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In June we promised to give one local band a real tilt at the big time by making their album. From the flood of entries, our panel of celebrity judges picked Chochukmo – and they picked well. Now, with their album – the nattily titled The King Lost His Pink – set to launch with a landmark show at Grappa’s Cellar on November 28, Hamish McKenzie gets under the skin of Hong Kong’s most intriguing band.

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Two months ago Chochukmo sat in the Time Out office late at night and gave us a scare. Having just found out what they’d have to do for the We’ll Make Your Album project, they balked, concerned there wouldn’t be enough time to get the thing done. Before we’d even announced the band as the competition winners, it seemed for a moment that the project might not get off the ground.

Fast-forward to the present and the four-piece (five for gigs) are putting the finishing touches on their album, The King Lost His Pink, at Sheung Wan’s This Music Studio. The guys joke among themselves as they huddle close to two microphones and try to figure out a series of beats to accompany an acoustic guitar track. Drummer Lau Kit-wai (‘Kitty Trouble’) sits on a high stool with a four-skin conga on his lap and picks out a rhythm, while lead guitarist Lester Lee Kwan-chun (‘Les Hunter’), rhythm guitarist Mike Mak Kai-chung (‘Mike Orange’), and singer Jan Chan Shui-wing (‘Jan Curious’) bat ideas back and forth between frequent laughter. The plan for the track, the album’s intro, involves a lot of slapdash, everyday sounds alongside the pristine guitar audio. Eventually, they take the equipment into the next-door office and by the end of the session they’ve recorded paper shuffling, computer keyboard tapping, foot stomping, and upright-bass slapping.

Considering this is the end of an arduous couple of months for Chochukmo, a period that has been as much a test of their creativity as their patience, the mood is surprisingly relaxed and the session productive. The guys, who met five years ago at Tsuen Wan’s Group Studio and have been performing as a band for two, are well accustomed to working together and getting things done under pressure.
“We don’t fight really,” explains 25-year-old frontman Jan, who is Kit’s cousin. Mike adds: “We have a clear division of labour.” And then Lester chimes in: “Like Jan never does the transportation.” Everyone laughs.

Jan continues: “We laugh more than talk in a practice. We don’t talk much, but we know what each other wants, and what to give.”

That dynamic is just one of the reasons Chochukmo sit at the top of our indie music tree. Chochukmo aren’t like any other Hong Kong band. They wear shocking pink girls’ T-shirts; they blast across a range of styles that make them impossible to pigeonhole; they flaunt irony as their modus operandi; and they embody, while not comfortably fitting into, the city that has reared them: a mish-mash of ideas, a clash of cultures, and twenty-plus years each of growing up in Sham Shui Po, Sai Kung, Ma On Shan and Tin Shui Wai.

“They’re a band of this city,” says Clockenflap music director and gig promoter Justin Sweeting, who picked them as the top-billing Hong Kong act to play at the festival. “They’re a mashed-up cacophony of influences that merges to create something original and uniquely theirs. They are a genuinely exciting prospect – they sound great, look great and put on a thrilling live show.”

THE ALBUM

The King Lost His Pink is an excellent debut effort. Bringing together ten tracks of pure Chochukmovian delight, it cockily boasts complex beats, mind-boggling time changes, blistering guitar solos, intricate but deadly-tight song structures, a cutting sense of humour, and the characteristic high-pitched melodic wailing of the city’s most rock’n’roll frontman. The album has been so named because its release marks the last time the band will sport their trademark pink theme. The ‘King’ apparently refers to Jan, who was the lone voice in favour of the unconventional colour scheme. “They have decided to overthrow me,” he deadpans.

Much of the material on the album will be familiar to those who’ve followed the band as they’ve risen through the local indie ranks, playing at live showcases such as Underground, HK Live and Listen Up. Alongside crowd favourites Head to Toe and Number One are tighter versions of live mainstays Caroline, Tell Her (Laura I Love Her), Let Her Go, and 1, 2, 3, 4, as well as two stonking new vocal numbers – Something Special and Good Morning Graveyard – and two instrumental tracks.

All of these songs are pearls of imaginative rock music, swinging seamlessly from flamenco guitar licks to punk chords, dub rhythms, and bouncy pop all within the space of four minutes. There’s also much to be said for the lyrics, which tell stories of day-to-day experiences, ranging from Jan’s plea to guitarist Lester to break up with his girlfriend (Let Her Go – it worked), to a self-reflective but political number that points the finger at Hong Kong’s government and society for failing to foster a sense of national identity (Number One), to a song that asks people to think about their short time on planet Earth and what exactly they’re doing with it (Good Morning Graveyard).

A particularly interesting case is the song Tell Her (Laura I Love Her), an almost-cover of Ray Peterson’s 1960 hit of very similar name. In it, Jan pays homage to the classic American pop song while adding a grim twist in which the subject of the dead boy’s affections moves on to find love with another guy. The stories Hongkongers are fed on TV mostly have happy endings, Jan says by way of explanation for his alternate ending, but it would be better if they sometimes reflected the way life really works. He follows that sobering thought with a comical example: “Like, Winnie the Pooh is an actual animal that can kill people – he’s not actually a tiny yellow teddy bear.”

HOW GOOD ARE CHOCHUKMO?

