Love Angel Music Baby

🪻🌷 Updates!! (and some Mandopop and Cantopop recommendations)

Secret Ceremony

It’s very funny how life works - first you go through all possible vicissitudes (沧桑 cangsang, beautiful word) but then if you do enough of the right kind of job in the right kind of combination, the most unbelievable things begin to happen. They are never the things you started out expecting because nothing could have made you expect them but by nature of all the cangsang they are always much more meaningful than anything you actually could expect. And you have to act like nothing is going on at all so as not to over-sentimentalise. Anyway Camille Paglia emailed me when she found a 1968 Roger Greenspun review of Secret Ceremony in her archive and I located the NYT scan of it:*

Losey and I are on the same wavelength I think. Last summer I began absent-mindedly plotting out five pieces of narrative work which I mapped to the Chinese elements (I was bored in class in Taiwan) - my ‘water’ screenplay was loosely based on Madonna’s love affair with a psychiatrist near me and its ballooning into a concentric Freudian affair, and I am only just noting how unconsciously Secret Ceremony it all was. Also, ‘poet of mirrors’? (I swear I have said this in those words about Losey).

I finished my dissertation

The worst feeling! No closure (I prefer working with magazine editors because at least you know you can collab on something that will definitely be considered finished in the end). I am still very invested in the subject matter and will be trying to pitch on it once the essay’s marked. Something will come of it.

Silence by Yang Naiwen

(Posting with no comment except that you should also listen to Yang’s very strong Cranberries-esque trip-hop-influenced ‘One’ album from 1997, only available as a single YouTube video).

Cantonese bonus track version of 色戒 (Lust, Caution) by Faye Wong

For wannabe Faye Wong fans who like the ‘90s Bristol scene and are intrigued by the heights of its transference to Asian pop: I would listen to this (the mixing!!!) and THEN I would listen to her Mandarin 寓言 ‘Fable’ album, but only the sublime section from tracks 1-5. (Should have been an EP - was a contender for the position of Mandarin Ray of Light until she put a load of radio-friendly ballads onto it). I love the choral break and its electronic saws on #2, 新房客 (‘New Tenant’) and the lyricism on #5, 彼岸花 (‘The Flower Across the Bank,’ a personal favourite - learning Mandarin is worth it just so you can understand Wong when she wails ‘I’m not scared, I really love him’).

I don’t speak Cantonese but my brother does. Our parents have fulfilled the hyperliterate Jewish dream, which is when your two children each grow up to learn a different Chinese language even if you only speak English to them (the UK government should seek to replace the Confucius Institutes with our mum and dad, who will just stand there doing nothing). The only shared thing I can map this linguistic interest to is North London’s Oriental City, a wondrous pan-Asian shopping centre from our childhood, now sadly the domain of derelictplaces.com.

After the Beep 哔一声之后 by Faye Wong

Another discography highlight, this time from the Only Love a Stranger album - masterful harmony.

Mavis Fan - The Best Weapon for Loving Someone to Death

…and if you liked the previous song then you’ll LOVE this super rare Cantonese bonus track from Mavis Fan’s ‘01 jazz fusion album (‘Lounge Diva’ in English, which is a terrible translation of the fantastically classical 绝世名伶 ‘Eminent Actress’).

Is it a Dream? 是不是梦 by Ai Jing

Ai Jing is a singer and visual artist from Shenyang, but this album (clear trip-hop influence) was recorded in the UK. Gorgeous middle eight in this. (See also her acoustic Buffalo 66 (水牛66) with the opener: ‘We watched Buffalo 66, that film was great / but we had no idea what it was about’).

*I am pretending to be nonchalant (LOL) but I am the luckiest girl in the whole world - and anyone who has read this blog for a year plus, or read my last Spectator piece (for that’s how it happened) will know immediately how much this means to me. Ignore the people who tell you not to meet your heroes because sometimes they are very sweet and very knowledgeable and will contribute to some of the greatest email convos probably ever. If you’d told me about this turn of events a month ago I would not have believed you).