FREAKS RENDEZVOUS

PEOPLEText: Shinobu Koike, Noriko Tojo

From Hong Kong, which is in its depression, a multi-media unit ‘Freaks Rendezvous‘ released its first album that is a set of music and visual. Freaks’ style is cool and unconventional in HK music & art scenes in general. At this time, Noriko Tojo, who has known Freaks Rendezvous since the unit launched, reports on Freaks Rendezvous and its works.

Freaks Rendezvous is a unit organized by three Hong Kong guys and has just released its first debut album named ‘Everybody is a Superstar’ on Aug 20.

This album contains two CDs; one music CD and one CD-Extra. It was February 1997 when they supposed and thought to release their CDs soon, I interviewed them and wrote an article about them on a Japanese magazine. And now, one and half year later, it finally comes true. The reasons why it has taken so long…, if I start writing about it, it would be a long story. Anyway, in a short, it is that their works are too far away from so called the general music in HK which means the one commercialized, and nobody, including themselves, had no idea what to do with these works. (For details, I will tell you when I get other opportunities.) I feel a bit sorry about that they had to wait for a while but honestly speaking, I think it was all right because at the end, they could release their CDs as they wished. And actually it was a good timing, I felt, they made their debut when the time was ripe. Why? Because these CDs have potentials to pep up the HK music scene which has been sluggish for while.

The strange name (in Chinese) of this unit ‘Yi Yan Man Jeun Gun (Freaks Rendezvous as English name) was made with twisting a Chinese word ‘Mou Yan Man Jeun (nobody comes to see)’, members say. ‘Yi Yan’ for this unit name means ‘strange people &/or people like strange things’ and ‘Yi Yan Man Jeun Gun’ can be interpreted as ‘The place where strange guys come together.’

In other words, the core members of Freaks Rendezvous are three guys but actually numbers of Yi Yan (Freaks) who are also uniquely talented joined to produce this album. It’s Freaks Rendezvous’ basic attitude to create their works through stimulation with these other Freaks. So, Freaks Rendezvous’ album is fundamentally different from those HK idols CDs which producers, managers and other creators usually do most of works and the idols themselves have not much to involve. Also, they put efforts on MTV that has been treated like a by-product of music. As the result, they came up with the style of this album, which contains two CDs as one set; one is music and another is CD-Extra that has a game like interface. Since this album was released from Sony Music, I tend to write about it with focusing on music but I could say that this album is about cool visual with cool music, as well. Anyhow it’s not the same kind of MTV with traditional HK MTV that the singer acts melodrama in. Freaks Rendezvous’ catch copy is ‘See the sound, Hear the colour’. The way of their expression that is the fusion of music and visual, has not been so common in HK yet, and I believe it’s suitable for the unit name ‘Yi Yan Man Jeun Gun’.

Now, let me introduce members of Freaks Rendezvous.

James Ting (=Dr.Panquix) is in charge of music. He started his career as a professional composer from 1994. Since that time till now, he has composed songs for major HK singers such as Ekin Cheng, Eedmond Leung, Sammi Cheng and so on. (By the way, Sammi Cheng’s last year hit song ‘Everyone is a superstar’ was not which Freaks Rendezvous copied but Sammi’s producer who was inspired by James’ demo version of ‘Everybody…’ and named for Sammi’s one.) The characteristics of James’s music is ‘seductive’ (as he described) melody line which reminds the atmosphere of 60s & 70s Japanese Pop music. This style is applied to Freaks Rendezvous’ works and appears very well on ‘Black Lizard’ (7th song) in the album.

For the visual parts, Chan Kahing (=DaDi) and Yong Gwok Yin (=E-Yin) are in charges. DaDi, who admires Dali since the time he studied painting in Canada, has chosen 3D Computer Graphic to express his world. He has received many prizes from various contests.

And he received the special prize in HK independent film contest for the MTV of “Daai Lou Nei Seong Dim Ma?”* which is also in this album. This MTV was shown in overseas as well. E-Yin was used to be one of many ‘Yi Yan’ as supporting stuffs of Freaks Rendezvous but because of his high design sense and object making ability, he became an official member of this unit.

For two years from 1992, he operated a small shop named ‘Art Music’ where also provided live music. In this shop, he dealt independent label CDs and books, which were not easy to get in HK by that time and clothes he designed. And this shop was the place where James, DaDi and E-Yin got to know each other.

Read more ...

[Help wanted] Inviting volunteer staff / pro bono for contribution and translation. Please e-mail to us.
MoMA STORE