|
After a successful release of their album "From The Towers Of This City, I Can Still See All Your Promises", Uncle Joe talks to HKClubbing about their music and how the band came about.
Notable artist accomplishments:
Matthews = Uncle Joe have played numerous festivals in HK such as the annual ‘Rock On Festival’ , the ‘Sound & Vision Festival’, supported US rockers Brandston and the upcoming ‘Rockit Festival’ this October in Hong Kong. The band is set to grace the stages alongside fellow CMJ marathoner’s Electric Eel Shock and Supergrass. Both the EP and LP as well as the compilation that the band have appeared on have garnered them praise from indi and national press around Asia.
Gardener = The band have basically self-funded and self-produced two releases, and we are proud of what we have been able to accomplish given the circumstances within in which we find ourselves. By that I mean Hong Kong, which has a really small underground indie music scene and no real support from local venues or enterprises.
How would you describe your sound?
Matthews = The Uncle Joe sound is rock n’ roll but not in the traditional sense. We play driving riffs and hard hitting drums but there is a constant sense of melody and depth to the sound. No fast solos or distortion. The live setting is where the band thrives. You can hear all of us playing at the same time adding in our parts to make the overall sound powerful.
Gardener = Most of the writing style has been heavily influenced by indie bands such as Death Cab for Cutie, Pedro the Lion and old Jimmy Eat World. The emphasis is on clean but driving guitars that compliment each other, settled around punching bass lines and pounding drums.
What do you really want people to know about your band?
Matthews = We want people to know that lyrically this record comes from a Hong Kong setting and the dynamic of the sounds often echoes that of the city but also that the lyrics are there to be appreciated with an individual perspective. Someone who is from the other side of the world could relate to these lyrics and kind of understand the general theme that runs throughout –hope.
Gardener = The thing I really want people to know about our band is that great rock is not about how loud, how fast or how drunk you can play. It’s about how passionate your music is and how dedicated you are to what you are doing. Great rock has always been about the cause, and our cause as a band is help get Asia bands heard on the international stage, where they belong.
What are some of your major influences?
Matthews = Musically I always feel people dig their own ditches by listing artists they admire. In the case of Uncle Joe, we all have a similar middle ground with our tastes. But we also have differing influences that are personal to each of us. I think together we take all that eclecticism and make music that we feel passion for playing and hope others will also enjoy. Some of our case logic folders have recently contained : Electric Eel Shock, Saetia, The Icarus Line, Death Cab For Cutie, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Pedro the Lion, Interpol and old Jimmy Eat World.
Gardener = Hong Kong has definitely been an influence on us. A lot of our music is representative of the city within which we live – sometimes hectic, sometimes beautiful, sometimes dirty, and sometimes clean. Hong Kong is a complex international city and I think that our music reflects the struggles we have had in trying to get heard here. Likewise, each of our own personal beliefs also play a large part on the influence of our music, and this come across especially in our lyrics. Lyrically we sing about hope, being positive, gaining something out of life and being motivated to bring good into this world. There is enough negativity in life and if our music helps someone feel positive about themselves, then we have achieved something special.
Without the backing of a label, how do you go about the business of getting your music out there? What’s the most outlandish thing you’ve ever done for self-promotion?
Matthews = Two of our band members run a non-profit label by the name of Far East Records. Tom and Andrew decided that Hong Kong was never going to start promoting young alternative rock bands or whatever they were called at the time. They started the label and released a few EP’s and full-lengths over the last 5 years and have kind of got a nice healthy appreciation going. We pretty much took the backseat with Uncle Joe until this year when it was time for our band to have its focus from the label. They had been concentrating on making other peoples records and then when the songs were being written we felt it was time to unleash it.
Gardener = the other thing we do is play a lot of shows. Most shows in Hong Kong are in the Universities here or local bars and schools. There are no real venues that are supporting the music scene here, so it is quite different to other countries. What this means is that we need to get out there and just play to as many different audiences as possible in order to get heard. The most outlandish thing we have done for self-promotion is walk around in a typhoon, in torrential rain, winds at hurricane speed, and try to hand out flyers for our CD release show! Pathetic…
What has been your most memorable moment as a band (or, if you’re a solo artist, just in your musical career in general)?
