Eco-friendly Cyberport

We're having a great time at the OFTEN Fair last weekend. The nice weather with sunshine, live music, and all the activities which promotes eco-friendly and oragnic life has made the last weekend perfect. Tho the OFTEN Fair has come to an end, it's time for all of us to start to concern more about the environment around us, and concern more about the FAIR TRADE. We just hope we can have more of this kind of events in Hong Kong, to promote and educate the next generation about how to preserve and cherish our planet earth.

GOOD WORK OFTEN 2010. Hope it's not long till OFTEN 2011.

*Photo by Venda Lee

Sharing the stage with te'

We're having a very good lesson last saturday (27/2), while sharing the stage with te', an instrumental rock band from Japan that we always look up to. To be frank, we're not doing a superb job that night, with accidents kept happening, such as the hi-hat went off, and the electricity of the guitar effect board suddenly went off. We know we can't just say "O bad luck" then have everything blamed to "luck".

When it came to the te' set, we realised what it's called a proper "production". te' is not only a band with 4 but 6 members. The complete sound of te' can only be created with the performance of the 4 band members, plus the taste imported by the sound engineer and the aid of the roadie on stage, according to the sound engineer of te', Kentaro Sasaki from Zankyo Record (残響). This is really impressive, and also let us realise how professionals produce their show.

After the gig, we went out for a drink with Kentaro-san, the sound engineer of te', and we've talked for hours about issues from sound engineering to live production, from how the Japanese indie music culture has been developed to how we should market Chochukmo. Kentaro-san kindly shared with us a lot of his ideas, comments and suggestions, which we're so impressed. He's made us realised the "professionalism" of a band, which is much beyond what we're already having in mind.

We'd like to thank SONIC BLOOM for offering us such a great opportunity to play with great bands like WangWen and te'. We're having a great time on stage as well as off stage, and we've learnt so much, so much more than we've ever expected.

Kento Anything

After almost 8 months of recording, gigging and touring without a bassist member, we're so proud to present you our new bassist, also a new member of the Chochukmo family, Kento Anything (Kento Kawamura).

We first met at This Music Studio, during the time we're recording our debut album "The King Lost His Pink". While we got stuck as the bass amp at the studio went wrong, our engineer Corey called up his friend to bring us another bass amp, who turned out to be Kento. Since then we've been working closely together. He also helped us out with the live recording of our unplugged live at kubrick in February.

We'd like to take this opportunity to thank all the bassist who has helped us out thru our tough period, namely Carina Ho (FAD), Vanilla Lau (Tacit Closet, Noughts and Exes) and Lala Him.

A night with a hundred of brilliant singers at kubrick

With one band (which is us) standing alone on a Friday night with an acoustic set, we could never expect a full house at kubrick on last Friday night. It's a wonderful night for us, with a hundred of people sitting so close together, sharing an hour of acoustic music. We'd love to thank those who've come to our little concert, for your supports as well as your singings. We used to think singing-along might be pretty cheesy, but it has turned out to be very touching. That's a night between only you and us, and for sure it has made one of the most memorable night for us.

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.

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!