Mong Tong 夢東—Mystery 秘神

Mong Tong 夢東 are a sample-based psychedelic trio operating in Taiwan. They are an instrumental act whose sound is broad, compelling, and tricky to pin down. In its production, their new LP Mystery 秘神 churns post-punk, dub and synthpop elements into its charming whole, suspended with a precarious effectiveness between the genres. It uses modern techniques to explore elements of Taiwanese folklore, blending horror with dark humour, futurism with tradition.

Post-punk can largely be found in lower registers; in the album’s rolling bass grooves and the ultra-precision of its drums. Its minimalistic composition and arrangement bears the standard, too—most audibly in the Baltic ‘717’. The genre and its practitioners obviously made an impression. At this point, artists seem to be paying homage to this sound almost compulsively, but in the right hands (as here) it’s still effective.

These lower registers also fill their vast spaces with a syrup-thick mugginess; this is where the dub comes in. Drums are vast and reverberant—not so much giving Mystery 秘神 foundation as they ballast it into deep, dark spaces. ‘Ancient Mars’ recalls Kenji Kawai’s Ghost in the Shell soundtrack, mimicking the composer’s employment of an insistent heartbeat of Indian percussion.

The compositional simplicity and use of traditional instruments helps bolster Mystery 秘神 as what Mong Tong 夢東 describe as “a psychedelic journey to the east.” The trio wear Taiwanese culture with pride and, for an electronic act, are remarkably unswerving from their traditional approach. The most notable exceptions are the album’s heavy use of sampling and synths. Sometimes samples are downright eccentric. Mystery 秘神 at one point uses sounds from Space Cadet 3D, which many of a certain age will remember as that pinball game that came pre-installed on machines running Windows XP. Such goofiness secures the album’s success; Mong Tong 夢東 are more aware than most that tradition and fun aren’t mutually exclusive.

Mystery 秘神 is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Choir Boy—Gathering Swans

Choir Boy are one of a number of eclectic Salt Lake City bands now graduating to unprecedented worldwide recognition and acclaim. The city has been a quiet cultural hotspot for ages, but was recently discovered as the site of a post-punk renaissance. Choir Boy are one of the softest of these in sound, but still have enough prickly spirit to rival any of their peers. More mawkish elements slip the net because they feel sardonic—exposing the emotional vacuum at the nexus of modern yuppie indie shite not by violent opposition, but wry homage.

Nowhere is this more cogently deployed than in lead single ‘Complainer’; a ballad that’s effusive with defeatism and self-pity, and riffs on a Morrissey-like “dearie me” persona even more aggressively than Morrissey does (and it helps that vocalist Adam Klopp has some of the nicest pipes in the business). But the comparison doesn’t end there, courtesy of the same buoyant instrumentation and world-class performances which made the Smiths such a listenable band. It’s impeccably constructed, beautifully assembled and mixed, but at no point feels insincere or too performative or “clean”.

A delicate, tragi-comic balance is struck; a Twin Peaks-ian tone of melodrama we cannot avoid becoming swept up in. Gathering Swans is frequently funny, but never a joke. And it can switch things up into paroxysmal sadness and beauty at a moment’s notice. This band do heaps with the smallest movements. Lyrical themes are fully-developed, but are explored with such a delicate touch it feels crass to even bring them up; like whispering art history in someone’s ear in the Rothko chapel.

The mark of a great synth pop act is that they make now decades-old techniques feel refreshed or unprecedented. With Gathering Swans, Choir Boy manage just that—beneath a cosy synth blanket is something ineffable that makes you want to recommend them to everyone you know. There is a unique sense of mystery to this band—a feeling that something profound is being withheld or concealed, and that if you listen hard enough, the curtain will fall away. Until then, it’s a really lovely curtain.

Gathering Swans is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Baxter Dury—The Night Chancers

In the recently-released video for Baxter Dury’s ‘I’m Not Your Dog’—the song which opens The Night Chancers—Dury staggers across a deserted beach, weak and bleeding at the end of some vicious pursuit. Dury’s detractors would say he was hounded by the legacy of his father Ian. For some, Baxter still labours under that long shadow—styled to the nines to hide a deep abdominal rupture; a weakness, or literal lack of guts.

In fact, Baxter isn’t hiding anything. The Night Chancers is peppered throughout with wilful self-denigration, dismantling its own geezerish image in real-time. The album’s title track alternates recordings of a dog’s powerful bark and pathetic whimper. The Night Chancers is powerful precisely because it is wounded; naked.

There’s even space for queerness. ‘Samurai’ is a sexually-charged song with a potluck of pipe-climbing, sword-swinging imagery. The object of desire isn’t a damsel—it’s a fierce warrior. Again, Ian got there first (with ‘Superman’s Big Sister’—a kind of cuck-y, submissive fantasy which trembles at the power of the woman it’s describing). But this kind of thing didn’t start or end with Ian—it’s always been endemic in disco and funk, like it or not.

The path cleft by Baxter—droll spoken-word bouncing on minimalistic grooves—is close to Ian’s, albeit only superficially. It tells you something that ‘I’m Not Your Dog’ is compared just as often to Serge Gainsbourg or the Pet Shop Boys. And sure, Baxter inhabits different characters and personas across this LP, too; another fundament of his father’s work. ‘I’m Not Your Dog’ tells us, “I’m not your fucking friend,” before ‘Saliva Hog’ addresses us as “friend” about fifty times a couple of tracks later. But these perspectives and pieces are glued together by Baxter’s—not Ian’s style. A style all to its own. And that’s more than enough. Underneath our suits and shirts and skin everyone is the same bright red—it’s how we wear ourselves that defines us.

The Night Chancers is available for purchase here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe