#39: After-Bedtime Stories
on the debut album of the folksy Tales in Murmur, a refined soundtrack for watching landscapes
Been watching Will Love in Spring—really enjoying it so far (best Chinese drama I’ve seen this year, though I’m only on episode eight). Chen Jingfei put together an EP for the four songs she made as part of the soundtrack and they’re gorgeous. Works really well with the show which is great television in the way that sometimes great television is just two beautiful people falling in love and watching them push and pull each other away. Other dramas I watched from this year were: Amidst a Snowstorm in Love, which is perfect for maybe four episodes where two young people awkwardly navigate feelings in a foreign place (Finland) before taking a huge nosedive and Everyone Loves Me which is about gamers and lovers and tosses in every trope, but there’s this one perfect scene where Zhou Ye drunkenly cries about all the things she had to do for love only to be rejected.
Anyway, let’s get to it: wrote about the debut album from Tales in Murmur (睡後故事) and singles from Good Band, misi Ke, Quanzo, and ØZI.
Tales in Murmur - Tales in Murmur
Tales in Murmur sound like being guided through the countryside by another—their music carries a likeness to the sounds of nature, driven by soft staccato notes and graceful, fluid melodies. Unhurried as they unfurl into focus, each instrument picks up on a surrounding feature that arrives and fades into viewpoint: the twisting bends of the river, the rustling leaves of the overgrowth, the whistling air as it breezes past your ear.
The trio—whose Chinese name better translates to After-Bedtime Stories—were first formed over a decade ago by guitarist Lin Meng-hsuan and accordion player Huang Chieh, before being rounded out by Korean double bassist Lee Donghee. Their set-up is rather unconventional, but hints at their panoramic viewpoint of nature and their involvement with tradition. Whether plucked or bowed, the double bass produces a resonant yet hushed sound; it’s too quiet to turn the foreground lively, but hints at the microscopic life, providing dimension to the group’s scenery. Meanwhile, Huang’s accordion nods at nakasi—a form of traditional pop music performed by the working class that was carried from Japan to Taiwan around the ‘80s. It might initially scan as a substitute to the more standard piano accompaniment, but her performance provides a rustic charm to the trio’s sound.
The trio craft landscapes throughout their self-titled debut album. On the instrumental “Anonymous,” there’s Lin’s delicately fingerpicked guitar at the forefront, before Huang’s elongated accordion melody arrives as a cool breeze and the dull tapping of Lee’s double bass patters like footprints on the earth. Alone, the trio’s arrangement would feel like a rough sketch, but the backing arrangement provides depth to the track. There’s the winding melody of the drawled bowing of a cello, the faster see-saw motions of a clarinet—each of which move at their own tempo.
Those acquainted with Taiwan’s indie scene might spot familiar names in the credits: Your Woman Sleep with Others’ Zhang Lichang and Young David’s Yang Dawei appear on background vocals, i’mdifficult’s Lin Yuangeng on cello; and Spectro 7’s Sayun Chang performs percussion. With additional personnel on clarinet and trumpet, the band create replicate the contours of their landscape. Tales in Murmur have described interests in nature and world music—to my ears, I hear hints of the latter in percussion akin to Okinawan folk music and guitar rhythms that draw from Latin American folk music. As “Anonymous” takes a sudden, chipper turn, Huang’s performance shifts into bouncy eastern European-tinged melodies.
Though the natural is always sketched in the instrumentation, Lin and Huang will occasionally make references in their lyrics. Atop the rollicking rhythm of “Field in the Valley,” the pair sing about time and the things that are left: “there’s a road, there’s a gust of wind / there’s a quiet afternoon / there’s rain, there’s a person / there’s a fire that still has not been extinguished.” Observing is often enough for this kind of dreamy, meditative folk music; even as they turn towards their own subconscious, they survey their feelings rather than attempt to wrestle with knotty emotions. On the album’s most pessimistic track, the nightmarish “thorns,” the pair are sharp and cruel: “everyone will slowly stop caring / you still can’t take me away.”
These song can burst to life on a whim. Half the title track is instrumental, an extended trail of crests and valleys that arrives more sudden than the band’s arrangements typically allow. Here, the trio sounds like they’re lucid dreaming, tossing and turning over the words, “he’s there in my imagination.” Huang is the dreamer, imagining a flying elephant and the brightest moon, while Lin is more illustrative, his words more realistic: “living is feeling, it will never disappear / everything is real.”
Maybe the most rewarding moment of Tales in Murmur is “Beside ‘Shui,’” where the cello sings like flowing water, the percussion acts like shimmering droplets, and the rest of the band fills out the sounds of flora and fauna. Repetition exists in the trio’s music. It’s there in the lyrics; it’s there in the occasional looped melody. But more often, these ideas are carried out in irregular patterns, in mimicking the uneven course of water, in drawing the rough edges of the forest. The percussion feels unsteady, jostling around as the band is pulled by the river, until it eventually forms a calm pool of bright pool of chimes. For Tales in Murmur, it’s just like passing through the scenery.
