It all started when I bought his debut effort Taoism in 1999 (the album waas released in 1998 if I am not wrong and then he was sort of an indie singer) and boy, the tracks inside were beautiful, all 14 of them! Ask Ismail, he will know even though he couldn't (obviously) understand a single word in his songs.
Then suddenly he got famous, and just when you expect that commercialism will cause him to lose his magic, he didn't. Instead of going through the same route of other singers who got instant fame (churning out crappy albums every other month or so just to cash in), he opted for the slow approach of doing his albums which translated to him releasing one once every two years (which also meant that fans ended up with longer necks from all the waiting) but it (the wait) was all worth it.
Recently his fourth album, The Greap Leap 2005 (or Tai1 Ping2 Sheng4 Shi4 for those Chinese-inclined) was released and I got it without a second thought. (This coming from someone who has not got a Discman, [all thanks to his sister who lost it] and also who doesn't really spend on CDs is something). I love the track "Ghost" which is a satire on modern life where the world has transformed people in beings without faces and who are definitely scarier than ghosts (there's a line in the song, "Should you fear people or should you fear ghosts?"). A deep message hidden in
a rock song.
The album that started it all...Taoism.
The Great Leap 2005
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