Album Review Corner 2002

last SG · 2002-08-24T11:52:42+00:00

Thanks for sharing your opinion, Zilch I personally prefer A*Mei's and Elva's latest albums to their previous ones, Truth and 4U. Fa Shao is a well-balance...

xiaohan SG

harlow,
I kena prompted by the sgforum pple to post a mail. since my fren has spoken, I think I better write something.
Truthfully I dun read any mags, coz I am illiterate!! Mr. Green Haha!!

Hajime SG

I guess you can always sue them on the grounds that they used an image which does not depict your charismatic looks decently enough on its widely distributed mags. Cool

blithe SG

mercy pls!

the mag needs talented and charismatic people like u folks to get going... Smile Smile

guess who....dun sue!! Wink

Huang_YunRen SG

[b]mercy pls!

aiyah no need to worry at all about that lah...with all those ppl non stop ripping us small time singaporean songwriters off by downloading the bloody mp3s coz they think music is free, where got money to pay lawyer? Evil or Very Mad

the mag needs talented and charismatic people like u folks to get going... Smile Smile

aiyoh....don't say that lah...we need talented ppl like u to make boring bums like me look talented and charismatic... Mr. Green

my fren just now told me that the i mag recently had tis little write up on a few of us and all the melody writers had photos except me huh?! hahh...it''s ok...tat's cool..at least tat photo is gone... Cool

wat the hell?! U(xiaohan) illterate..??? hahha...for all those words u have written....all i could do is 'la la la'....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

xiaohan SG

So, what mags do you guys read? recommend a bit la.. so that I can pick up a bit of more refined english along the way.. Embarassed
btw, HYR, you dun La, you juz Hooo... like an owl.. Shocked
I dunno about you guys, but I dun really like to read mags, coz too many pics, see until dizzy Confused I prefer to read those books with pictires, like this guy called Ji 3 Mi 3, taiwanese I think.. he is really popular now.. he draws alternative looking yet colourful pics with some words under it.. it is really cool... I recommend pple who wants to have inspirations to just stare at the pics and you might just get ideas flowing to your brain! Idea My fren from Tw gave them to me..
Anyway, our local singer Cai Chunjia sang this song about two pple living in the same block of apartments and they never met each other coz one will turn right and the other turn left while they get out of their aptments. Tat song ripped off the JiMi artist guy man!! He has one book called "turn left turn right". Mad

blithe SG

i love buying Q and mojo, esp when they have cool cd giveaways!! kekekekeke...true cheapo! Embarassed

there was once when Q gave away this 'best tracks from the best albums of 2000'..it was smashing!! i bot 2 mags in the end, just in case one cd was scratched, i still hv another one! (now, this is wat i called kiasu spirit!) Laughing

as for chinese ones, i really missed the chinese version of 'pass' mag from tower records few yrs back, they wrote impressive n insightful music stuff. pity it's gone now...market bad lah. sigh..even the gd taiwanese mags like 'yin yue ren' and 'wu fei yue du' have discontinued circulation...sobs...

yeah, jimmy was gd, i luv 'smiling fish' and 'the moon has forgotten'. can cry buckets when reading. got all the 'yellow moon' merchandise from the rubber ball, mug to coasters! perfect consumer behaviour for the merchandisers ya? Wink Wink

btw, shena ringo latest offering is tops! Very Happy

Huang_YunRen SG

[b]i love buying Q and mojo, esp when they have cool cd giveaways!! kekekekeke...true cheapo! Embarassed

2 days ago i bot tis SPIN magazine just becoz they had Axl Rose on the cover...hahha...it's true...i'm a bloody mat rock...they had tis Metal Issue, so i just had to get it...it's still a mystery to me till tis day that i still can be blasting Motley Crue, Guns and roses or those 80s big hair bands in my toilet or in the bus or walking on the road(these are the places I listen most to stuff, once i get in my studio room, i'll be working) or otherwise listening to nice violent agressive like hell music(sometimes Muse, sometimes Radiohead) and then writing something like err....Same time next yr(Liu Ruo Ying) or I believe or that 'home' song for sandy(tat was the working title)

there was once when Q gave away this 'best tracks from the best albums of 2000'..it was smashing!! i bot 2 mags in the end, just in case one cd was scratched, i still hv another one! (now, this is wat i called kiasu spirit!) Laughing

