farewell!

forever popgeeks is no more. it turns out the team of bearcanboogie, candyfloss girl and wandering star constitute the superlatives of lazy, lazier and laziest.

thankfully, they are still good friends.

p.s. bearcanboogie now writes solo at http://tinypress.blogspot.com/

malaysian label mü-nest's sweet first release we are all cotton-hearted is not fluff

various artists
we are all cotton-hearted
mü-nest, 2006
www.mu-nest.com

the cover of the album shows a red balloon, blown up, printed with a face of big round eyes, waffle-shaped blushes and thick o-shaped lips. i used to play with this kind of cheaper thin balloons when i was a kid. and so, the artwork by kitchen (the design unit of singapore's electronic group aspidistrafly) is a very apt visual companion to the music contained on these 2 cds of 25 songs which sounds nostalgic and child-like. generally naive, gentle and playful but sometimes dark in nature. perhaps like the best and worst of our childhoods and adolescence.

i was reminded of the ekkehard ehlers-compiled childish music compilation when i first read about we are all cotton-hearted. although on listening, i found the malaysian label's first compilation release to be more ambitious and comprehensive in scope, with songs, some new and unreleased, from a good number of artists from asia, especially belonging to China's shanshui (山水) label. the countries compiled on the two-disc compilation are japan, usa, europe, china, taiwan, singapore and malaysia. another small established label featured is the melodic electronic audio dregs.

with a transglobal focus, this compilation manages to show the commonalties of music from different parts of the world, which are to various degrees steeped in similar pop and folk traditions, music box melodies, steve reichian repeitions, vocal-based compositions and toy percussion, but yet can be so different in their songcraft and musical styles.

disc 1 starts off impressively with songstress piana's ancient note which sounds like the best pop-electronica moments of fellow japanese artists haco, tujiko noriko and kahimi karie. the piano melody is fragile, her voice is delicate and the song is evocative with layers to peel and enjoy.

other highlights include a contribution by perennial toy music favourite lullatone who contributed a soothing fantasia piling together voice and percussion and ending in a swirl of strings. i also like the flowing glockenspiel-led and glitch-propelled track of kulyfile's xi with its rumbling mid-section of jazz drums. perhaps the song title is in hanyu pinyin and refers to 溪 which means river stream in mandarin?

disc 2 compiles the noisier songs at its end. taiwanese music veteran lim giong (林强) offers a brooding abrasive 2006 remix of marching forward taken from his rock days in the 90s. the penultimate track, dad's shadow by forbidden culture, a much-welcomed return of kacy the ex-guitarist of malaysian post-rock band furniture, is pretty straightforward but with raw energy reminding me of the china's electronic-folk-rockers 窦唯 (dou wei) and 张亚东 (zhang ya dong).

the compilation's closer is the intriguing in sunlight down by aspidistrafly in which they warp vocals to sounds like chinese opera singing (perhaps it is chinese opera singing!) amid soft guitar strums and floating synth tones.

if sam hui were an indie kid of the 2000s, he might be singing my little airport's new song

my little airport
畢業變成失業 (graduation becomes unemployment)
sounds like: arumimihifumi, the pancakes, macdonald duck eclair
www.mylittleairport.com

oh how i love my little airport! this hongkie band which debuted in 2004 keeps getting better with every release. their coming compilation on elefant records is not out yet, but they have already started releasing free demos of new songs on their website since late last year.

of the 3 demos released so far, my favourite is graduation becomes unemployment. over a swing beat, nicole sings about the difficulties of finding a job after graduating from school. to be sure, it is sad to want work but not being able to find any. but p's lyrics are really funny like the daily jokes that we crack among friends, a light-hearted approach towards a depressing situation. so the song goes "it's harder to find a job than to find a husband" and "who knows the job is to dig a hole in the hill" with lots of shoo do do dos!

i keep thinking that this is something which sam hui will sing if he is an indie kid living in the 2000s. a song that speaks to the masses or at least indie kids all over the world who are looking for jobs that they actually like, who don't feel ready to join the work force or sometimes just feel like staying home and skipping work.

the light of darkness of summer lei

雷光夏 (summer lei)
黑暗之光 (the light of darkness)
(sony bmg, 2006)
http://www.cizoo.com/summer

i have waited three years for this. 雷光夏 (summer lei), a daughter of taiwan with a wandering spirt, returns with her fifth album (fourth album of new material) which sounds like the sum of her musical journeys, directions and meanderings over the past ten odd years. from her folksy debut 我是雷光夏, an experimental/electronic sophomore 脸颊贴紧月球, to a third classical/chamber third 时间的密语 and its accompanying release 2003逝, a collection of acoustic versions of her past works, 雷光夏managed to draw all the different elements together in one collection of luminous songs on her fifth full length.

the lead single, 我的80年代 (my 80's), with a self-referential never-ending piano intro is a classic summer lei ballad that asks what we have become of us as we grow older, and the permeating sense of loss as the time and place change in our lives, like a late response to the 1995 recording of 逝 collected at the end of her last full length. that song recorded with her schoolmates in a classroom on the eve of her high school graduation had an atmosphere which was dense with fear and anticipation of the then unknown years ahead.

and such are the remaining songs with her favourite subjects and themes about childhood, youth, family and friends, as well as her love for travel, poetry and films. her songs are as she once called them "sound films", cinematic, atmospheric and rich in imageries. gentle but forceful with her unique point of view on life, its memories and dreams.

her albums are usually two-third songs, one third interludes, often employing field recordings collected on her travel trips with a mix of acoustic and electronic instruments. not suprisingly, her past projects included musical works with taiwanese auteur 侯孝贤 (hou hsiao-hsien) on his films and her music videos, and her music is regularly backed by foreign musicians, including pianist uri caine and african percussionist mogauwane mahloele.

