#35: Jude Chiu's Enduring Hunger
on the self-titled third album from the singer-songwriter, whose latest concept album charts the course from conception to death and the desire that lives in between
Happy New Year everyone! You might notice that this month’s playlist is lighter than previous—they keep making it harder to do this. I took a bit of an extended break over the holidays, so I’m still catching up on records released over December, but ever since the Spotify layoffs forced Every Noise at Once to stop updating, it’s been harder to keep track of all the releases. No other tool has been as handy as getting a picture of what was released in the past weeks. We’ll see how this works going forward.
Nothing much else from me! My head is all scrambled and I’ve been listening to a lot of Mandarin music from around the ‘90s and ‘00s. Have you guys ever seen the album cover for Power Station’s Goodbye My Love? Really funny. Good album. Betrayal Love Song is better. I wrote about Jude Chiu’s self-titled third album and singles from Dinner Salute, MAYI, and clef for this month’s issue.
Jude Chiu - Jude Chiu
Jude Chiu’s second album was a sweeping concept album that followed a group of rich tourists through an extravagant, futuristic aquarium to their own bitter demise, a story akin to The Menu, but the singer’s theatrical flourish landed it in campier territory. His latest self-titled album wrestles with something more complex as he attempts to deconstruct the human experience. Here, the Chinese singer narrates those fixed formative, physical experiences, tracing a path from conception to death, but what remains at the core of his songs is a voracious appetite that endlessly craves, the desire and want that drive us forward.
That hunger can sometimes be literal. On “Bon Appetite,” food permeates the mind, crammed into the spaces of the daily humdrum. Satiating hunger might just be a means to an end in the bustling rush. Chiu makes note of a old slice of birthday cake as he opens his fridge to the sight of rotting food, itself a grotesque reminder of all those wishes he gave up long ago. The song is fitted with a brassy arrangement that calls to mind a run-down old-fashioned bistro serving nothing but stale bread and soggy pasta, carried forth but Chiu’s traditional showmanship and usual jazz ornamentation. Despite the tedious banality, the singer can’t help but want: on the final line, he recalls his burning itch: “yesterday night, I longed to stew a neighbour and taste it,” he sings, a reminder of the singer’s macabre interests, before being shake by a sudden interruption. It’s a dark extreme, but it’s a familiar hunger for something that will shake up the pedestrianism day-to-day.
But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Jude Chiu opens with a first-person genesis. Each sensation brings about a new experience that feeds the singer’s desire. On the brill building “Vocalise,” Chiu and Leah Dou take turns exercising their newfound voices, like toddlers making their first sound: “void, from the void, create my voice / can you hear the cosmos in my throat?” they call. Joy in just being able to express themselves. Lala Hsu’s voice folds into a motherly comfort around Chiu on “Colour Blind,” as he takes in each stimulant with wonder: blue and the damp feel of sweat; scarlet and laughter; orange and the clang of a heartbeat.
With his showman flair, these moments feel vibrant: the swirling arrangement of “Vocalise” understands how each vibration can feel like the world building in front of you, while the tenderness of “Colour Blind” understands the softer joy in using these newfound senses to understand the world. But these arrangements can occasionally grow tiresome across the album, its restrained subtlety like an almost paint-by-numbers version of a Pixar short soundtrack rather than the messy complexity of human desire. HUSH’s lyrics about his relationship with the body feel less impactful by the casual theatricality of “My Trauma Bond with Fat.” The moments of dramatic tension are what make these experiences feel lived—even when Chiu is getting ahead of himself. On “Hypoxia,” for only a moment, his voice switches to the other ear and the arrangement drops to a clearer space. “At least let me accompany you,” he whispers, intoned like a dying wish. It’s a final want for more despite having nothing left to offer. On “Ms. Starving,” his voice ascends from the underwater production with a stately flourish. “More coaxing, more lies to become more attached / actually, I want more lovers, how can one be enough?” The double bass becomes animated, the orchestral flourishes become a courtly storm. It’s not a sigh but an urging statement, desire moulded into the only tenable viewpoint.
From the moment of self-actualization—the realization that colours can be multi-varied, that a heartbeat arrive in different forms—Chiu longs. He longs for a meal that can capture every flavour, a body free of blemishes, a love he can accompany to death. Jude Chiu takes its time exploring the sensations but seems to rush into the final stages, where time runs short. He begs and bargains on stirring closer “Down Lies the Skeleton” before coming to its final resting point: “who have I been knocked down for? who have I fallen for? / whether you want it or not, it all disappears.” Maybe that’s the way life goes. But of course, Jude Chiu repeats. That’s the point he made on “Embryo,” as he’s born in the midst of its variegated hues: “finally, I say goodbye to all my origins,” he hums, nodding at the circular pattern of life and death. Chiu is again working through the eyes of someone else. He ends with something of a moral: “loosen your joints and get a good night’s sleep.” It’s as if he’s ready to long harder on a second round. Nowhere does that drive for desire feel like a loss.
