Thank you Time Out Hong Kong💕🐘
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Elephant Gym (Taiwan)
Taiwan has a robust indie music scene, and math rockers Elephant Gym is one of the region’s leading bands. Formed in 2012 by siblings KT Chang and Tell Chang, along with Chia Chin-Tu, there are few words that don’t describe Elephant Gym. Their music, marked by odd time signatures and intervals, is unpredictable and diverse – moments of relaxed and breezy melodic bliss are often interspersed with bursts of chaotic, frenetic, and borderline punkish noise. It’s well worth it to try and keep up.
Elephant Gym set themselves apart from their peers in the math-rock world in their choice of lead instrument – rather than sticking with guitars, the genre’s staple, the band opted to build most of their work around KT’s bass playing abilities. She is adept at finger tapping, a highly complicated technique that yields beautiful, lulling, and rich polyphonic sounds. Tell and Chia support her on the guitar/keyboard and drums respectively. Their music is mostly instrumental, although they do sometimes feature guest vocalists – KT even pulls double duty as lead vocalist on some tracks but has said that she doesn’t like singing. The band has a handful of excellent releases under their belt, clearly laying out how their sound has matured and developed over the years. It doesn’t take much to see why Elephant Gym is one of the most exciting emerging math rock bands not just in Asia, but globally.
