Bands on a run Jon Lowe
Friday, December 22, 2017 Defying the global trend, more bands are emerging on the HK music scene. caught up with some of the indie faces to talk about their craft and why they do it.
There’s a flowering underway in the city’s alternative music landscape. Just when things have got about as dynamic as old Hong Kong can handle, the indie scene keeps booming like some crazy cryptocurrency. Some participants are on a purely musical quest; others have longevity and a career plan in mind. Many just have the primal urge to rock a crowd.
It’s Friday night and the citrine streetlamps cast a pallor over Jaffe Road. A woman in a yellow tube dress hails a solitary drunk from the entrance of a nightclub. On cue, a sleek red taxi pulls to the curb, its rear door opening mechanically, ominously. Across the junction with Fenwick Street, lively chatter radiates from a throng of people filling the pavement and spilling among a line of parked motorcycles. A sudden, tribal blast of floor tom and bass, a crash of cymbals, and many in the crowd quickly move inside Hong Kong’s oldest and most fertile live house, the Wanch — an oasis of musical intoxication amid the jaded bars on Wan Chai’s north side. The rock combo Back have just launched into their set.
After the show, Back’s co-lead singer and rhythm guitarist Xavier Sefrin, or X, recounts, “I moved to Hong Kong not long ago and didn’t do much music at first. Then I went to an
‘open mic’ and met literally three of the members there. So we jammed together, and we fit right in from the get-go — and we were like, yep, that’s working. We’re playing together!”
Bands made up of expats are common in Hong Kong. They want to play gigs and have fun, so set lists will favor crowd-pleasing cover versions, plus varying amounts of original songs. X, who has written some catchy numbers for Back, says, “We’re doing rock, pop-rock, alternative rock. It’s mostly modern covers, stuff from the past three or four years, plus some older classics like U2 and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And we’re doing some originals, trying to blend them in with the rest of the set.”
In most other world cities, either you’re a covers band playing for fun and cash in the hand, or an originals band showcasing your material in the hope of attracting Artists and Repertoire (A&R) reps from record companies. In Hong Kong it’s easy to be both. Back have played about a dozen shows. The biggest stage they’ve played was at the Jockey Club, where they kept the crowd happy with a set of mostly covers. The Wanch, a home for all sorts of acts from the weird to the wonderful to the wooden, gives Back a chance to up their quotient of original tunes.
Flexible focus
Taking full advantage of the flexibility of the local indie scene is bassist Noriko Watanabe, who’s lived in Hong Kong for close to a decade. “I can play in different styles with different musicians, which gives me a wider outlook and more motivation to keep learning music,” she says. She currently plays in four bands: DJ Star, a versatile covers band; Still Minds, a modern rock combo playing originals; Atlantis Philharmonic, who belt out classic rock tunes; and Changelingcide, an originals band mixing pop and rock with a jazzy bent. For Watanabe, however, questions of genre and repertoire are secondary matters. “I love playing with good musicians,” she says. “Hong Kong is a really international place, so we can find musicians from all over the world.” The Japanese expat calls music “my personal challenge”, adding, “Music is my hobby but playing in different bands requires management skill and continuous effort. I’m testing my capability outside my day job.” This astringent approach also gives rise to a telling observation of the local music scene. “It’s sometimes too easy to earn a performance fee. Although it’s a big advantage for amateur musicians like me, I sometimes feel that musicians in Hong Kong are too easily satisfied with their quality of performance.” For local Chinese bands, playing covers is less common. Many are out to prove themselves as bona fide indie rock gods. One of the most promising — and busiest — bands right now is Andy is Typing (AiT). Longtime friends and jamming buddies, they’ve been playing as AiT for nearly two years and have maintained a punishing schedule of recordings, local gigs and festival shows at home and abroad, as well as promotional duties.