雷光夏 completed this album quicker than intended after a road accident in aug 2005 left her injured and either working at the radio station or staying at home with more time to write her songs. this incident also explains the title of the latest album and the beautiful illustrated album art that captures the fantastic dreamland of her music.

there was a ghost on the train the other day

there was a ghost on the train the other day. i didn't noticed her, till my rather terrified travelling companion pointed her out and asked if she was one.

she was sitting on the same side as us, on our right, in another section of the cabin, but her reflection could be clearly seen in the window in front of us. i gingerly observed her, cos you never know... but other than a bigger than average hairdo, she seemed as human as me and my companion and the other passengers on the train.

her face was small and pale with little eyes that were looking straight ahead, not at particularly anything, not at us. perhaps the big limpy frizzy hair dyed a too light shade of brown was disconcerting, but i was struck by how tired she looked. most people on the train going back home from work look tired but her tiredness was of a graver kind. the kind that a night of full eight hours sleep will not remove. the kind that accumulated day by day, week by week, month by month and before she knows it, years after years. the complex kind that is formed by various causes, when her heart was broken, when her soul was crushed. when she has to wake up and know that today is not a new day. when she watches others and wonder why she could not be like them, be happy, be indifferent, be less worried, be more able, be more beautiful, be richer, be more asshole, be less jealous, be less bitter, to have more potential, to have an ambition, be less of this, be more of that. and then she tries to remember when it all started but it was all so long ago and she is so comfortable, yet so uncomfortable, that the only thing she wants to do is to cry and feeling there is absolutely nothing else that she can do, yet feeling there must be something that she can do.

nothing will probably change and all this will repeat itself and she will remain tired and feel dead till the day she dies. and till that day, everyday, she dies a little, knowingly, on her way home, on the train.

band from malaysia ferns releases debut full-length after mercilessly teasing fans for months with false dates of release

ferns
on botany
(fruit records, 2007)
http://www.myspace.com/fernfrens

it’s here, it’s finally here! with much thanks to the good folks at fruit records! ferns (warren, abby, meng, dave and boon) released two top-notch eps and then proceeded to tease fans for months with false dates of album release that never came to be. and now the group finally releases a peculiarly packaged cd with die-cut picket fences, illustrations of farming tools, vegetable batch, trees and rainbow all in green, plus a patch of astroturf glued to its front. i'm very tempted to walk on it barefoot...

so cute, but is it any good? well, this is my best album of 2006. perhaps even 2007, as it’s already out for sale but the release date printed on the album says 2007.

the album gathers four songs from their earlier self-released cd-rs, add a couple of once-available-on-myspace songs and throws in a bunch of four new ones. and just as fans are expecting, none are fillers.

the older songs are always great to listen to, particularly dear derelict which remains a firm favourite. the song in two parts (one part gentle sway, one part almost exuberant swing) still send chills down my spine when the piano and drums take over, and the singing goes higher and warren's voice is a little raspy, sounding like it will crack and break at any moment under the weight of emtions.

my new favourite will be wistful thinking, the most upbeat song that had me clapping and tapping along in no time. a couple of the new songs, citadel and when we die, moves into similar atmospheric rock pop terrain which fellow malaysian pals furniture do so well and which ferns are pretty good at too, as first heard on older songs like the western front. not surprising cos some band members from both bands were previously from the defunct this body broken. lots of chiming guitars and multi-tracked vocals, all floating on rolling drums that goes loud and soft. the soft-loud dynamics might have become a somewhat post-rock cliché but when it's done so well, i'm not complaining.

their music is decidedly poppish and sometimes, almost twee. yet, its nature is not quite so when you listen to the words which are sad and cynical at times. for example, the line "en route to suffering" is heard twice on both disaster strikes again and when we die.

somehow, listening to ferns feels like falling in love.

i am leaving montreal, heading to massachusetts

i am leaving montreal, heading to massachusetts! the weather is excellent now but flurries is expected to come in an hour. i can see the dark clouds in the not too far horizon... got to run! see everyone back in singapore soon!

i am quite miserable in montreal

i am quite miserable in montreal. it has been raining the whole of yesterday and the whole of today. it has been icy rain all the time. kinda like blade runner. kinda like se7en. kinda of like brazil (i cannot remember. did it rain perpetually in the last film...). btw i am typing with a keyboard used for typing french characters and i cannot figure out how to type the question mark, the inverted comma and a few others.

and it will be flurries tomorrow - soft watery snow. and we have to drive back to the usa. i have prepared a cd case packed with cinerama, harper lee, lovejoy, cinerama and of cos, trembling blue stars to listen to and keep us cheery and introspective during the long rainy ride.

the best of montreal are the streets with their mix of intellectual and bohemian character, with vintage and antique shops, foreign groceries, bookstores, record stores, bakeries and lots of non-canadian eateries. but it will be crazy to walk in the chilling rain, to be out in the sub-zero weather, to be blown at by gales of wind...