Born in Hong Kong and adopted by American parents, who worked at a camp for Vietnamese refugees seeking opportunity in the city nicknamed the Pearl of the Orient, the Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist and producerChris King may be best known for his work in Cold Showers and his production work for a list of artists that include Tamaryn, House of Harm and Fearing.
Led by King, the Los Angeles-based collective Kai Tak derives its name from the now-retired Hong Kong airport, famously known for its harrowing approach just above and through the city’s skyscrapers. Founded during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when King started to write songs as a vehicle for connecting with his own unconventional roots — and as a platform for collaboration with the numerous musical friends made from his lengthy career as a producer and engineer.
Operating without any deadlines or creative constraints allowed King to use and explore every technique he had learned over the years, incorporating re-sampling, drastic pitch shifting, time-stretching, liberal use of tape delay, recording live drums with MIDI drum triggers, and creating his own sample-based synthesizers using found sounds recorded during various trips to Hong Kong.
The Los Angeles-based collective’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, Designed In Heaven Made In Hong Kong is slated for a June 21, 2024 release through á La Carte Records. The album sees King and collaborators specializing in sculpted, moody soundscapes that draw inspirations from shoegaze, trip hop and electronica. The album will feature three previously released tracks:
“Jalen Rose,” feat. Draag
“Villains In My Mind,” feat. Foie Gras
“Blush,” feat. Dol Ikara‘s Claire Roddy. The collaboration can be traced back to when the two artists were placed together by chance at a live show. “Blush,” is built around a brooding and cinematic arrangement that — to my ears — sounds like a synthesis of Massive Attack and Cocteau Twins with the song featuring skittering boom bap and a looping glistening string sample paired with swirling shoegazer guitar textures serving as a lush bed for Roddy’s soulful, smoky croon.
“Chris came to me with this transportive instrumental while I was dealing with a bit of a writer’s block,” Roddy explains. “These lyrics are an ode to that very moment of inspiration where suddenly feelings, words, and melodies spring right out from the drought, as instantly and vulnerably as a blush.”
“When Claire explained the meaning behind her lyrics, I almost couldn’t believe it,” Kai Tak’s Chris King explains. “The music also came to me during a bout of writer’s block, which was broken by one of my old tried and true methods – watching a visually stunning movie on mute and composing music inspired by the imagery. In the case of ‘Blush,’ the inspiration was Fallen Angels, which has always made me feel like I’m permanently suspended in the most beautiful fever dream.”
Designed In Heaven Made In Hong Kong‘s fourth and latest single, the brooding “Flood The Harbour” seems to sonically channel Garlands and Heaven or Las Vegas-era Cocteau Twins: swirling shoegazer guitar textures are paired with swaggering and thumping, boom bap-like drums and a supple bass line create a lush and dreamy bed for There’s Talk’s Olivia Lee’s gorgeous and expressive vocal fed through a little bit of reverb. Throughout the song evokes the existential unease and dread of our current moment — with the acknowledgment that the our current world is on its death knell, and the hope that we’re on the precipice of a new, fairer world for all.
“The music for ‘Flood The Harbour’ was written on the same day I wrote ‘Blush.’ After feeling uninspired for a long time, I spent the day repeatedly watching Fallen Angels on mute while messing around with instruments, and 90% of both songs were written in a few hours,” King explains. “Whenever I’m working on something new, I always give the songs a temporary working title of the neighborhood that inspired the tune, or that I’m using found samples from, and this song drew from Yau Ma Tei. Formerly a little fishing bay, Yau Ma Tei has been built extensively upon reclaimed land. Because of Hong Kong’s limited usable land and massive population density, land reclamation has been a central part of the city’s growth over the past century – over 60 km of land has been added to the city from land reclamation projects, including part of the old Kai Tak airport, and just thinking about land reclamation and its endless ripples helped shape the song.”
“I aligned on inspiration with Chris – the lyrics came to mind after simmering on the working title for the song, Yau Ma Tei, as well as hazy neon-lit montages from Fallen Angels,” There’s Talk’s Olivia Lee adds. “Sinking into the broodiness of the song, images of a revolution on the heels of the end of the world engulfed in flames and flood came to mind. Perhaps a meditation on the consequences of colonialism and corporate greed, and who will have the last word.”