Listen here: Apple Music // Spotify
Singles: “Colour Blind (feat. Lala Hsu)” // “Please Unfriend Leo” // “Embryo” // “Down Lies the Skeleton”
Dinner Salute - “Early Morning Hours”
For almost a decade, the male-female harmony has been a prevailing arrangement in Taiwanese indie—the result gets something more out of the typical binary of firm versus soft, strong versus tender, shades of each layered across another. Four-piece Dinner Salute use harmony in their synth-adorned indie-pop to better depict the dullness of being alone. “Only tiredness is left,” Ling Tung sings on the second verse, her background vocalists weighing the next line down: “still spreading, the chaotic plot still plays in my mind.” When her backing has disappeared, she shifts to a half-rapped cadence in an attempt to convince herself the loneliness doesn’t affect her: “I write a song for me,” she blurts out in English, then acquiesces in the briefest moment, switching back to Mandarin, “actually it’s written for you.” As the voices re-emerge around her, they’re the weight of that emotion she pretends to lighten, a reminder of the one who’s missing.
MAYI - “hole card”
Chengdu-based MAYI leans into his clubbiest aspirations on two tracks towards the end of his latest album, rap it up. On “Weirdo,” he acts the rapper while PalmIsland TeaHouse lends her seductive lilt for the UK Garage track’s hook, her awkward English syntax furthering the distance between the two. But on “hole card,” he plays someone smoother, his voice bending the melody to fit its contorted beat. “We’ve both decided to hide our trump cards,” he sings. It leaves you wondering if his decision not to go for the animated rap of “Weirdo” is in kindness or weakness.
clef - “播放你的泪”
BRAINFREEZE were formed as a product of restricted physical connection—the twinkling synths of “DEBUT” are an obvious homage to hyperpop, but there are phrases across their music borne out of the Internet: “you know when you buss it down, that’s good love making,” hums the four-piece on the otherwise charming sounding “PURE BLISS.” The group are all about present connection and on “DEBUT,” a high-pitched voice twirls the phrase “just a dream” as if waiting for the balloon to pop. On the lead single for his debut EP, member clef is guided by these two ideals: there’s a bond he holds to the utmost importance as he calls, “don’t worry about what else you might lose / I will collect what you throw away,” despite later counting the days after a breakup; and the prettiness of “播放你的泪” (“Transmit Your Tears”) as he folds the track into the lightest beat and sparkling decorations. Too grounded to really take off into a dream, it’s the kind of music you listen to knowing something better is on the horizon despite being stuck in the miserable now.
Extra Listening
I think I’ve said enough about babyMINT. But it’s worth reiterating that their latest album, Loading… FUN!, is perhaps the greatest Chinese idol pop album ever made, one of the greatest Chinese pop albums ever. The idol scene has never really been particularly strong in Taiwan, yet Loading… FUN! distills the best from the idol scenes of South Korea and Japan. It’s incredible.
On ONCE UPON A MOON, TIA RAY looked to the stars, but for her latest album, ALLURE, she’s grounded on here. Natural imagery runs through ALLURE, from lead single “RIVER FLOW” to standout “IN THE MIST”—on “HOW DID I FIND YOU,” one of the album’s many songs that sounds absolutely lovestruck, she sings, “until it rains, we’re falling in this paradise / obviously want to say, ‘I love you.’” For ALLURE, she worked with a set of Taiwanese musicians that include lyricist David Ke and producer George Chen, and you can really hear the latter’s involvement as the songs push harder. TIA RAY’s also got an English album coming later this year, with lead single “BORED” out now.
The story goes like this: on a rainy night in a taxi shortly after moving to Chengdu, Zheng Xing heard the driver say that the basin would fill with rainwater in the middle of the night, then clear up in the morning. A casual observation acts as the catalyst for the title track of the singer’s third album, The Basin, as he dwells on farewells and arrivals—something more concrete in his wondering as he rests his mind on Taipei, the city he once waxed on and on about, and Chengdu, the city he now calls home. Zheng’s latest feels firmer in that regard, with heavier instrumentation that grounds his previously airy indie folk, before lifting to an unfinished arrival or a spontaneous farewell, subsumed somewhere in the mountains.
The electronic duo Astro Bunny are so consistent, releasing an album a year (now on their ninth), that it’s difficult for me to put into words why their latest album, Should Have Let Go, might be my favourite from them in years. But really it is. Can’t say why.
Some more records worthy of your time:
Bobby Chen’s Neither Here nor There
Night Keepers’ Retune
Shi Shi’s Boomerang
SOWUT’s Solstice
Wendy Wander’s Midnight Blue
老大! (Lao Da!)’s …晚安
R&B/Soul artist DEN’s new EP, Pink Friend
deca joins’ new EP, undercurrent
Alfred Hui’s in the round (Cantopop)
Find the latest Canto Wrap and Mando Gap playlists on Spotify and me on Twitter here.