It's close to 11pm on October 22, 2008, and nearly 200 people have squashed into Wellington Street’s Backstage as four pink-shirted guys and a pink-shirted girl bassist rock out on the small stage wedged between the bar’s bathrooms on the right and a green room to the left. Before they launch into their catchiest and most self-consciously pop number, Head to Toe, lead singer Jan breaks a guitar string. No matter. They’re used to doing it rough anyway – tonight, for instance, they haven’t had time to do a sound check for the Time Out Hong Kong Top 20 Showcase. They’ve come straight from work – Kit is a drum tutor and the others do design work – plugged in their amps and started firing their musical bullets. For many in the crowd, it’s their first encounter with Chochukmo, and their dancing feet and the looks on their faces as Jan wails his way stringless through the song – eyes rolling, hips wildly gyrating, tight T-shirt gluing itself to his arms – suggest that they find the upbeat, sometimes frenetic tunes more than a little agreeable.

More than a year on, Chochukmo have tours in The Philippines and Malaysia under their belts, but they’ve lost that female bassist. Yanyan Pang left the group in July to concentrate on other projects, leaving a hole the band are yet to fill. (They are at pains, however, to thank their close friend Lo Yu-him for stepping into the fray for some recording and gigs.) Despite the setback of Pang’s departure – it’s clear the move has taken a toll on the tight-knit group – they’ve forged on to a productive last few months, gigging at Clockenflap, Rockraiser, and opening for New York’s Heartsrevolution at a Diesel:U:Music event at Volar in October. The We’ll Make Your Album project has brought them into contact with industry professionals – including our panel of star judges: Anthony Wong Yiu-ming, Steve Wong Ka-keung, Kelvin Avon and Wong Chi-chung – who love their sound and foresee a bright future for the band.

“It’s great working with them because they are a group of young guys, but they are serious about what they are doing. They want to do every part the best they can,” says production company Invisible Men’s Kenneth Tse, a recording engineer and right-hand man to singer-songwriter-producer Hanjin Tan. Apart from mixing and mastering Chochukmo’s album, Tse also offered professional advice during the recording process.

“Their music is quite melodic,” he says. “I’ve heard a lot of indie bands in Hong Kong that aren’t melodic – that’s [Chochukmo’s] advantage.”

This Music Studio’s recording engineer Corey Tam put in countless hours with the band in their long, late-evening sessions. “They’re pretty wacky guys,” says the hard-toiling ProTools wiz, before pointing to frontman Jan, “Especially this one right here. But I can really tell that they’re passionate about what they do – even if they joke around.”

The We’ll Make Your Album chief sponsors, Diesel, also give Chochukmo a glowing review. “It’s easy to look at all the obstacles of being an up-and-coming band in Hong Kong, but they’ve chosen to really stay focused and support one another,” says Jason Lam, who handles special marketing projects for Diesel in Asia. “They’ve got so much potential, and it’s really an honour for us to be able to not only witness, but also be part of that creative process.”

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ALBUM

For winning the competition, Chochukmo are not only getting their album made, but they also get a big launch gig, cover art by famed artist Simon Birch, a Time Out Hong Kong cover story (voila!), airplay on Diesel radio (www.dieselumusic.com), and help with promotion and distribution. Now crunch time is approaching, and the album will be on record-store shelves in time for Christmas.

Even if The King Lost His Pink sells only a few copies, however, it likely won’t matter to the guys. The significance of the album for them lies beyond its commercial success. “If a band doesn’t release an album, they are not a band,” says the always-smiling lead guitarist Lester, 24, whose band experience before Chochukmo involved black nail polish, long hair and death metal. “For me, this is the real start. Before we did the album, we were just some people playing music after work.”

Drummer Kit, at 23 the youngest of the group, was initially uneasy about the project but as the process wore on, he warmed to the idea. “At the beginning we thought it was going to be a commercial thing, but Time Out and Diesel gave us a lot of space, accepted our ideas, and gave us advice,” he says. “The whole process has been an amazing journey.”

It also holds some emotional resonance for Kit, who plays his drums with measured ferocity and points to the process rather than the product as his personal highlight, describing it as “like a ticket to a theme park”. The album for him is a mere memorial photo of that time. He also takes time to thank one of his support crew: “I’m really proud of my mum for giving me the support to pursue an unrealistic dream in this realistic city.”

For rhythm guitarist Mike, 27, the album is an important bookmark in the pages of time. “This album is a very interesting one to us: all the songs were done within one and a half years, and we’ve been going through a lot in that time… It’s like a process of heaven to hell, hell to heaven.” Whenever he hears one of the songs, it reminds him of what the band were going through at the time. “This is an album of memory and it’s a good record of some of the best days of my youth.”

For Mike, too, the album release carries a strong emotional element. The band’s chief organiser says his parents at first thought he was wasting time with Chochukmo, and even his younger brother thought little would come of it. But now that’s changed, and he’s looking forward to the day he can see the album on sale. “Many, many years ago, when I first started playing guitar, I had a dream to bring my parents to HMV to buy my CD,” he says, making an apology for sounding cheesy, before adding: “I want to make my parents proud.”

Well, Mum and Dad, eat it up. Your little boy’s on his way to being a rock star.

Then there’s Jan, who has a way with words in speech as well as song. He describes The King Lost His Pink as a by-product of the band’s creative urges, as if it is an inevitable spin-off of their love for music. “No one eats because they want to shit,” he says in a poetic metaphor. “They eat because they’re hungry. This album is just the shit.” At the same time, he calls the achievement a “magical” moment.

But he’s not getting carried away. There’s work to be done. Improvements to be made. More songs to write, shows to play. Chochukmo are far from finished, and to prove it, Jan refers to the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling painter. “I will quote from Michelangelo: ‘The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.’ We can’t be arrogant about our work, because this is just the end of the beginning.”

More reading:

Get the back-story on the We'll Make Your Album project

Can an indie band make it in Hong Kong?