Their sound is an adept blend of indie and hard rock, which AiT’s singer/guitarist Cheung Chun-lok — or Jky — says takes inspiration from the United Kingdom’s Muse and Radiohead and the United States’ Mr Big and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But the result is theirs alone. “We’re trying to make our own thing because we play our own songs. But we get some advice from our management team as well,” says Jky. Their management-cum-record label, Drop’d, takes a hands-on approach to polishing its artists’ material and stagecraft. Having done at least 20 medium-sized to large shows including Shenzhen’s Midi Festival where they gained a slot after winning a competition last year, the Wake Up Festival in Taichung, Taiwan, Hong Kong’s Wow and Flutter festival, and a recent show in Tokyo with their J-rock friends Rising Style, AiT have certainly honed their moves on stage. They avoid the “shoe-gazing” condition that afflicts many bands and causes audiences’ attention to wander. They recall themselves at their first gig “standing still — but at that time we thought we were moving! Now we try to move as much as possible.” During their outdoor show at Street Music, next to the Hong Kong Arts Centre, they strut and pose, indulge in synchronized head-banging and, as the night falls, cast ever-morphing shadows on the impromptu urban stage set around them. There is never an idle moment.
“We want to grow bigger and bigger, but just step by step,” says Jky. Their aim is to match the achievements of elder peers such as local indie breakout band Supper Moment, but with greater focus on the regional and global markets. “I think currently there are not enough international artists in Hong Kong. Not many indie bands are really listening to (international) indie bands,” Jky says. Ergo they favor English lyrics. “We don’t want to just have an eye on China, we want an eye on the world. I think English is a good medium for the world.”
Also aiming for the big time is musician Esan Shi and his band Kongo. The 35-year-old guitarist and singer is set on doing things his way. He leads a four-piece band performing original songs that fuse rock virtuosity, vibrant Latin percussion (courtesy of Chris Polanco) and odd time signatures. Idiosyncratic it may be, but Shi, a fan of Japanese fusion bands such as T-Square and Casiopea, is determined to ascend out of the underground and into the spotlight. “There’s nothing like us at all in the mainstream,” he says.
Pristine product
Shi’s musical tastes were inculcated at the age of 4 when a cassette with a side of Santana and a side of Mahavishnu Orchestra — challenging music at any age — fell into his hands. He went on to collect records throughout his childhood, but only took up the guitar in his early 20s after successive injuries ended his dream of a career in martial arts. He taught himself to play, picking out the notes to Santana songs and quickly identifying the shapes and patterns of music he’d long ago internalized. “I think I could pick it up and play it because I’d already spent two decades listening to stuff like that, day and night,” he says.
In being a jazz-rock outlier, Shi deduces opportunity. “If you do anything but Cantopop, at least in Hong Kong, you have 100 percent of any audience that wants anything other than Cantopop.” He thinks music audiences only need to be exposed to different things for their tastes to develop. He reasons that to be successful his music needs polished, competitive recordings and videos to gain access to broadcast platforms and receive maximum exposure in Asia. He is shopping his bold game plan around regional record companies and potential sponsors.
AiT and their label Drop’d also know the importance of pristine product, and are putting the final touches on a sixtrack EP. Today, recording rock music to industry standard is more complex than ever. The band creates a multi-track demo of the song with basic equipment, recorded onto computer software. “We send the draft of the demo to the producer. He may edit parts or rearrange the structure of the song,” guitarist Chan Man-ping, or Ping, explains.
Using the now edited demo as a guide, the band will redo the instrumental and vocal parts in the label’s own high-end studio, aided by a sound engineer. The producer then reappraises the song and, with an array of effects and editing software, further shapes it into something more dramatic, ear-catching or mood-driven. “Finally it comes to a product that we all agree with,” Ping says. The stereo mix is sent to a mastering engineer who finesses it to make it jump out of the speakers and play well on specific formats — a specialized process that’s a world unto itself. The band have been working concurrently on several music videos for their EP and just released a fun “drum and bass battle” promo video to whet fans’ appetite.
Though the approach is professional, in the indie music business it’s essential also to love what you are doing. Everyone is aware there may be no greater return than a slew of happy memories. Jky, who works as a live sound engineer — the other members are students — says, “I need to have work because it’s hard to make money in music, especially at the start. So I’m not thinking about money. I just want to enjoy the moment, enjoy the music right now, and hope to create something great that people might like.”