TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwanese psych-rock duo Mong Tong (夢東) released a new EP ahead of their first U.S. tour, which will visit 10 cities, play at South by Southwest, and record a live session with indie-favorite KEXP.
Hom Yu (洪御) and Jiun Chi (郡崎) are brothers and bandmates. They told Taiwan News their influences include 1970s Southern Min organ pop, video game soundtracks, contemporary industrial, Japanese synth-pop, and more.
The duo blends that with traditional Asian folk instruments, synthesizers, drum loops, guitars, and heavy sampling, which can all be heard on the new EP: "Epigraphy."
The EP was released on the Australian-U.S. label No Gold on Friday (March 8) and contains nine tracks of almost entirely instrumental music. Jiun Chi said "Epigraphy" has more of an experimental feel than some of their previous work.
The concept for the EP “is inspired by the idea of ancient music salvaged from a future era, depicting an underwater sci-fi epic of oceanic explorers venturing into a submerged ancient city,” according to the band’s promo materials.
Watch Mong Tong discuss albums that inspired their sound and talk about their performance style in this interview with Taiwan News.
“Everyone in this generation is listening to music on TikTok and YouTube, so if we’re making vinyl records now, in the future our records can be dug out of the sea. So, (maybe in the year) 2500, it’ll become an epigraphy,” Hom Yu said.
Jiun Chi said the tour will be the band’s first time in the U.S., but when they toured Europe, foreign audiences got a kick out of their music style and performance.
“They liked that kind of eastern feeling, that we were wearing blindfolds, and the scales we were playing,” he said. “We play a lot of pentatonic scales, kind of an oriental, asian sound. So it’s quite a fresh thing for them to see."
“Asian fever!” Hom Yu quipped.
Listen to "Terracotta" from Mong Tong's new EP: "Epigraphy"
The blindfolds, which the duo wear while performing, compliment Mong Tong’s ethos of putting on a unique live show. Jiun Chi said that while sometimes being blindfolded leads to mistakes, the mistakes can be incorporated into the music, which gives each performance more of a “live feel.”
In English, Mong Tong’s music is often described as “psychedelic," but Hom Yu said he would rather call it “mi-huan (迷幻)," which is the word that “psychedelic” is usually translated to when switching from English to Chinese. He said while in English the term psychedelic is often associated with hallucinogenic drugs, in Chinese, it is not always directly related to that idea.
Hom Yu said in Chinese, the term "mi-huan" is more closely associated with being in a trance, the concept of “trippy,” or something dreamlike. “So I think actually, this is kind of lost in translation," he said.
Translations aside, Jiun Chi added that the “feeling or essence” of the multitudes of music styles given the psychedelic label are often completely different. “So as I see it, we can simply call what we make 'mi huan music'," Hom Yu said.
Mong Tong’s U.S. tour begins on March 11 at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, and finishes on March 29 in New York City. Tickets can be purchased through the band’s website.
(Facebook, Mong Tong image)
