{"id":147658,"date":"2021-08-09T09:00:39","date_gmt":"2021-08-09T01:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thehoneycombers.com\/hongkong\/?p=147658"},"modified":"2025-01-02T12:37:58","modified_gmt":"2025-01-02T04:37:58","slug":"my-little-airport-hong-kong-indie-band-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thehoneycombers.com\/hong-kong\/my-little-airport-hong-kong-indie-band-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"The weirdos, the anguished poets and the romantics: Meet local indie band My Little Airport"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is plenty of local musical talent in the city, with some of our favourite Hong Kong bands<\/a> being Thud<\/a>, Life Was All Silence<\/a> and Blood Wine or Honey<\/a>. And when you think local indie pop, you can’t miss out on My Little Airport.\u00a0Since releasing their debut album in 2004, My Little Airport has become a local indie wonder under Harbour Record. Most known for their hilarious and borderline diabolical Cantonese lyrics that ridicule daily affairs \u2013 the horror of Admiralty station at 6pm, cheap hotels in Kowloon Tong or the embarrassing moment when getting caught eating alone at Yoshinoya \u2013 they have established a highly inventive musical style that is so lacking in today\u2019s popular music.<\/p>\n

With their indie pop songs slowly adopting a different approach that is apparent in their latest releases, we chatted with the frontman and frontwoman from MLA, Lam Ah P and Nicole OuJian, about their music evolution and plans for future creative output.<\/p>\n

Meet the minds behind My Little Airport<\/h2>\n
\"Lam
Ah P and Nicole from My Little Airport draw inspiration from human interaction, sad encounters, and new experiences in life when it comes to songwriting<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some musicians write music because they have something to tell the world, some do because music helps them to cope with their own emotions; how about you guys?<\/h3>\n

Ah P:<\/strong> Maybe because I\u2019ve never heard of those songs, so I create the kind of music that I wish existed in the world. When we were young, we thought pop music was meant for crowds of people, but now \u2013 there are times that I just want to write a song for one person. So sometimes I\u2019ll write a song for one particular person, and hopefully, it\u2019ll blossom into a form of expression that engages others as well.<\/p>\n

Nicole:<\/strong> I kind of think that it\u2019s a calling… I still don\u2019t know if I chose the path to music or if music is the path that chose me. Everything just falls into the right places when inspiration hits. It\u2019s not as intense as say a visceral instinct, but rather a natural inclination to simply let things happen. Because I feel like if I keep them bottled up, I\u2019d be mad uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

\"Lam
Ah P thinks that he wouldn\u2019t be able to write without the basis of music, as music helps carry his thoughts<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since your debut album in 2004, we can see the evolution of My Little Airport \u2013 from being a juvenile teenager talking about crushes to becoming more philosophical and political, and touching upon the reasoning behind the “holy” matrimony \u2013 how do you feel when you look back at your earlier works?<\/h3>\n

P:<\/strong> A portion of them I don\u2019t think are good enough… But I guess most of them are considered okay? In our earliest works, I depleted my every ounce of teen spirit to write about the wild and dumb ideas we had in our teenage years, and now looking back, there probably isn\u2019t that much wisdom in them.<\/p>\n

N:<\/strong> Starting from the very beginning, most songs have been about Ah P\u2019s life, which set the tone for My Little Airport\u2019s songs \u2013 the idea of not being attached to certain people or things, validating a free spirit, and acknowledging the uncertainty in life. But in 2017, there was a notable change in his songwriting (as he has entered into a serious romantic relationship). So I genuinely look forward to how the narrative of MLA would evolve in the future.<\/p>\n

Your single Hey Hey Baby is considered the sweetest song that you\u2019ve ever written \u2013 unlike your older stuff such as You\u2019re a Lang Zi, Don\u2019t Settle Down which convinces people the biggest cause of divorce is marriage \u2013 how would you react to people\u2019s disbelief in the sudden change in MLA\u2019s musical style?<\/h3>\n

P:<\/strong> For songs like You\u2019re a Lang Zi, Don\u2019t Settle Down or those revolving around modern dating, I\u2019ve already exhausted that part of my life and written about them all. Now I want to put a cap on it and move on to another stage. Changes often spark a new vein of creativity and it\u2019ll be boring if\u00a0there’s no variation. Also, I\u2019ve never tried writing love songs like Hey Hey Baby… Nor living life the way I do now.<\/p>\n

N:<\/strong> At first it was quite astonishing indeed, it did take us a while to get used to it.<\/p>\n

P:<\/strong> It just so happened that Fai Young Chan (the Cantopop composer) provided me a sweet melody and asked if I wanted to write something about obsession. It was emotionally difficult for someone like me. And when you\u2019re being really happy, you don\u2019t have a lot to say. So I extrapolated ideas from a tiny notebook where I jotted down random stupid things in my life and pieced the stories together. Everything I put in the song was real, except for the line about me taking the bus with my girlfriend in Sweden, it didn\u2019t really happen in Sweden… I was just trying to make it rhyme\u00a0(laughs)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

N:<\/strong> Maybe in the future, there will be a sequel to it called Hey Hey Baby Baby! I wonder how the listeners will react to it then, since we\u2019ve received quite a bit of feedback that a lot of them still hang on to the old Lam Ah P.<\/p>\n

\"Lam
My Little Airport just started working on their new album and the soundscape is assumed to be more gentle with less fierce frequency<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Two of your releases \u2013 A Good Trip One Night Along Nathan Road and The Afternoon Where We Took a Pregnancy Test \u2013 have quite a sentiment behind their seductively funny titles, what inspired you to write them?<\/h3>\n

P:<\/strong> For The Afternoon where We Took a Pregnancy Test, I was reading the Chinese literature Dream of the Red Chamber at the time. I\u00a0admire the way Jia Baoyu the protagonist rebelled against his parents and didn\u2019t succumb to fame and money despite societal pressure. If one ever has kids, that\u2019s the message I\u2019d like to deliver: Just be a genuine person instead of pursuing the so-called \u201csuccess\u201d.<\/p>\n

And with Good \u201cTrip\u201d… We\u2019re socially conditioned to follow many unnecessary rules in life. It becomes clear that you\u2019ve subconsciously suppressed a bunch of stuff on a daily basis when you\u2019re mildly stoned (in Amsterdam), hence Good Trip, meaning you\u2019re finally confronting it. It could be simple as following the sequence of breakfast, lunch, dinner\u2026 Why couldn\u2019t I just get ice-cream before dinner? Do things that make you happy without depending your actions on antiquated rules.<\/p>\n