Matthews = I think we would all agree that just over a week ago when our record was released would have been the most memorable experience for the band. We played a packed club (300 plus people) billed as a ‘Release Party’ in Hong Kong to friends and family and a whole lot of new faces we had never seen before. It was very rewarding, seeing new people as well as the mainstays at shows tells us we must be doing something right! We had this whole audio-visual element incorporated into the set for the first time and we did some older acoustic tunes. We used some samples and people got to see and hear the album in its entirety performed live and it was pretty wild.
Gardener = I agree with Ben. Definitely getting our album out after spending almost the whole year in production was a great moment. Now we just hope the record will help us to sign a record deal that will get the music wider distribution than we can provide.
What is it that makes you different from other artists in your local scene? (Note: just saying you’re “better” won’t help much.)
Matthews = Firstly we are in a minority in Hong Kong. At most shows we play we are the only non-Chinese faces there. We see ourselves as locals having grown up here and spent most of our lives here, but the local scene still sees us as foreigners. Our band sound is also seen as quite unique. Most bands rely on heavy distortion and solos and all that stuff. We tend to bring the feeling of rock to our music via our performances while keeping the guitars clean, driving and the rocking but at times we lend ourselves to more subtle textures and sounds. Another notable difference is that we are the first independent band in Hong Kong to fly over a producer to make the record in Hong Kong. Dan Burton (Early Day Miners/Secretly Canadian) was called in to record, mix and master the album. The mixing was all done via correspondence using FedEX and took place in Indiana at Dan’s own studio. The final result is awesome.
Gardener = To echo Ben’s words, we are the only band in Hong Kong that is made of foreign members but that plays within the core of the local Chinese scene. It is very rewarding cause we are respected and accepted in this scene, even though we sing in English. That makes us different and automatically helps us to stand out – people don’t expect to see people like us playing at their shows! But on top of that, I think we stand out cause we don’t really play with distortion on our guitars. The local scene in Hong Kong is full of heavy rock bands that play hard and fast, and we are almost the opposite – we play upbeat, mellow, driving indie-rock. That makes us stand out completely, and people generally find the change refreshing.
Have you, or any members of your band, been in other groups that people would be familiar with?
Ben M played in HK indie-rockers Kid ZERO and the others played in Micah 68 another old Hong Kong alt-rockish band.
How did your band come together?
Matthews = Uncle Joe started with Tom and Andrew jamming in Tom’s bedroom making demos with acoustic guitars. The first EP came together fairly haphazardly due to the lack of a solid line-up. Ben Tse joined on bass in mid of 2002 and I joined in July after I bumped into Tom in a mall and he gave me his number. It’s so ridiculous cause Tom and myself were in the same year at high-school, we both loved and played music, but never got together in a band until now. Our school was all about it’s cliques, and so years later we are now laughing, telling each other what we used to feel like back in those school days. We were kind of outcasts but have always been kind of similar. The love of music definitely runs deep in this band and has ultimately brought our paths together at last. Having been the last addition to this band I am told we are a ‘real’ band now. Now the rock can start!
What question are you just dying to give the answer to that we haven’t asked? (Please supply both the question and the answer.)
Q: What are the immediate aims of the band ?
A: Matthews = We are currently seeking distribution in the US and Europe for our new record. We have had some interest from one European-based label but are ultimately looking to take this music across to North America, Japan and Europe. The response to the record thus far has been good and we hope that other countries will also show interest as a result of generous praise from Asian media.
Please use the space below to say anything else you’d like us to consider for inclusion in your profile.
Gardener = We believe strongly that there are some awesome bands in Asia that make great rock’n’roll. I think for too long the rock scene has been focused on bands coming out of the US or the UK, but there are so many awesome bands in the Far East (Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong) that bring a different mix to the global rock scene. Our hope is that the international scene will begin to sit up and take notice of what is going on in the Far East. It is about time we had a rock band from South East Asia make it big on the global stage, and we really feel that US labels need to start taking notice of what is going on out here.
|
