Sunday 20 December 2009

Debut Album "The King Lost His Pink"

We're here to present you the release of our debut album "The King Lost His Pink", with album cover by Simon Birch, mixed and mastered by Kenneth Tse (The Invisible Men), and full supports from DIESEL and Time Out Hong Kong.

The album is now available at HMV, White Noise Records, Records Rendezvous, Zoo Records, CD Warehouse. Digital purchase is also available at iTunes Store, eMusic and Amazon.


Monday 14 December 2009

The story behind the album cover

Some frequently asked questions these days are mostly about the album cover. Did you guys photoshop it? Did you guys paint it? No, we didn’t, we're not that talented to come up with such a beautiful painting. For those who've come to our album release party would have probably seen the actual painting, which is as huge as 8 feet talll. So who's the artist who turned our nude bodies into something beautiful thru his magic brush strokes? The acclaimed Simon Birch is the answer.

Thanks to Time Out Hong Kong for the hook up, Simon has then sent us the first email regarding the album cover, going straight ahead to explain to us his philosophy in his art. With the desire of expressing on self with absolute honesty, we've found ourselves so lucky and blessed that we've got Simon on board.

I forgot who suddenly rose "Let's paint us nude!" during a discussion with Simon about the album cover, with Simon replying a "Why not", the painting was then officially kicked off.

With not any further confirmation about what to do with the album cover, we went up to Simon’s studio on a Sunday afternoon. "Come on guys, clothes off." That's what Simon said when he got his camera in hands. Standing in front of the huge plain canvas naked, we got ourselves started to pose. Unlike posing naked in front of a mirror in your own bathroom, it isn't easy at the beginning to pose naked in front of a camera. Les and Jan's great efforts are inspiring, getting the whole team into the mood very quickly. With our clothes back on, the last step for us is to lie on the canvas, while Simon outline us with a chalk on it. It's pretty interesting that we are being outlined by a chalk while we're still in consciousness, as normally when you got outlined by a chalk you’d probably be lying in the middle of a highway, dead or half-dead.

In just 4 days, the painting was finished. We're all so amazed. This painting means so much to us, it has marked our debut CD release, our first nudity in public, as well as our friendship with Simon.

For the stripe over the painting, that is no one's idea, and that's nothing anyone wants. Big applause to the Hong Kong stupid censorship system for classifying the cover as "indecent content", in which if we don't put something to cover up our "painted dicks", our CD won't be allowed to sell to people under 18. We'll keep spreading the words to the world of how civilized Hong Kong is.

(We'll try to save money to run a limited edition with the original painting on the cover, to show our respect to the painting, and the artist.)

To know more about Simon Birch's work, please visit
www.simon-birch.com or monkeymodified.blogspot.com

Go and take a look, we promise you'll be very impressed!

Monday 23 February 2009

A short memoir

Only a week to go for our A*Fest Manila Tour, we’ve just finished our last gig before our break. Feeling pretty relaxed and it’s about time for a short memoir. It’s been 10 months since we had Chochukmo started all over, time flies as it seemed just happened yesterday. I still remember the night the 5 of us were having Curry at Chungking mansion, talking about how to start the band all over, and what goal to achieve. Tho most of the points we’ve discussed that night have been forgotten, the passions remains.

In the past 10 months, Chochukmo has taken over the most part of my life. Heavy gigs and interviews, recordings, promotions, and a lot of managing works have made my schedule terribly packed every single week. Tho sometime exhausting, it’s a meaningful life to me as in the end we’re working extra hard to try to at least achieve something. I’m glad I’m gonna be less busy as before, and would be having more time to relax a bit. At the same time I know I’ll miss the packed yet awesome life I was having in the past 10 months in Chochukmo.

Looking forward to start writing songs with the band, as in the end, the most satisfying thing for a band to do is always to write music.

We’ll soon be on a break, hope to see you all soon.

Mike Orange