Oh yeah...I got that too...and now it's prob all scratched up, throw one side dunno where already...tat's why I bot myself a little IPOD few days ago...NOT to listen to MP3s but I convert them to wav or aiff files to listen to the full damn thing without compression...I let my sound engineer fren hear yesterday and he could tell the diff too btwn MP3 and wav or aiff files even when we were at a noisy restuarant...it's true mah...the difference is the compression...U put them side by side and the wav or aiff file becoz it's direct FULLY ripped off the CD is so full and huge sounding compared to the bloody teeny MP3 which i encoded at 192 kbps...but i guess nowadays, no one really gives a damn...as long as it's free and as long as the feller who is singing has a melody enuf for 5 yr olds to hum it...it's a hit! so lets rip it!

well, not tat i don't download mp3s...but I do and becoz i find that the sound sucks for long term listening, i will go and buy the album if the album rocks..there is such a trend in the west...and that's why mp3 didn't stop Nsync or whoever to sell a few gazillion copies...but i think even F4 gotta sing until die to get near 500 000 copies and even if they do, it's prob not possible....

and piracy..well...sometimes it's impossible to resist the temptation...but i guess out of a 1000 CDs that i bot, maybe 10 are not original lah...but then again, out of those compilations, if there's a song tat's really power..i'll prob buy the album just for the hell of it to listen...so actually piracy can be a useful marketting tool...in china...they are being resigned to the point that they regard piracy as free promotion....they are doin it for free...and a songwriter there earns about less then 500 singapore dollars for ONE song...and that's it..no royalties...no credit..nothing...and as times are no good....the songwriter there prob can sell maybe one song in 6 mths? go figure...these are really true hardcore artistic ppl living for music...

sometimes ppl might say...aiyah i download coz i got no $$ to buy albums mah...well...last time in the 'old school' days...ppl like me who have no $$$ to buy albums...will just listen to it on the radio lor...tat's what radio is for...if i really liked it so much...i'll just save a bit and then go buy it becoz that guy screaming his head off in the song and the guitarist who broke that guitar on stage had to get $$ to buy a new one too rite or a throat operation for the singer? so tis is my little contribution to them...it's just give and take...

well zap to 2000...yes..actually in a way it's still the same...u download mp3 off the net instead of taping it off radio...and it's still not exactly same as the original master recording....

then there's the issue of cd burning...wah lau eh...that one is another long story...but well, the mp3 thing and this one also same theory lah...

hahahha why did I talk so much cock over tis?! hahaha i guess it does apply lah...coz tis is the album review 2002 column anyway...i'm talking about albums...

and this prob might spark a debate...BUT tis is just my view...my brain told me this...so....as ozzy osbourne says in the 'no more tears' album....'DON'T BLAME ME!' hahha... Twisted Evil

blithe SG

er..i dun listen to 'hell music', so can't comment much...hahaha.... more drawn to brit acts like blur, gorillaz, doves, badly drawn boy and the soon-play-to-death coldplay. but can relate to the 'aggressive music' part, coz i'm crazy over linkin park (considerably the oni americano rock-band i like...abit over-age lah, but who cares!) and blast their songs out loud whenever its on my stereo, and most of the times, i'm writing some sentimental stuff. talk abt weird constrast! Wink

o, i'm on the anti-piracy line as well. much as though i respect the serious players in this field, really can't stand some instant (read : commerical) ch music, esp when they are produced from the same 'factories'! (no special reference to anyone hor, lest it creates wrath). pop music is fine, but not when it becomes crap music, u can't even tell the difference. if it's dat hard to draw a line, then the record cos have lost their case for consumers to pinch their wallets. Confused

read some views abt how they 'punish the insincere musicians by buying pirated cds, downloading mp3s, and burning cds', wat a lame excuse! if u think the product is lousy, at most dun buy lor, dun hv to resort to such treatment n make it seem logical wat Evil or Very Mad

btw, mr huang, can check ya mail? Wink Wink

Hajime SG

ok lah, i admit i m a leecher. i often leech mp3 off bots so tat i can listen to them for free. but hoh, the mp3 for me is test water purpose. if i like the songs by the artiste, i will usuali go out to buy the albums. eg. recent albums by penny dai, ye shu yin...oni some artistes i will go out straight to buy without downloading their mp3, eg. david huang, david tao, jay chow, jeff chang...aniway nowadays the mp3 i download were all those which u can no longer find elsewhere. if i can't find the album, so wat's the next best thing to do? the answer is obvious lor...

