A Music Shop With Unexpected Results And Other Taiwan Delights - Part 1

Early August 2011 - Taipei, Taiwan

In my first few days of being in Taiwan I discovered two key things about Taipei:

1. It had the most humid atmosphere I have ever experienced.  I felt like a sponge trapped inside a giant sub-woofer. There were times when I actually had to run from cover to cover to escape the sun.

2. Every shop vendor from one end of the city to the other had at least one piece of homemade Angry Birds merchandise they were trying to sell.

One thing I didn't know until later was that Taipei has the most stoked music shop I've ever seen.

About three days into the trip we were taking photos of Taipei 101 in front of a department store. 

Nearly got it

I've tried finding this store on Google Maps and I think I've finally found it.

The other side of the above photo

It's called Eslite (www.eslite.com) and is a huge, six story building with the usual posh shops - perfume, a food village, boutiques - the works.

But on the 4th floor there is a music shop (on the Eslite Mode floor of course) and it has the greatest collection of music I've ever seen in a shop. Vinyls and all! There were CDs from bands that my old band supported that I could never find anywhere in the UK. 

My mind was blown, I spent hours looking through the aisles for anything I could take. I had a limit of CDs I could take due to a lack of space in my backpack.

Different day, same store

After painful decision making, I bought Joan of Arc's new album and a Frog Eyes album with a pretty disturbing cover. I also wanted to buy some Taiwanese stuff that would be quite difficult to find anyway else. Here's what I found:

i. 柳葉魚 - hereweare

柳葉魚 (The Capelin) are a Post-Rock band with all the usual bells & whistles. It was the artwork that really attracted me. It's good, but not great. Have a listen here:

ii. 傷心欲絕 - 我愛您

Now these guys are amazing. 

傷心欲絕 (Heartbroken) are a punk band from Taipei that remind me a lot of a similar Japanese punk band - Husking Bee.

I bloody love this album and listen to it a fair bit when I get the chance.

Here's a video of one of the songs from the album:

Overall a pretty good find!

Just a short post this week. Next time, we're going to delve deeper into my experiences in the south of Taiwan.

These include trying areca nut and betel leaf (a local, legal high) for the first time and sleeping in a three person bed with a large man named Kevin.

Also, as a leaving gift to you all, here's that Frog Eyes album cover:

Have good nightmares!