Broadcasting Time: 2006-04-09

(Beautiful Fleur)
Hello and welcome back to this week's China Beat. I'm your host Shen Ting. As we all know, the 21st century saw a comeback of popularity for the concept of do-it-yourself, or DIY, in people's daily life. The same is true in the music industry. As new technologies are ever more accessible to ordinary people, the home recording studio has become an alternative for those who have the interest and talent for making music but not enough money to record in professional studios. And the concept of lo-fi has grown from a mere mode of DIY recording into bona fide musical genre with its own independent spirit.

Today our show will introduce you to a Hongkong indie musician, who takes on all the procedures in making a record, from writing the songs to playing the instruments, all the way to the album cover design for his self-released records. He makes his living as a professional graphic designer, but lives out his interest in music by recording his own work late at night in his small home studio. Sound amazing? Yes, to me that's a really exciting life -- almost the ideal lifestyle that I'd like to pursue. So today let's steal a glimpse at this mysterious and creative indie musician by listening to some of his songs. Hopefully, this can give us a general idea of today's featured musician Ken and his one-man band Ketchup. I personally consider him a strong-minded present-day DIY hero.

To show my respect to this DIY musician, I'm thinking of making a DIY music show by compiling Ketchup's songs into a little musical. Maybe the storyline will not be very clear, and the theme will not be that interesting, as I'm simply making use of the available songs from his 4 albums and one ep. But that concept is exactly what a DIYer should follow, that is, to make the most of the materials at hand.