Listen here: Apple Music // Spotify
misi Ke - “Forgive Love”
misi Ke has such an incredible voice, the kind of voice that makes you think of every emotion at its most intense. Her happiness is elation, her sadness is sorrow. It comes in shades too, when she swoops in with the opening line, it sounds like being deeply lovesick—the joy of loving someone, the pain of not being able to hold them. “Forgive Love” is a tempest and as she thrashes about on the low-end of the piano, she questions the big things, but renews her beliefs: “sometimes, I ask the world / ‘is there really love?’ I believe there is.” The final request to “start over” isn’t so much about undoing loss but reaffirmation.
Good Band - “My Beautiful Nose”
With “My Beautiful Nose,” everything shifts when Good Band introduce another person into the picture. It starts with a casual mention, but it’s initially all assumptions—things singer Wen Hsu sees about her noise, framed as what she believes his opinion would be. But then his actions prove different: “you look at my nose and call me baby,” she sings, “you say maybe it’s a beautiful nose.” The wordplay (another one comes right after: “even if my nose is tall like a mountain / tall like that sound,” she sings as her voice jumps) matches that skittish bassline. Wen finds contentment in her feature; it’s how utterly playful the duo make “My Beautiful Nose” out to be that makes their self-love track feel so refreshing.
Quanzo - “EDEN (feat. Sabrina)”
Something so pretty about how the synths undulate over the blown-out bass. But all of that is pushed to the side to make room for Quanzo and Sabrina’s voices. On “EDEN” Quanzo sings about those magical things—about time moving backwards and him being stuck, about angels floating in the garden—but the moment he dives in is when he looks for what’s real: “is anyone there?” he sings, the words prolonged. It’s prettiness means that the loneliness never feels extreme, but the swooning vocal melody feels moving regardless, made more powerful by the pair’s voices joining in harmony.
ØZI - “ICE AND FIRE”
On his second album, ØZI pivoted from party-boy to horndog lothario. It plays out like a bid for international stardom after his first album snagged him a nomination for Best New Artist at the Golden Melody Awards: his second album is mostly in English, features guest appearances from American R&B singer Arin Ray and South Korean R&B singer GSoul, and even has the lyric “two girls one me.” This outright horniness can be off-putting: latest single “SEX TAPE” features a breezy arrangement courtesy of Sunset Rollercoaster but also ØZI singing the line “watch you fuck me like a Japanese porn star”—an absolute clunker the way he starts rapping a couple seconds after that line. That’s the track he’s promoting—with a helping hand from Durex—but “ICE AND FIRE,” a one-off single for some Douyin project is much better at the flirtation, at leaving things unsaid. Over the moody UK Garage beat, the singer clings to the object of his affection, a reversal to his usual skirt-chasing. It’s built on pathetic begging (“I’m watching you leaving / I feel so defeated,” he sighs like some lovesick loser) that his question of “is your love still there?” manages to draw a concession. “ICE AND FIRE” might be built around a well-worn cliché, but sentiment still leaks through. In the final moments of the track, it’s ØZI back to teasing: a moody guitar loop, the trace of a house piano, and the unknotting of the fiddly beat into a steadier thump.
Extra Listening
When they reclaimed their name, sodagreen skipped over their pair of albums from 2009, but looks like their Vivaldi project will be coming with the seasons. The first, Spring · Daylight (sodagreen Version), is out now on streaming (the bonus disc will come out with the physical at the end of the month, but no statement that I could find on whether it’ll eventually be included on streaming), with re-recordings that sound clearer than before—fitting for the springtime.
Mimik Banka, the Chinese shoegaze band, have a new album built on re-recordings—unlike sodagreen, the band have rearranged several of these tracks.
R&B singer Yu Jiayun has a new album out, Yu. Includes singles from two years ago, yet still remains pretty succinct at just nine tracks.
Chinese R&B singer ZesT has her debut album out now, 苹果园 (Apple Orchard). The title track is a collection of dreamy chimes, spoken word rushed somewhere into mimicking rap, and a sweetly, melodic hook. The rest of the album follows suit.
GALI’s new album, STRIPLIFE, is merely fine, BabyGrape’s new album, VINEYARD, is purposefully erratic; the former remains the best pop-rap act in China, the latter is a promising electronic musician in Taiwan. What’s common is they both felt it’d be fun to sample Kanye West’s Grammys speech on their album in the year 2024, GALI at the beginning of his album, BabyGrape at the end of his. MadNeuron’s latest album is the most interesting rap album this year so far.
Musicians across Taiwan and China have been working on this project called Incomplete Rescue Manual, one of those ~healing vibes~ kind of things. The results are largely what you’d expect—fairly pleasant. The surprises are: Sandy Lam, retired, but not quite retired; Cyndi Wang with rappers Jiji Lee and Kafe.Hu doing a song that features dial tones supporting a rap and a hook that goes “that phone ring” (immediately better off anything from her last album); and “Ice,” which is essentially theatre kid Jude Chiu singing over a post-rock track by Constant & Change.
A-Lin went on THE FIRST TAKE.
homegrown, the Chinese series where they follow musicians to their home for yellow-hued at-home performances that are polished and comfortable, went to Taiwan—their first is a performance by HOATING, saxophonist of Sunset Rollercoaster, really gorgeous stuff—one of the best albums to come out of Taiwan in the past few years. (They’re teasing the rest of the performers in the description, but I’ve never been good at that kind of game.)
Find the latest Canto Wrap and Mando Gap playlists on Spotify and me on Twitter here.