Mong Tong
Mystery
Guruguru Brain
Mong Tong is a band that consists of brothers Hom Yu and Jiun Chi and a noncorporial computerized third member. Mystery is described as a Taiwanese psychedelic experience. The music is a rich blend of echoey guitars, walking bass lines and exotic percussion. Throw in synthesizer washes, sound effects and sampled dialogue and you really do have something mysterious.
The humans behind Mong Tong claim they were inspired by occult art, vintage Taiwanese book covers, synth wave, doom metal and video game soundtracks. When I’m listening to the record, I imagine I’m in a theater playing some obscure cult movie. I imagine it, as something Quentin Tarantino would have in his personal grind house collection. A noir mystery with a hard-boiled detective scouring opium dens, brothels and gambling houses searching for…something. I can’t tell what’s going on because I’m the foolish American wandering down dark alleys where I don’t belong. Am I in Chiang Mai, Taipei or Angkor Watt? Is that lady in the slinky silk dress a temptress, a hungry ghost or a replicant? The flashing neon reflecting off the rain slicked streets is disorienting. What was in that tea I got from the street vendor?
Mong Tong offers escape, maybe to the world where their noncoporial third member lives. Sometimes it’s good to dive into the unknown and drift in the currents of an audio psilocybin dream.