Aadia, Balance, 2002
Aadia, Balance, 2002
ranking: #76 on 1993-2005 list
Like Jutoupi‘s “Love Live Punk ‘N’ Funk,” “Pre” (序) quotes Lenny Kravitz’s famous “Are You Gonna Go My Way” riff. In the older album, the interpolation is part of a larger jokey jumble defacing all things sacred about Chinese and Taiwanese society. But Aadia (阿弟仔) is no joker. This opening track to his acclaimed Balance (平衡) sums up the blistering balancing act that will be the record. A Chinese flute flutters through while an electric guitar crashes underneath. Rock drums alternate with Chinese cymbals. Juxtaposing Chinese and Western instruments is nothing new, but Aadia seeks in the combination something of a spiritual breakthrough that goes beyond culture mixing.
“Map” (地圖) begins with a similar instrumental juxtaposition: ruan plucks are joined by electric guitar distortion. Yes, there’s something immediately alluring about it musically. But the lyrics suggest other tensions. The singer searches for a map of good and evil. He needs help finding his way in the existential goo, and turns to god. The English rap by sidekick Joe is assured and steady. The Chinese rap, on the other hand, is manic like Busta Rhymes without the confident swagger, huffing and puffing nervously. It’s mumbly and rambly, like somebody’s got his tongue but he’s gunning anyway. He’s driven by his inner demons. “What should I do? What should I do?” he asks.
“Confession” (認罪) similarly recreates inner struggle as a musical clash. The track opens with Chinese opera, but it is jagged, cut up and pasted in the editing room. There’s something bubbling beneath tradition: western mixing techniques, the postmodern pulse of youth. An electric guitar kicks in, as does a sinister-sounding English and Taiwanese rap bouncing off each other. A call and response between an adult and a kid, in Taiwanese: “Life’s like that (like that).” The chorus is a folk call by the new generation, nervous about both the past and the future: the baby-killing parents and the fun-loving youngsters of the song’s opening lines.
Even the love songs are troubled, or at least distracted, by spiritual unease. “Ambiguity” (曖昧) is an English-Chinese prayer over wispy heavy metal arpeggios. It’s less a love song than a dream of one, thought up as the heavenly release from earthly troubles. The outro offers no consolation, just an erhu crying over distortion. The album’s other “love song” is “Hornet” (虎頭蜂) with its “we can make war or make babies” battlecry, which in hip-hop is an invitation to sex, but in the context of Balance almost feels like an actual dilemma. The song is too angry to be sexy. Too heavy to be flirtatious. Too rough to be romantic. “Hornet” is lovemaking with stingers.
If it all sounds unsettling, it should. Balance is Taiwan’s answer to nu-metal. The very-good title track handily balances good and evil, god and the devil, purity and corruption, selfishness and responsibility, before launching into a memorable chorus blast with Linkin Park-type rap flourishes. “Birdcage” (鳥籠) is the creepiest track, with monotonous rap mumbling over a rumbling Chinese bass drum. Occasionally, a solitary folk horn blares, as if for the dead.
But musical hybridity is never merely a “balance.” How are the Chinese and Western instruments/lyrics brought in, and for what purpose? In something like “Pagoda” (塔), the bagpipes and other Scottish sounds create a beautiful, even transcendent, air that’s lighter and fresher than anything a Chinese equivalent could have produced, borrowing ethereal melodies from Europe the way Faye Wong borrowed from the Cocteau Twins, creating sonic patterns that release the music from the confines of Chinese pop. But for the most part, Western instrumentation doesn’t uplift the music, but grounds it in darkness. Electric grinds, drum-and-cymbal crashes, nu-metal barks — these are sinister sounds made more sinister by their association with Euro-American subculture.
This borrowing is ironic given the nationalistic stance Aadia claims lyrically. “Choke” (嗆) is a rebel yell with Chinese opera claps, prefiguring Leehom Wang’s “chinked-out” experiments and sporting much more hip-hop cred. “The mighty dragon will awaken. / The whole world readies to chase the Chinese,” he sings. The most telling moment is “Door” (門), which takes on the controversy of European new age group Enigma’s “borrowing” of a Taiwanese aboriginal chant. Aadia hijacks the original chorus himself, claiming his culture and protecting it against colonialism. But what to make of the fact that half of “Door” is in English? Aadia may decry the West’s hegemony, but he has no problem letting the English language and American vocal traditions form the basis of his own musical signature. Aadia needs the West because he needs its counter-cultural credibility. Perhaps that’s why for Aadia, musical hybridity is such a tormented game of good and evil. This is a game with no winners, only the mutual recognition of each’s presence in the other.
