Indie rock fans in Kaohsiung are being offered variety tonight, with live music from one band that wields pop rock noise on electric guitars and another that pumps out beats on laptop computers.
Both aim to have the audience dancing. Touming Magazine (透明雜誌) and Unfamiliar Friends Party (不熟的朋友派對), both based in Taipei, are performing at the Pier 2 Art District (高雄駁二藝術特區) to promote newly released CDs.
Touming Magazine’s guitar-heavy sound and tightly arranged songs clearly nod to their musical heroes, mostly American alternative rock bands from the late 1980s and early 1990s like the Pixies, Weezer and Superchunk.
Photo Courtesy of Unfamiliar Friends Party and Touming Magazine
Twenty-eight-year-old Hung Shen-hao (洪申豪), who is the frontman of the four-piece group and mostly sings in Mandarin, says he feels “young people” don’t share the same musical tastes as the band, but that doesn’t bother him. “We just play the music we like,” he told the Taipei Times.
Touming Magazine recently released a full-length debut album titled Soul Music (我們的靈魂樂), and its pep and solid repertoire ought to have concertgoers moving to the music.
The evening starts with a set of electronica rock from Unfamiliar Friends Party. Tonight’s show is being billed as the band’s official release party in Kaohsiung for its new six-song EP titled Headstrong (頭好壯壯).
Photo Courtesy of Unfamiliar Friends Party and Touming Magazine
Unfamiliar Friends, a four-piece group (currently a trio with one member studying abroad), performs all of its music on Macbooks, MIDI controllers and electronic keyboards.
The group’s beats favor new wave rock grooves, and the music is full of spacey atmosphere with melodies built on video game-like sounds.
“All the people that hear our music say it’s joyful,” band member Lily Chen (陳郁欣) said.
In Taiwan there are two economies: the shiny high tech export economy epitomized by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and its outsized effect on global supply chains, and the domestic economy, driven by construction and powered by flows of gravel, sand and government contracts. The latter supports the former: we can have an economy without TSMC, but we can’t have one without construction. The labor shortage has heavily impacted public construction in Taiwan. For example, the first phase of the MRT Wanda Line in Taipei, originally slated for next year, has been pushed back to 2027. The government
July 22 to July 28 The Love River’s (愛河) four-decade run as the host of Kaohsiung’s annual dragon boat races came to an abrupt end in 1971 — the once pristine waterway had become too polluted. The 1970 event was infamous for the putrid stench permeating the air, exacerbated by contestants splashing water and sludge onto the shore and even the onlookers. The relocation of the festivities officially marked the “death” of the river, whose condition had rapidly deteriorated during the previous decade. The myriad factories upstream were only partly to blame; as Kaohsiung’s population boomed in the 1960s, all household
Allegations of corruption against three heavyweight politicians from the three major parties are big in the news now. On Wednesday, prosecutors indicted Hsinchu County Commissioner Yang Wen-ke (楊文科) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), a judgment is expected this week in the case involving Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and former deputy premier and Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is being held incommunicado in prison. Unlike the other two cases, Cheng’s case has generated considerable speculation, rumors, suspicions and conspiracy theories from both the pan-blue and pan-green camps.
Stepping inside Waley Art (水谷藝術) in Taipei’s historic Wanhua District (萬華區) one leaves the motorcycle growl and air-conditioner purr of the street and enters a very different sonic realm. Speakers hiss, machines whir and objects chime from all five floors of the shophouse-turned- contemporary art gallery (including the basement). “It’s a bit of a metaphor, the stacking of gallery floors is like the layering of sounds,” observes Australian conceptual artist Samuel Beilby, whose audio installation HZ & Machinic Paragenesis occupies the ground floor of the gallery space. He’s not wrong. Put ‘em in a Box (我們把它都裝在一個盒子裡), which runs until Aug. 18, invites