Laneway Festival 2016: GDJYB offers a taste of HK indie music

SINGAPORE — Math-rock meets folk music? It’s certainly one of the more unique music blends you’ll likely to come across at tomorrow’s (Jan 30) Laneway Festival, where the all-girl band GDJYB will be dishing out a taste of what the Hong Kong indie music scene has to offer.

And it’s not just the music that makes the band rather, well, tasty — its unusual acronym comes from a local Chinese dish gai dan jing yuk beng, which means steamed meatloaf with egg in Cantonese.

So what’s up with the name? Vocalist Soft Liu said they had wanted to pick a “more local or funny name” that would represent their music.

“GDJYB is a dish my mother always cooked for me. The usual dish should be cooked with salted egg, but then my mother always told me that the (regular) egg is healthier than salted egg, which matches our band’s style — local but with a little of a special element,” she explained.

Further fueling the band’s local feel is how their songs are all sung in Honglish, a slang that mixes Cantonese with English, representing Hong Kong’s bilingual culture.

“Just like Singaporeans have Singlish, Hong Kong people have their Honglish,” said Liu, who added that the slang distinguishes them from their Cantonese-speaking counterparts in Guangdong, China.

Since their formation, the Hong Kong-based group has experienced a monumental rise, from releasing their first EP in 2014 to performing as a guest band for the well-known Japanese math-rock band Tricot and participating in the Taiwan Wake Up Music Festival last year.

Making the decision to pursue music, Liu and drummer Heihei Ng left cushy jobs at an advertising agency in 2012 to form the group with guitarist Soni Cheng, whom they discovered from YouTube. Bassist Yellow Yi Wong joined them later in 2014.

The group had started off playing folk music in their early years, but were eventually introduced to the rhythmically complex genre of math rock after Cheng played a math groove during a practice session. Attempted to fuse what others may think as two incompatible genres, they started experimenting by adding math grooves to their folk songs. The result was a unique fusion dominated by the complexity and precision of math-rock with a distinct hint of modern folk.

Sound aside, GDJYB’s songs also feature the recurring theme of social issues the band members face in their homeland.

Their latest single, Durian What What What, tells the tale of a controversial incident during the Umbrella Movement protests starring an elderly man from Shenzhen. According to Soft, the man had threatened protestors with a knife, yelling “Mat mat mat mat”, which loosely translates from cantonese as “What what what what” or just pure gibberish. When asked why he had a knife with him, the man had claimed it was to cut open fruits like durians, as he liked to try local fruits.

“We didn’t intend to talk about so many social issues, but with all these ridiculous news happening in Hong Kong, they just impact our lives, and we cannot avoid it,” Liu said.

The band is currently in the process of recording their second album, which they hope to release in August this year. But before all that, they’ve got their Laneway Festival gig. And as the first Hong Kong band to be invited to the music fest, coupled with the fact that this will be their furthest performance away from home, GDJYB are eager to make an impact.

“It’s quite unexpected when we heard for the first time that Laneway was inviting us… we didn’t expect this opportunity to come so fast,” said Liu.

“We all love music and we want to do something for the Hong Kong music scene. Because music in Hong Kong is not very well known or spread out to the world, so this is a chance for us to bring our music somewhere outside Hong Kong.”

“And I hope people can wake up earlier to watch our show,” chimed Ng, referring to their 12.40pm performance slot. “Wake up early, don’t be lazy!”

Laneway Festival Singapore 2016 is on tomorrow (Jan 30) at The Meadow at Gardens By The Bay. Tickets at S$180 are available at SISTIC. GDJYB will be performing at 12.40pm at the Cloud Stage. For more fest details, visit http://singapore.lanewayfestival.com