Two bands entered the eighth floor of a notorious Kowloon building and only one emerged.
Well, in a sense. The bands in question were Taiwanese psychedelic duo Mong Tong and Gong Gong Gong, an experimental rock duo based in Beijing and Montréal, with roots in Hong Kong. And the building was Sincere House, a labyrinthine 1960s-era complex in Hong Kong’s Mong Kok district, packed with mobile phone resellers, sex shops, and cheap hostels. It’s also home to President Piano Co., a legendary rehearsal studio opened by Lee King-yat in 1978 that has played host to many notable Hong Kong musicians. Gong Gong Gong and Mong Tong were there for a jam session and ended up leaving with a full new album they are now touring through Greater China to support.
“At first we thought it would be more like a demo, but after we had recorded and played it back, we thought, ‘Oh shit, it’s pretty good,’” says Hom Yu, who plays in Mong Tong with his brother Jiun Chi. The result is Mongkok Duel 旺角龍虎鬥, which the bands have described as “an imagined soundtrack for a lost kung-fu film.” Critics have already lavished it with praise: indie music magazine Post-Trash described it as “an extraordinary array of sounds.”
Gong Gong Gong got its start when Tom Ng, a Cantopop-obsessed Hong Kong musician, met Joshua Frank, a Canadian filmmaker and musician whose peripatetic upbringing in a diplomatic family took him between Canada, India, and China. A little over a decade ago, they were both playing in Beijing’s underground music scene — Ng in his band The Offset: Spectacles, Frank in the group Hot & Cold — when they began jamming together.
That led to Gong Gong Gong, which Frank and Ng founded in 2015. They’ve since won international attention, with tours in the US, Europe, and China, including shows at notable festivals like SXSW and Clockenflap. Gong Gong Gong’s appeal comes from how they create hypnotic rhythms with nothing but a guitar, bass and vocals; Ng’s elliptical Cantonese lyrics emerge through the music like a half-remembered dream. Writing in Interview Magazine, New York music writer Richard Turley described the band’s sound as “the blues run through a post-industrial processor.” They released their first full-length album, Phantom Rhythm 幽靈節奏 in 2019, and have since been reworking it in collaboration with musicians they know and admire from across Greater China.
Mong Tong are one of those bands. Since 2017, Taipei-based Hom Yu and Jiun Chi have been layering drum loops and samples to create music that draws from Taiwanese pop culture, the occult, and psychedelic music from the 1960s and 1970s. Like Gong Gong Gong, their sound found its way into ears around the world, and they just finished a tour that took them along the West Coast of the US and Canada. “Their first album [Mystery 秘神] came out during the pandemic. I heard it and was like, ‘Whoa. This is music I really want to hear,’” recalls Frank. “It’s music that is a little different from what Gong Gong Gong makes but it feels tapped into the same wavelength.”
“I really liked how unreal it was,” adds Ng. “The melodies and instrumentation are kind of familiar but it also made me wonder how someone can recreate these kinds of sounds these days. I didn’t think their music should exist in the space and time we are currently in.”
Ng and Frank invited the brothers to remix one of the songs on their album, and in 2022, when Hong Kong’s borders finally reopened after years of pandemic-related restrictions, they asked them to play a show there in January 2023. “We didn’t really know them, had never seen them live before, but we were just really excited by their music and wanted to see it in person,” says Frank. “We liked that they are a duo and we needed someone to share a bill with. It was a DIY show essentially — we just flew them over.”
It was a memorable experience for the brothers. “People were crazy, yelling,” says Hom Yu. “That was our first show in Hong Kong and it was in a secret club venue. I would say it was a pretty special experience. We went to dim sum — a real Hong Kong dim sum restaurant. Delicious.”
And they also ended up at President Piano Co. “We spent about five hours recording with them,” says Ng. There was an instant musical connection, but Ng says the four musicians bonded in other ways, too. “Me and Jiun Chi being the younger brothers in the family, kind of let Josh and Hom Yu — both are elder brothers in their family — to take a more leading role in terms of soloing on their instruments. Me and Hom Yu, being both Virgo guys, we have some sort of mutual understanding. Being able to lead the groove of everyone with just some simple strumming on my guitar. It was fun.”
The end result wouldn’t have been possible anywhere but President Piano Co., with its lo-fi improvised recording setup.
“It has an indescribable, hard-to-replicate feeling of an era gone by,” says Frank, referring to the bespoke recording system that Lee King-yat has installed in the studios, with an improvised array of wires running between mics in the main rehearsal room and a PC in Lee’s office. “I think that sound really adds something special.” Now the two bands are hitting the road to recreate that collaboration on stage. Next month, Mong Tong and Gong Gong Gong are embarking on a 16-stop tour across Taiwan, the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, and Macau.
Frank says that the shows will aim to capture the improvisational spirit of the album — and that recording session at President Piano Co. — rather than reproducing what’s on Mongkok Duel note for note. It’s a rare chance to see two bands become one.
Banner graphic by Haedi Yue.
