I (Still) Love SciFi.

Aphasia - Good Morning! Taipei

Apparently Taiwan/Taipei loves them some post-rock and shoegaze.

Also? All these fucking records I bought came out in like 2010 AFTER my last visit so most of the bands appear to be broken up/inactive. Goddamnit.

On that note… I skipped through the Aphasia - the Crocodile Society of Aphasia record a few times since I got it last week. My first few scattered listens reminded me of San Diego-era Tristeza. Finally took some time to listen to the record in it’s entirety tonight while walking around and my first impressions were just a little off. Big time Explosions in the Sky and This Will Destroy You influence that I didn’t catch because I was skipping through the songs.

From what little I read, the bassist KK is pretty much the godmother of the Indie rock scene in Taipei, starting the White Wabbit record store and label while the other members work at The Wall doing sound.

This is get-lost-and-wander around Taipei music. Great soundtrack for riding around the subway or just people watching.

I’ve said this pretty much every Taiwan-music related post but the fact that the White Wabbit and Waiting Room crews are building their respective scenes from the ground up still makes me so ridiculously happy. I can’t wait to see what music in Taiwan is like in 10 years. I need to trick a kid into making Mike Kirsch sound-collage sample-heavy punk rock. Or an ignorant/angry as shit Scott Vogel influenced band.

I hope the song title is a reference to this. I’ve got some scores to settle with Taiwanese films but that’s for another time.

White Wabbit - Taipei, Taiwan

So David B. went to Taiwan about 3 years ago for a conference on the way to a fancy PhD in ocean physics and searched online for record stores. He found White Wabbit where he met Simon who was working there at the time. Simon took David around town and shopping for older used records. David ends up making a mixtape of his finds.

When David found out I was in Taiwan he immediately got me in contact with Simon because Canadians are the best people in the world.

While Waiting Room has mostly punk/hardcore/metal, White Wabbit mostly stocked Indie Rock type stuff. There is no way in hell I would have found my way to this shop without Simon’s help. THE SUBWAY IN TAIWAN? SO EASY. THE STREETS? SO HARD.

Another smaller record store. A bit bigger than Waiting Room. Pretty neat that White Wabbit had a wall of music from Taiwan/China (second to last picture is the wall). Waiting Room also had a section of Taiwanese punk/hardcore/metal that I can’t wait to go back this weekend and buy the shit out of.

I picked up a few of Simon’s recommendations and will post stuff as I get a chance to listen to it.

The receipt had a lottery number too.

Here is a better article on White Wabbit that isn’t filled with my bullshit nonsense rambling. It’s written by Catherine Shu who writes one of the blogs Dorothy loves and highly recommended to me when I was originally planing on coming to Taiwan (before I cancelled my plans only to leave last second anyways because my life was/is a wreck).

I’m going to end here because it’s past midnight and I’m talking in staccato.

P.S. If someone from Taiwan related to White Wabbit or Waiting Room reads this through google translate, when I said the store’s were small I didn’t mean it in a derogatory way. The fact that there are not one but TWO independent record stores in Taiwan is amazing.

Stray observations for 02.22.2012

1. From my understanding of what Simon told me, motherfuckers love their shoegaze around here. 
2. The Chinese name Simon gave David B. to sign up for RenRen (Chinese Facebook, because goddamnit David) roughly translates to “calm interior, angry exterior, half-horse-half-dragon-mythical-creature-surrounded-by-fire”. Not joking.
3. My Chinese might not have been as terrible as I thought. Simon and I managed to have a conversation about SST/Dischord records, Black Flag, Agnostic Front, Husker Du and Swami Sound System. It took us about 10 minutes to figure out what Circle Pit was in Chinese and English, though. Still surreal.
4. My phone is supposed to be activated sometime today. This should lead to 97% less dying on my part.
5. I’ll write more tomorrow when I’m more awake and not completely scatterbrained, or at least less scatterbrained than usual.