Week 5 (ish) Wong Ching Yuan – A-Go-Go & Off Beat Cha Cha

This week, we welcome our esteemed guest contributor Dan Wall from Funky Navigation, to provide our features...

Following on coincidentally from the Betty Chung / Jun Mayuzumi 45 featured here back in August, the Orient coughs up another curiosity for us this week in the form of this four- track EP of Singaporean Popcorn/Beat coolness. Now this is all a matter of perspective because our friend Wong Ching Yuan here - responsible for this slice of Mandarin Suave, also happens to be incredibly popular with grannies all across Asia and has recorded around 800 songs in a career spanning 40+ years! That being said, here he manages to craft a sound that is haunting and other worldly. Twanging guitars drenched in echo and a hypnotising vocal style float through the air like wisps of opium smoke. This is a great example of the 'a-go-go' sound he helped proliferate throughout Singapore, Malaysia, and beyond. Check it out on this month's Curious Music For Curious People podcast.

Week 4: Afro Rock Festival

Lions roar in the distance, hyenas wail and a cacophony of savannah sounds burble away as Assagai's Kondo begins, soon launching into a driving afro-percussion riff replete with monkey-calls and chirping birds, that loops for a few minutes before abruptly ending. 

With more safari soundscapes than you can shake a stick (or spear) at, and some pretty wild afro/rock n roll crossovers that err on the side of the afro, this compilation is pretty bonkers and a shoe-in for Freak of the Week. 

I can't find any of the tracks on the record available to stream on the internets, so perhaps you should wrap your ears around my latest mix, where Osibisa's Black Ant features...

Dead Wax Social Mix by Ewan Hoozami on Mixcloud