#42: Going South
on the new album from L8ching, recorded during his Southeast Asian tour that finds the singer exploring a rougher, realer world
Singer is finally over and Na Ying won without ever singing “Conquer.” Like most Chinese reality television, it’s a waste of time for everyone involved.
L8ching - South Expedition
Lei Ching was a drummer before a singer. Working behind-the-scenes, the drummer’s most notable role was supporting Come On! Bay Bay!, backing the sibling duo’s quaint indie-pop without distracting from their delectable guitar riffs. Come On! Bay Bay! might have been modelled after urban sensibilities, but Lei’s own environmental influences skew towards the natural landscape. With Xueiyuan—the band’s name meaning water source—he traded tight drumming for softer strokes and hollow timbres, swaying comfortably under the bassist’s funk grooves. Each performer is breezy and casual, but Lei is a calming presence. “Groove your body like no one can see / eventually, we gon get it, we’ll get it,” he sings on opener “Wind Blowing.” Rich and airy with just a hint of scratchy texture, he makes this throwaway banality sound like basking in the sun while drifting on a lazy river.
This is the same space Lei’s debut album as L8ching lives in: open space built around a palette of earthy greens and clear sky blues. “Everything is because of love,” the artist answered in interview—it’s a vague response from an unambitious naturalist that defines the tender air of Dive & Give, a sort of balm for the cramped city lifestyle, perhaps best embodied by “Real World,” a song that feels built out of that answer. “I’ve been living in this real, real world / I wanna breathe and feel this life,” he sings, “I wanna love and pass this vibe.” Somewhere in the space of R&B and neo-soul, its inclinations are for openness—the natural, the sensitive. It’s non-descript nature can feel almost aimless. Lei’s second album invokes the same influences, but there’s a stark difference in the particulars. It’s not just the stars and flowers and clouds, but on “Jalan”—Indonesian for road—he references proper nouns like the Mecca and the Equator line. His lyrics are stimulating to the senses: the prickly sensation of holding a handful of rice, the wafting fragrance of a spice market, and the humid air of rainy season.
South Expedition was written and recorded during a tour across Southeast Asia. Lei had the idea that he wanted more out of his experience with the region, so he enlisted a team of international musicians and recording engineers for what would become his second album. The credits are stacked with Taiwanese artists—The Crane on background vocals for “Cave,” Lilium’s Lin Yishuo for production on “Buffalo,” Olivia Yan featured on “Letter to Myself”—gathered during post-production, but Southeast Asian local acts also make appearances during the initial recording and writing process, like the Thai indie-rock outfit H 3 F, Philippines-based siblings Ysanygo, and the Indonesian electronic duo Bottlesmoker. L8ching didn’t want the recording process to be confined to studio and you’ll hear snippets of conversation and field recordings taken from the markets of Manila, the caves of Cebu, the rice paddies of Ubud, and more. These snippets are only familiar to those who have lived the region, but South Expedition trusts you to embrace a sense of curiosity.
The volume of personnel can sound overwhelming, but South Expedition is almost like a collage-format travelogue, a song like a candid photograph. They sound like fond memories: “Fang! ฟัง” comes alive with the sound of horns in theatrical welcome to your destination vacation; “Buffalo” settles into a jazzy arrangement like a romantic dinner at an extravagant tourist restaurant. L8ching sounds more in tempo with the world around him. Though he might have previously let his drum rhythms define his songs, he matches pace with the field recordings and outside contributions. He takes time to understand the waves and whistles of “Bohol”—named after the region in the Philippines—before matching them with a soft, dusty drum. Only occasionally does the smoothness feel like a detriment and it’s often where L8ching finds himself searching inward amongst the crowd: would you have known “Bohol” featured background vocals from Sandee Chan if the press release didn’t tell you? “How should a life be spent?” L8ching questions on the song, to himself rather than a companion, losing touch with his surroundings in the process of this introspection.
There’s someone L8ching often sings to on South Expedition, with the kind of tender gaze that feels more specific than the general sentiment he attempted to convey on Dive & Give. Sometimes, she pops up rather inconspicuously, like the incidental reminder of her warmth in the the middle of “Letter to You,” other times, she’s a full and welcome presence. On “Pardon?” before it veers outside with a jig, it’s a fragment of a conversation. “I said you’re a song,” Lei sings, “you said I’m like a cow.” Not meant to sound unkind, it’s more like a quarrel between lovers had multiple times before. Here’s the intimacy that L8ching’s previous work lacked, the details that made it feel like a simple idealization. The strides to connection that he takes, by attuning his instrument to the world or by holding a romantic partner is memory, make South Expedition stronger. Over the instrumental interlude “Phibe,” someone puts it to English: “we make music together. Today actually, you will affect us and so our music becomes better because you’re with us.”