aniway, now i juz realise tat i m less hesitant in buying english albums rather than chinese ones. i tink i biased lah, but i feel english albums r usuali better and more worth buying/risking. artistes like pet shop boys, jamiroquai, etc, i always buy without test-listen oso. very biased hoh? but can't help. coz i realise many chinese albums usuali play on the marketing rather than on the production itself. wat for u give me towel, keychain, t-shirt etc when i buy the album for gd music? Confused

oso hoh, the chinese albums i tend to buy later now, coz of the freebies which they give in the later versions. kaoz, i remm tat time i bought tao zhe's 1st album on import coz no local distributor, the cd cost $20+ and come wif nothing at all. then after tat he became popular, local distributor brought in his album then price slashed to $17 or less, plus bonus tracks! dui ah! 2nd album oso like tat, i bought in its 1st week, then not long after, the later edition got free vcd Mad loyal fans were discounted for their support, sigh Crying or Very sad

orh, was talking abt mp3. aniway i felt tat now mp3 so rampant, wana stop it oso next to impossible, so best is record labels work out an agreement with the major mp3 servers eg. Morpheus for a win-win situation. instead of wasting so much $ and coming up wif dumb technology like "protected" CD which in the end could be overcome by the simple method of using a black marker to draw a line at its circumference. end up as laughing stock leh...

cham, i tink i talk nonsense liao, better stop... Shocked

Hajime SG

btw if u wana learn gd english, dun bother wif the music mags. they use lots of slangs and self-coined terms which you can't find in the dicky (=dictionary, pls lah!). try Fortune, Forbes, Reader's Digest, TIME...abit the boring, but their english reali better lor...

aniway some "dedicated" music mags r usuali quite high-brow in their selections. sori loh, i not so "high-class" one, very difficult to relate to wat they listen to. i m a veri surface listener, mainly mainstream, (but no trash like n'sync or a1 pls) so u can c i m not a music fanatic. talk to me david bowie, pet shop boys, gorillaz, blur, pulp...i can still accept, i m a sucker for britpop. but i duno which r the gd britpop mags out there, so if can recommend, pls recommend, thanx.

ok, i know i m spouting rubbish again, so...peace out! Twisted Evil

xiaohan SG

Hi Hajime,
I was joking about the learning english part. But thx anyway. Wink
Same here, I almost dun buy Chinese CDs at all. The last two I bought was the last 2 albums of Jay Chou Laughing . Not becoz I like him, but becoz I wanted to see why Fang Wenshan has written. Personally I prefer Vivien Hsu's lyrics. There's more feelings in her lyrics, though they are simple, and very verbal. Anyway, thatz my personal opinion la! so dun quote me! esp the undercover reporters in this forum! Twisted Evil
Normally I dun buy many CDs anyway, unless I like more than 3 songs of that particular album. I get very angry Mad as I feel cheated if I find out that only the first plug of that CD is nice, and the rest is just plain and boring. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

blithe SG

ok lah, i muz admit...i'm quite a ktv fanatic, so i do hv my fair dosage of k-songs...kekeke...closet s.h.e. fan! pop music does hv its appeal, but somehow exploited by the record labels lah. actuali, a1 isn't dat bad, at least they 'try' to write their own songs...got the 'effort' factor. ok ok, so mebe for some it wasn't the case. Laughing

chinese albums are increasingly disappointing loh, i hate to say it, but some really cash on the popularity of the singers, and then come out with some marketing strategy excuses, a bunch of crap...if the music sucks, dat's it man. in d end, i'll rather buy the eng and jap albums, dat might not even come with freebies to tempt me into buying them.

talking abt jay chou, fang wen shan shone on the past 2 albums, but come the 3rd one, i think he's somehow lost the oosh...became v.predictable and formalaic. ya, i agree dat vivian hsu lyrics are more sincere. too bad, aft a fallout with i-dunno-who, she's not gonna write for jay again. i even heard the latest track for radio/mtv air-play 'signal' is written by one of the company workers, by ballot (russian roulette?!) style wor... Rolling Eyes

then again, i still luv cheer chen, sandee chan, faith yang (tho the last album was kinda so-so, my fave is the 2nd album 'silence' Wink ) and mavis fan (some said try abit too hard Confused ), so i'll still fork out $$ for them lor.... Cool

back to mp3s, if i wanna sample cds, i'll go to websites like amazon.com or cdnow.com, oso can listen to the tracks and get a gd feel of how the songs are like mah. so...dun download lah hor. Very Happy

hmmm...got undercovers here ah....tsk tsk.....(but dun think anyone will get quoted here lah) Twisted Evil

