Charismatic

Here's  a screenshot of a blogpost I stumbled across when I was googling 'Give me Jesus 只要耶穌' (yes, I do google my stuff occasionally to see if the right things are coming up for the public).  Made my day that a store in Hsinchu is playing the album, and that people like what they hear, and they are sharing about it. In fact, a few people from HK have contacted me on Facebook saying that they bought the album because they heard it in the store. Love that the music speaks for itself.  Grateful.

My first full-length Mandarin hymnal album is out! It was released on Sept 1, and it is officially in all Christian bookstores in Taiwan. It is also in some mainstream CD stores and bookstores like Eslite Bookstore 誠品. Last week, it was also shipped to Christian bookstores in Hong Kong and Singapore. Hopefully, it will be on the racks soon in Malaysia too!  "Give me Jesus 只要耶穌" Kinda surreal. I have been working for 2 years on my personal album but suddenly birthed this hymnal album in 2.5 months: 2 months of music production, half a month of shoots, designing and manufacturing. That is pretty fast, considering that T and I produced all the tracks with the help of vocal producer, Hao Ku on 6 tracks. I also arranged the strings for 8 tracks. T gave one track a full Enya-meets-Braveheart electronic treatment. We also did one short acapella breather.  Well, since then I've been doing a couple of promo stints here and there. Not terribly busy, but...

I have a fortnight's 'breather'. 'Breather' is in quotation marks because the time spent working needs to be productively spent on preparing for more work. Hah. That is why I am still on the computer at 1.30am.  My 'breather' is due to the fact that the Nanchang show for David Tao was unexpectedly cancelled less than a week before the show date. And, I have also finished all my vocal recording for hymnal album (unless there are some backing vocals I have to do). It's quite interesting to myself that I've barely sung any backing vocal parts for this album. A very 'unplugged' way of arranging and recording the music. I have 2 weeks to relax, supposedly. But I've been trying to organize my next few months. Two months. It's a very short time to pump out a full length album. But I'm relishing the process and I'm not too stressed. It's a blessing to be able to have someone provide the funds to record an acoustic hymnal ...

Yes. I should have announced this earlier, but December was such a whirlwind of activity. I had barely any time to breathe. Plus, this EP was a last minute project. There are other reasons for not announcing stuff earlier. I might not be OCD, but I have my own perfectionist tendencies. I've always wanted to release a full-length album properly, in the old-fashioned way; along with 3 music videos, radio-play, a tour to promote it etc. I'm still working towards that ideal this year, but it has been taking a long time. The Fire-makers were engaged to hold an evangelistic concert in Pangkor in Dec. Since our air-fares were covered, I decided to do a few extra shows in Malaysia with my fellow Fire-maker musos. I realized that I probably needed some merchandise if I was going to play a few gigs, and decided to prepare a little EP as an 'appetizer' for the full-length album that is to come.  'With me 我身旁' EP cover  Check it out at HERE The EP ha...