Listen here: Apple Music // Spotify
Singles: “Jalan”
Shan Yichun - “Lil’ Sis”
Some of the weirdest pop music of the last decade has been courtesy of Chang Shilei, whose production includes Sandy Lam’s experiment with new age, Tanya Chua’s left-field alt-pop turn, and much of Isabelle Huang’s distinctive discography. His hands are obviously all over this—both the enunciation and vocal melody feel like an imitation of Huang. There’s the melismatic run that stretches the word “come” to a multi-syllable affair, melodies that span an octave as her voice leaps and plummets, ear-splitting shrieks. Chang’s production is as busy as ever, dotted with synths and effects, but perhaps most thrilling is the mutant bassline towards the end, pushing harder and heavier in the mix. The lyrics sound more classical than what someone her age should be working with, but it’s Chinese title is “Chun Mei Mei”—it’s all directly tailored to the singer. Perhaps what makes “Lil’ Sis” sound like Shan and just Shan is the moment between her overlapping vocal runs in elegant form where she switches her tone for just an instant to sound a little bit bratty.
NIO - “coyboy”
Synthetic disco strings and overblown bass immediately place this at the club, but the giggled conversation narrows it down to a secluded corner. This moment plays on repeat, giggles and flirtatious questions taking a backseat to NIO’s anxious assertions: the question of what to say, the “let’s get out of here,” remembered but immediately requested to be forgotten. Nothing plays better at attempting to get back into the moment than the chorus: “I was just talking nonsense,” NIO sings, the words choppily strung together before he throws a shy “I don’t care” as the singer settles into the silence: the synths are pounding heartbeats, the rest of the words, probably filled with slip-ups and nonsense, swallowed by another set of lips.
Ally Shen - “Secret”
“Secret” goes for the obvious performance in Ally Shen’s hushed vocals, even when its beat desire to go wilder, a softer version of Afrobeats waiting patiently to dance. It’s marked with heat warnings despite her occasionally awkward delivery as she commands him to finish his drink and touch her body, but the most playful moment lies in the chorus. Not particularly explosive, but when Shen switches from Mandarin to English for that particular word—pronounced like it’s foreign to her tongue—she makes the affair feel dirty.
icyball - “Never Gonna Stop”
icyball love ‘80s pastiche. The band’s core influence is so heavily present that you can practically imagine the neon colours and slicked-back hair. “Never Gonna Stop” is a fist-in-the-air romantic proclamation, so bright and whole-heartedly cheesy that you can’t help but smile. It lacks the tension that made their duet with actress Vivian Sung have some semblance of more to come, but it feels like the last dance. Though he trails off with a request not so certainly answered, at the key change, the lights come down and the ending is certain.
Extra Listening
Summer Lei’s got a new album called Short Stories out now. As the title implies, it’s all about taking stories and turning them into songs—for example, the opener reinterprets a story written by her poet father and is fleshed out musically by Lei after visiting an abandoned seaside resort. It’s pleasant singer-songwriter music here.
Rapper Capper has a new album out, his second three “disk” album (though it’s more like triple EP than triple album). The title P.I.G. stands for Pretty Image Game: the first disk is filled with pop melodies and shiny synthpop, the second disk is filled with feigning cool and trendy beats, and the last part is the most straightforward rap disk and the most introspective component. Solid stuff around if not quite consistent enough to warrant so many parts—not sure P.I.G. was the best acronym for the job, but the outro where he gets a bunch of people to read “I am PIG” is very funny.
The Vansdaddy & LusciousBB album is on streaming now (not sure why, but seems like Apple Music has his profile mixed with Ryukboi’s). One of the most fun hip-hop albums of the year; it’s been dubbed a “sample-fest”—for the lyrics sheet (at least on Apple Music), they go Chinese style, crediting mixing and mastering engineers and probably more useful to you, songs sampled. Check it out and see what you can single out.
Cannot believe this is the first official debut from a NEXT GIRLZ group.
Also the sequel to the boy group version of this show starts sometime this month—this one feels the most exciting to me, but you can watch the rest of the group trailers or previews or whatever you wanna call it on their channel.
Find the latest Canto Wrap and Mando Gap playlists on Spotify and me on Twitter here.