will play both dates. Shows started at 7:30pm at the HK City Hall’s Theatre. Tickets are $150 per show from URBTIX, 2734 9009.
Old Wine, New Shadow
 Progressive metal powerhouse BlackWine released their debut Chasing the Dream in 2002 and have been quiet since then. This year they return to the scene with The Shadow, a six-track concept album that tells the story between a detective and a murderer. While the first five tracks are written from the point of view of the murderer, the detective and his fiancée, the public and ‘the shadow’, the ending title Unbreakable Cycle will tell the whole story of what happened. Bassist Samuel talks of the creation progress and the coming show.
What inspired you during the writing process?
When I wrote the lyrics of the song Turning Point back in 2003, news footage of people who had robbed the hospital in Iraq taking advantage of the chaos in war and cheering ‘Thank you Bush” appeared in my mind. I asked myself, ‘Are they worthy of saving and help?’ This is the main concept and inspiration for this story.
How will the band present the album in the coming gig? It is a rather conceptual album…
We will be playing the songs together with visual footages filmed by our friends. Those footages will visualize the story of the album. It will let the audiences understand and memorize the story in the hour-long performance.
In the band’s press kit, there is a whole page introducing ‘what is progressive metal’ – I have never seen bands doing that.
Progressive metal has never been a popular style of music, so we want to introduce this kind of music to others. Let people know what we usually listen to, and why we wrote a ‘half an hour’ song.
1998-2008 is the band’s first decade – can you sum the last 10 years in probably three words and what do you foresee in the second decade?
Can I use four words? “Practicing, writing, rehearsing, enjoying”. In the second decade, we hope we can bring our music to different places, not only in Hong Kong. In 2004 we had played in Formoz, a music festival in Taiwan. We all enjoy and had good experience from it. We hope we can play live shows in other places like the mainland, Taiwan and South East Asia, introduce our music to them. And of course Hong Kong is our home town so we hope to have more shows and hope people enjoy our music. Bands need live performance to keep them alive.
BlackWine ‘The Shadow’ Live will stage on July 12 at Wei Hing Theatre, City University of HK. Supporting bands are two other local rock legends DSC and Purple Express. Show starts at 7pm and entry is $80. Call Tracy at 6021 2060 or email isu_ming@yahoo.com.hk for booking.
Best of Both Worlds
Hong Kong-based American bassist/composer Peter Scherr is teaming up with Australian pianist and composer Matt McMahon and percussionist Simon Barker again. The trio is putting out the experimental recording, Jazz Folk. Scherr explains how the two genres can harmonize together.
 Some of the works the trio covered, say Joni Mitchell’s, Bob Dylan’s and Elliot Smith’s, are very lyrics-driven. So when Jazz Folk interpret their songs, do you think something is lost?
As far as interpreting vocal tunes with an instrumental group, of course it's different. And people are attached to the original versions, so rather than try to recapture the magic of the original versions, we use the material as a point of departure. I think that this approach is valid for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it is a part of the jazz tradition. Tin pan alley tunes, show tunes, even art songs have become instrumental standards over the years, and of course all of those tunes have lyrics. Knowing the words of a tune is important in giving meaning to an instrumental version of that song. This is something that is often lost on the younger generations of jazz musicians who may be covering songs written in the 1930s for example.
Why does the trio pick these songs in particular?
The main reason that we want to do these songs is that we grew up hearing them, so they do carry a lot of meaning for us. More, perhaps than ‘standard’ jazz songs in a way. What I'm particularly interested in doing with the songs, and what I think our group is so good at, is a sort of de-construction of the material, so that you end up many miles away from where you started, but still have some of the emotional wallop of the original tune. So it's basically a question of enthusiasm for the material.
Are there any songs by other artists that you really looking forward to re-interpret with Jazz Folk?
We've got a huge list of songs that we love, and I have promised the guys to sketch out some new possibilities for this time. I think I am going to do a tune written by a friend of mine, Chris Brown, who is a great Canadian rock musician and songwriter. And maybe some Jimi Hendrix tunes, and more Beck tunes. Maybe a version of a Tibetan mantra. Because my wife is really into Buddhism, and she's always singing them and playing them on the stereo.
The Trio will play at Zip Zap Saturday Nights: Jazz Folk – Music of Compelling Simplicity at Backstage on July 12. Show starts at 10:30pm and admission is $150.
