Not long ago, I met a Taiwanese hip-hop band on MySpace called Kou Chou Ching. Kou graciously bought both my albums and I offered to do a remix for them. Well, I’m right in the middle of a remix for their track Black Heart and I thought I’d share my excitement about it. On the one hand it’s really exciting to be collaborating with Taiwanese artists again (I collaborated with singer Sonja V. from Taipei on Chill Dynasty – whom I incidentally also met on MySpace) – besides rapping in a combination of Mandarin, Taiwanese and the aboriginal language Hakka, Kou Chou Ching also incorporate traditional Chinese instrumentation in their music. Since I only understand a little of the Mandarin (and nothing of the rest), I’m kinda reduced to looking at the vocals as percussion – emotional percussion; I don’t really see this as an impediment. On the other hand, I’m really excited about the way the track is coming along; it had me bopping around in the studio a bit yesterday (!) – always cool when that happens!

Speaking of Taiwanese aboriginal music, Mark Forman phoned on the weekend asking if I remembered who the band was that got sued by a Taiwanese aboriginal singer. First I’d heard of it, so I looked it up on the net and it turned out to be German group Enigma. They had a huge hit with a track called Return to Innocence (that’s the album cover of the single above) in 1994. It was later used to promote the 1998 Olympics and was also used in Virgin Atlantic’s advertising. Difang, a traditional singer of the Ami people of Taiwan was watching TV one day and was shocked to hear himself singing a traditional song on a world-wide hit. There’s more on the story here. I had no idea those vocals were from Taiwan… live and learn.

Yikes, Mark works like a demon! We’ve barely recorded the podcast and it’s up on his site. Have a listen to the first edition of the All Noted Podcast. We’re planning to make this a regular thing (once a month for now). This time around we played some remixes I’ve done for other artists, but in future we’ll be exploring great electronica from all over the web. I’ve got some great friends I can introduce listeners to…

Here’s the playlist for the maiden voyage:

Fort Minor – Remember the Name – Chinese Chill Mix

Gordon’s Suitcase – In Development – Asian Elaboration Mix

Joseph Murray – Slush- Bubble Tea Mix

PureH – Signia – Lazy Sunday Easy Cheesecake Mix

Big Red Devil – Wicked thoughts of You- Asian Space Mix

Though it doesn’t really sound like it, I had great fun doing the podcast – I’ll hopefully relax into the role of presenter a bit (and get used to the sound of my own voice!). Thankfully, Mark deleted the bit where I called ccmixter.org a “suppository for audio loops” – I’d meant to say depository (!). I blame it on tiredness, but still…

You may also have noticed that moshang.net has a new look. The old version caused problems in some browsers and my friend Andre laughed at the flowers… so there.

They got the capitalization wrong, but Moshang [sic] is now on Pandora. For those not in the loop, Pandora is a flash-based music player that suggests new music to listeners based on what they like to listen to. Quite clever really – they have a bunch of music experts listen to a track to discover it’s musical genome and then the system can recommend tracks with a similar genome. You refine your personal radio station by rating tracks with a thumbs-up or -down. There’s a lot more on Wikipedia if you’re interested.

What it means for me is that someone somewhere might stumble across some tracks from Chill Dynasty on Pandora, and find they like it… That’s the theory anyway.

Of course I was interested to see how my music would be classified objectively. For the track Smoke, Pandora returned the following: “Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features electronica roots, downtempo influences, acoustic drum samples, use of electric pianos and subtle use of electric keys.” Elsewhere it included “tonal harmonies and thin ambient textures”. So, there I have it… MoShang broken down into its musical genes.

In other news, CD Baby delivered Chill Dynasty to iTunes this week and it should become available there in the following days (weeks, months…). Made In Taiwan has seen a bit of downloading on iTunes and it will be nice to have Chill Dynasty available there too. And there’s a link from Pandora just waiting for the album to become available.

In preparation for the podcast I’ll be guest hosting with Mark Forman on the weekend, I thought I’d check up on the artists I’ve done remixes for in the past – the idea is that I’ll be playing these remixes on the show, and give some current info about the artists.

Skyd of Pure-H got back to me and included a review by J-Sin over at Smother.net of his Fabriksampler / Vol.1, which included my track Sun Gong Moon Song from Made In Taiwan. The review included the line: “Mo Shang is the Taiwanese sonic knob twiddler whose music I’ve heard before, and whom I’ve come to like quite a bit.” Hehehe, he said “knob twiddler”… Actually, I won’t hold it against J-Sin, since he wrote quite a nice review of Chill Dynasty which I’m very grateful for.

Things are as they should be and I’m currently twiddling knobs on a downtempo bossa track, tentatively entitled Roots. Here’s a taster.
Let’s see if I can stick to my new production schedule of a new track every two weeks – down from a track a week; life got in the way.

Under the links section at moshang.net, I’ve added links to some of the podcasts that have featured my music. Thank you very much to all these podcasters! The list is by no means complete – if I’ve left you out, I’m very sorry (info supplied by the Podsafe Music Network). Do drop me a line as a comment to this post, and I’ll rectify the omission as soon as possible. Bumper requests are welcome!