Hajime SG

actuali my angmo half bucket water. but abit sad my chinese now oso nosediving all the way...*shrug* Rolling Eyes

sometimes i wish i can juz listen w/o prejudice, afterall music is meant for enjoyment for us listeners...but some trash i reali is canot tahan... Confused S.H.E. is totally marketing, no offence, tho they haf some nice songs, i personali like "Re Dai Yu Lin"..."Remember" is funky too, but duh, a cover. Their new album (3rd?) really spoilt mkt wif the trashy zhu da "Mei Li Xin Shi Jie". Mad This song is so "China-Dolls"! Their 2nd album still better. I though 4InLove was much better than them, but too bad, marketing-wise they lose by more than a horse-length. What to do, in the world of marketing like this, packaging counts more than talents. Mad

If got any good upcoming albums, pls inform us hoh. I've been spinning the David Tao album to death these past few weeks, I'm starting to spin Jay's & ShinYueTuan's again...and if no more gd albums come along, I'm back to spinning my Huang Da Wei CDs (this man is magic! His music hypnotises me manz! I want to marry him!!!!!! Twisted Evil ), or any of my English albums...Oops, PetShopBoys!

Huang_YunRen SG

read some views abt how they 'punish the insincere musicians by buying pirated cds, downloading mp3s, and burning cds', wat a lame excuse! if u think the product is lousy, at most dun buy lor, dun hv to resort to such treatment n make it seem logical wat Evil or Very Mad

Tat's the stupidest and most no-brainer bimbo himboic thing to say....

since the slim 10 product is so lousy, why not those guys go steal the slim 10 from the warehouse and then eat it to punish those insincere and inconsiderate makers?? hmmm..maybe that might make the market go up again!

HA! Twisted Evil

but actually on the other hand...i'm also grateful for those ppl who do care to bring ppl like me and xiaohan into this tiny little biz where there could be much fun involved...but the reality is that this shrinking of the market might create a shrinking of new talents coming into the biz in the future simply coz it'll be too hard to survive if u're doin it full time in terms of economy wise...and also it might kick out some existing ones simply coz there might be a point where it's not worth it anymore, here u are, working your ass off to create something and at the other end some guy is just taking it for granted...of course there are ppl who will die for their art...but tat's a rare breed, and i'm not one of them! coz it's just pop music man...
Wink

Zilchster SG

Just like to wish good luck to Eric and Xiaohan in their respective nominated categories.

Esp to Xiaohan...U really deserve tat overdued credit...in fact let me see if i can list out the songs u wrote over the years...

Mavis Hee 'Ni Chou De Yan'
Some song for Daniel Chan is Bi Wo Xing Fu album...freya lin fan's 2nd album, one song in Kit Chan's Xuan Yao...quite many lar. My fav is 'Why'...

Eric...well...karen mok...ah mei...sandy lam...etc etc...

Well...to the topic of CDs...i usually buy them...unless it's just one or two songs i like...then i download...sometimes dun even bother to d/l...but right now...no CDs to buy...anyway some up and coming releases:

A Mei and Elva Hsiao 30 Aug
Edison Chen 27 Aug
Zhou Hui 28 Aug
Ritchie Ren 6 Sep
Lu Jiaxin (newcomer) 5 Sep
Zhang Zhenyue 10 Sep
Evvone Hsu/Xu Huixin 12 Sep

xiaohan SG

Thx Zilch. Embarassed
Actually Eric is more deserving than me la. He has been in the scene for as long as I have and has written much more hit songs than I have. It is just that His name Huang Yun Ren is often mixed up with Huang Yun Ling (the E-news host). Pple tend to think that it was a typo error on the credit list. Sad
Anyway guys, hope to see your name one day too! jiayou!