Gig Guide:
Soler All About Life 2008 in Hong Kong@La Dynastie (Shop 102, The Arcade, Cyberport), June 27 and 27, 10pm, $650, $450 from www.dinnershow.com.hk
Rock vs Rock (Rosy, Dark Fringe, Crazimalz, Silent Chamber and Partyolk)@N Set (44-46 Hung To Rd, Century Centre, Kwun Tong, Hong Kong), June 28, 7pm, $60 at the door.
Let’s Fight Round 3@HITEC Star Hall, June 30, 7pm, $450, $290, $220 from HK Ticketing, 31 288 288.
Jun’s Junk Unit (Jun Kung with friends)@Backstage, July 8, 9pm, $130 (with one drink).
Audio Traffic (supporting band Helter Skelter)@Grappa’s Cellar, July 12, 9:30pm, $200 (with one drink).
08 HW IVE Muso (Bluemoon, EI, Frequency, Never N, Killer beez, Sam Sir, Sixxpounder, Scamper, Zeitgeist, Bi LuoChun and Gong Wu) @1F Hall, IVE (Haking Wong), July 12, 2pm, $70 at the door.
bc unplugged 2@The Wanch, July 17, 9pm, Free Entry.
Mind Your Head’s Third Anniversary show@Multi-purpose Room ABC, City University of HK, July 18 and 19, 7pm, Advanced tickets are $110 (one day)/ $200 (two days) from http://mindyourhead.hk
Wang Wen Live in Hong Kong (with supporting bands Elf Fatima and The Swamp)@Club Cixi, July 19, 7:30pm, $150 from Zoo Records and White Noise Records or $180 at the door.
Intolerant live in Hong Kong (with Shepherds the Weak, Maniac and Evocation)@Warehouse, July 19, 7:30pm, Advance tickets at $100 from Records Rendezvous.
Stereophonics (with opening guest Soler)@HITEC, July 24, $580 and $380 from HK Ticketing, 31 288 288.
Alicia Keys@Asia World-Arena, July 29, $980, $680, $380 from HK Ticketing, 31 288 288.
Travis@Asia World-Arena, July 31, 8pm, $780 and $480 from HK Ticketing, 31 288 288.
Panic at the Disco@Asia World Expo Hall 6, August 12, 8pm, $650 from HK Ticketing, 31 288 288.
Eight in Indie
 Indie label 89268 is proudly stepping into its 8th anniversary this year with There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, a photography exhibition that is the first of a series of celebrations. The exhibition will open on July 4 at the Fringe Club’s Economist Gallery, showcasing works from 89268’s photographer Ngai Wing Hong from 12pm to 10pm daily until July 16 (closed on Sundays and public holidays). Also on July 4, singer-songwriter Hei Wong’s will be gigging at the Fringe Gallery. Some artists sound better in live performance than in the studio, and I would include Hei Wong on that list. The gig starts at 10:30pm and tickets are $125 from Fringe Club, Mackie Study (Causeway Bay and Art Centre), Zoo Records and Lab Yellow.
Live and Loud?
Call it courageous, but the Live N’ Loud music festival will hit the AsiaWorld-Arena on August 5.  In the line-up you will find Canadian punk-rock quintet Simple Plan, Los Angeles rock five-piece One Republic, Wales’ heartthrob Lostprophets, American pop punk outfit New Found Glory and 25-year-old British soul man Jamie Scott. Check out www.bcmagazine.net for an interview with Scott. The festival starts at 7pm and tickets are $780, $480 and $280 from HK Ticketing, 31 288 288, and Tom Lee Music Stores. $50 will be donated to charity for each ticket sold.
 Diva Returns
Her last concert in the SAR sold out in half an hour so it’s better to tell you the news well in advance: Japanese pop diva Ayumi Hamasaki will stage the Hong Kong leg of
her Asia tour on September 20 at the Asia World-Arena. Tickets priced at $780, $480 and $280 will go on sale on July 10 at HK Ticketing, 31 288 288.
 Rise to Fame
Attention please all you talented musicians: Entry for the Heartbeat Band Sound Competition closes on July 9. Go to http://www.ani-com.hk/front.htm for application forms. For the Sound Base Festival 2008, the closing date for enrolment is July 6 and you can register at www.tomleemusic.com/specialpage/event/ev239/index.asp |
