Graceful Porcupine

Waa Wei

Moonlight

Soft Lipa & Jabberloop

Matzka

Matzka

Newcomers Matzka’s Best Band win at the Golden Melody Awards in June could just help raise the profile for their unique brand of Taiwanese reggae.

Their self-titled album, Waa Wei’s Graceful Porcupine and Soft Lipa & Jabberloop’s Moonlight are some under-the-radar releases that deserve to be heard.

Singer-songwriter Wei is probably best known here as she was the vocalist for the Taiwanese indie band Natural Q and is also the elder sister of pop singer Queen Wei.

The artist, who once sang about menstruation, may have mellowed a little though the title suggests she is not about to get too cuddly.

Trapped In is a definite highlight on her album as her ethereal voice floats above a delicate sheen of electronica. The whole song shimmers like the sunlit sea, but one with a dark undertow: “You are trapped in memories of me, I am trapped in your suspicions, neither of us can breathe.”

Meanwhile, the Sandee Chan-penned I Am Not A Mathematician plumbs the unknowability of the outcome in a love triangle. Waa Wei complements the naive-sounding lyrics with a babyish coo: “Me plus you minus love/Does that equal to you thinking of him.”

Also giving collaboration a good name is Taiwanese rapper Soft Lipa. On his third album, he works with Japanese jazz quintet Jabberloop to concoct a heady musical fusion on Moonlight.

Opener We Got Jazz spells out what’s involved here: “We got sax, trumpet, keyboard, bass, drums/And we got luv, we got soul, we got skillz, and we got jazz.”

Classic! points to his ambition. On it, he samples Yao Su-rong’s evergreen Not Coming Home Today and asks: “What’s the meaning of super classic? Won’t be changed, won’t be forgotten, won’t be stopped, won’t stop singing.”

The album is richly layered and both the elegantly elegiac She Waltzes With Time and the unsentimental Process ruminate on life and living.

This is the most exciting example of musical cross-pollination in the Chinese pop scene since home-grown singer- songwriter Hanjin Tan and rapper MC Jin’s Buy 1 Get 1 Free (2010).

On the subject of cross-pollination, Matzka’s Taiwanese reggae is an unlikely sounding hybrid that actually bears fruit.

Leader singer Matzka is from the Paiwan aboriginal tribe and while the album appropriates foreign musical forms, the results are undeniably Taiwanese with their colourful language and use of the indigenous dialect.

There is a good-time vibe and leery side to the band. He sings on M.A.T.Z.K.A.: “Looking at your chest’s D-cups makes me want to commit a crime.”

But there is a more serious side to them as well. On the track No K, the band wave the flag of ethnic pride: “Taiwanese, foreigner, can’t tell them apart/Aboriginal, black, can’t tell them apart/Taiwanese people sing Taiwanese songs!”

Even when they obliquely tackle racism and discrimination in Taitung Handsome Chap, they make you want to get your groove on.

So rock on with Matzka, soak up the Moonlight or just chill out with Porcupine. Better yet, make time for all three.

(ST)