Talking about albums, I have this urge to go and buy all the Chen shan ni's albums. I really admire her for writing all the funny lyrics and the company's guts to release all that!! all the long hair dog caffeine crazy songs!! (actually I love her only serious but spooky song LaibuJi, drives me to tears, esp that line, Lai Bu ji wei ni bian cheng Haoren). Crying or Very sad

Hope that one day we all get that kind of luck too! to do the music that we really love, and not care abt the market. To be fair, Sandy's album is almost that, coz both me and eric enjoyed the whole process. We get a lot of room to stretch our potentials. But chances like those are few. Most of the time we have to write commercial stuff as the producers have to worry about album sales.
I mean, why cant someone appreciate songs that talk about, say, staples, bread, our toes, tap water or Taliban etc? Why must it be you leave me , but I still love you all the time? Question

By the way, what's with the Taiwan market? so many boy bands! I tumed to MTV that day and had a shock.. Energy, 5566, peace etc etc.. all look like korean/Jap bands! I cant even differentiate who is who?

Hajime SG

"Lai Bu Ji" is my most fave Chen Shan Ni song, though it's not asif I know many of her songs. This is the case of liking the song at 1st listen before knowing who sang it. I saw the MTV and I got the chills - it was filmed in a morgue. Her voice sort of reminds me of a local singer - Liu Xue Fang, the one who sang "Mi Li Ye" theme song.

5566 and Energy are both tw new boybands. 5566 have 5 members who venture in all entertainment areas, eg. hosting, acting, etc. They derive their strengths (or attempt to do so) from being diversified in all these areas. Energy is heavily modelled after Korean boyband ShinHwa, and their 1st hit "Come On", was covered from ShinHwa's "Hey Come On". Typical boyband lor. PEACE??? That's a locally made boyband. Erm, so far, don't see much of their achievements since they haven't released any solo album, though they can always boast of having Wang De Yuan as an ex-champ of Youth Karaoke competition.

Alot of new albums, but mostly are from "idol" singers. So I guess people should save the $$$ to go concerts instead! Hiak, Sandy is coming... Rolling Eyes

Btw, please support Xingpop which will be in Esplanade in Oct. Local compositions from the 80s to the present, with Jeff Chang as guest singer. Pity my fave Roy Lee and AhDo won't be present Crying or Very sad

xiaohan SG

hi Haijime,
Oh..I must have been mistaken.. okay, so Peace is local band.. there is another band that they have been showing.. just cant recall their name.. I am just too old for this boy band thing..
You sounded Pro. Are you anyone I know? If yes, do drop me an email. [email protected] Thanks. Wink

Huang_YunRen SG

eh…how to delete a post ah? weird…i can’t delete leh! hahah coz i posted same msg twice! haah anyway….

Hajime SG

Whoa whoa, relac mate. So many devil faces...

I'm just a poor working class here who know nothing about music nor play any musical instrument (the closest I ever get to one is the recorder I played during primary school days). But I do appreciate good music (or so I think), tho my standards are of coz far off from those critics who are well-versed in anything from mainstream pop to bossa nova (though I can't stand some so-called critics who always act so damn high-browed in their selections...act seh sia... BAH!). I always harbour a secret fantasy of wanting to revolutionalise the whole Chinese music industry if I have the power, talents and money to do so. Ha!

Frankly, the Chinese entertainment industry is always seen as a class lower to that of their foreign counterparts - backing, resources, dedication, production quality, manpower etc. Doing entertainment work is seldom seen as a mean of livelihood (not asif you can earn big bucks kind), but more for personal interest/passion. Probably due to the traditional thinking of "xi zi wu qing", people around you will seldom encourage in to be involved in the entertainment industry. Foreign artistes usually struggle to stand out due to intense competition, but for Asian artistes, there is an additional barrier of this misperception. How many cases you have heard of some Asian artistes whose parents threaten to disown just because he/she chooses to sing/act over conventionally prestigious jobs of a lawyer, doctor, banker, etc?

Ok, probably I'm not in the music industry, so I can't possibly empathise with musicians like xh and HYR. Talk is so easy for me, but the situation they face is probably hundreds times more difficult than what I have envisioned.

And to answer your qn, xiaohan, I don't think we know each other, and as mentioned before, I'm just a poor working class, not a PRO in anything, except for crap probably. But I must say the few posts by you and HYR definitely enlighten everyone in here immensely. Maybe it'll motivate (or demotivate, depends on how people take to your messages) more music-lovers to go for their dreams.

Does xiaohansuan mean "little scrooge"???

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