
home
Canadian Music Week 2017 Taiwan Artist: 88Balaz
BY Taiwan Beats / 2017-04-17

The 20-year-old band 88Balaz is a beast living in live. (Photo: 88Balaz)
Text by Roy Dai
Translated by Jessie C.
The band 88Balaz stepped into its 20th years with the current members Balaz Lee (lead vocals, guitar), Kuan Ling (bass), DongYu Lee (drums), and Bluez Lee (guitar). In 2001, they won Ho-Hai-Yan Rock Festival’s first prize. Besides, they have also won the Best Live Performance of Golden Indie Music Awards (GIMA) twice. The band is a beast living in live, and its habitats are wide-ranging, from typical live houses, music festivals, wedding ceremonies, year-end banquets to commercial performances. The base of their music is blues-rock with abundant distorted guitar riffs. While such kind of music goes with Balaz Lee’s husky voice and the charismatic, insane live atmosphere, the sound would boom in your ears and everything including yourself is all happily drunk up at once along with the alcohol.
They released the new album Punk Floyd as a tribute to Pink Floyd. In this album, the music style, tone and visual design all went back to the 90s in which the band made their debut. In addition, they invited the guitarist Zane Yang of Monkey Pilot, the winner of Best Band of Golden Melody Awards (GMA) to be their producer and invited Crystal Shien, the synthesizer player of Goosander to sing a duet. Punk Floyd was a concept album telling a story about a punk young man named Floyd. He drank every day and complained about the world in a cynical attitude. One day, he suddenly got a super power, but found out that he was still powerless in front of the terrible world. Finally, he decided to explode the planet. The story is a little hard to understand, but is full of the truth of life, since nonsense is the truth of it.

"Punk Floyd" is 88Balaz' most established album. It was named the "Best Rock Album" at GIMA.
88Balaz’s works are always intriguing. They write cynical paradox with positive attitude, attracting lots of lonely hearts. The bare emotion enclosed in their music is so intimate that you prefer to taste it alone rather than share it with someone else.
BY Taiwan Beats / 2017-04-17
Related Articles

2020 Golden Melody Awards Nominees Announced
Dance/Electronic, Folk, Hip-Hop, Indie, Jazz, Music Awards, Pop, R&B, Rock
BY Taiwan Beats / 2020-07-16

AMWT Announce Top Ten Albums and Singles of 2019
Dance/Electronic, Hip-Hop, Indie, Indigenous, Music Awards, Pop, R&B
BY Brien John / 2020-07-14

2019 GIMA Nomination List
Alternative, Awards, Electronic, Folk, Hip-Hop, Indigenous, Jazz, Pop, R&B
BY Taiwan Beats / 2019-10-04

LIVE RECAP: Shout Out Festival
Alternative, Folk, Hip-Hop, Music Festivals, Rock
BY wèi wáng / 2019-09-12

CINEMA SESSIONS: XICO x Dizparity
CINEMA SESSIONS, Electronic, Video
BY CINEMA SESSIONS / 2019-07-04

Jolin Tsai Dominates: 2019 Golden Melody Awards Winner List
Awards, Electronic, Folk, Hip-Hop, Indigenous, Jazz, Pop, R&B, Rock, Traditional
BY Brien John / 2019-06-30

2019 Golden Melody Awards Nominations: Jolin Tsai and Sandy Lam Leads
Awards, Electronic, Folk, Hip-Hop, Indigenous, Jazz, Pop, R&B, Rock, Soundtrack, Traditional
BY Brien John / 2019-05-20

Six Taiwanese Artists to Check Out at SXSW 2019
Electronic, Music Festivals, Rock
BY Andrew Hsieh / 2019-03-05

Warm Up Fest 2019, Turning it Up in Taipei
Electronic, Hip-Hop, Music Festivals, Rock
BY Taiwan Beats / 2019-01-25

Dig Deep into Taiwan's Unique Hip Hop Scene
Hip-Hop, MUSICANIMATION, Video
BY Brien John / 2018-11-28

Psych-Folk Group Prairie WWWW Drops New Album Pán
Experimental, Folk, New Releases
BY Brien John / 2018-09-11

Young Rapper K-HOW Honors Hometown "VASA"
Hip-Hop, It's Taiwan Pop!, Video
BY Brien John / 2018-08-31

SPOTLIGHT ON | ABAO 阿爆
Canadian Music Week, Indigenous, R&B/Soul, SPOTLIGHT ON, Video
BY Taiwan Beats / 2018-05-09

SPOTLIGHT ON | Dizparity
Canadian Music Week, Electronic, SPOTLIGHT ON, Video
BY Taiwan Beats / 2018-05-09

SPOTLIGHT ON | JADE EYES 孔雀眼
Canadian Music Week, Electronic, SPOTLIGHT ON, Video
BY Taiwan Beats / 2018-05-09

A Brief Introduction to Taiwan’s Music Awards: The Moment of Glory for Musicians
Golden Indie Music Awards, Golden Melody Awards, Hito Music Awards, KKBOX Music Awards, Ministry of Culture, Music Awards, Taiwan Music Composition and Songwriting Contest, The Association of Music Workers in Taiwan
BY Taiwan Beats / 2017-10-31

Yen-J & The Tic Tac Are Making Their Show on CMW
CMW, The Tic Tac, Yen-j
BY Taiwan Beats / 2016-04-25

Indie Rock Band 1976 Kicks off 20th anniversary Tour
1976, IndieRock, Tour
BY Taiwan Beats / 2016-04-25

The Top 5 Hottest Chinese Songs of 2015
Hebe, Jay Chou, JJ Lin, Jolin, R-chord, 特色文章
BY Taiwan Beats / 2015-11-02

Nicholas Teo(張棟樑)/There’s No If
Idol Singer, long vacation, Nicholas Teo, There’s No If, 張棟樑
BY Sophia / 2015-09-16

Fang Wu(吳汶芳)/《Chaos, but Beautiful》
Chaos but Beautiful, Fang Wu, 吳汶芳, 汶亂卻美好著
BY Sophia / 2015-09-03
