Iconic Track “A Pure Person” From Cult Film Millenium Mambo Is Reinterpreted for Our Melancholic Times

The movie is possibly one of the most notable Taiwanese films to captivate western audiences, if not Asian American audiences; Shu Qi’s most relatable quality being her rootless disposition. After working as a bar hostess in Taipei and breaking up with an abusive ex-boyfriend, she eventually gets involved with another man only for disappointment to follow, cycling her back into an uncertain future. She is a drifter, floating through life in the shadows of dimly lit neon club lights.

Throughout the film, Giong’s hypnotic, original techno composition scores cocoon the malaise of aimless youth that often results in fixating one’s lifestyle around vices like drinking, smoking, drugs, or toxic relationships, scenes of ‘00 club hoppers and their ephemeral passions portraying an intimate look into the dance and nightlife culture of Taiwan. Entering the aughts was observed as a universally hopeful time, once signifying an era of new potential only to arrive with the same problems, as society has now learned amid a global pandemic—just as Vicky did looking back into her life at the beginning of the film. Like the repetition in Giong’s tracks thudding to her endless return to inconclusive situations, the promise of beginnings fades and we more or less remain unchanged.

Lim Giong had intended artists to bring a more classical and symphonic composition to the project, leaning towards traditional Taiwanese sounds and improv jazz within the electronic recordings. Giong, whose roots are originally in pop music, has indirectly influenced everyone on the record artistically at some point in their career, bridging the gap between younger, aboriginal, and older generations of Taiwanese people. Leading the album is his opening track “Recite”, the most operatic version of the compilation, leading into the second rendition from his close and longtime creative collaborator, Point, who samples vocals from children and Giong speaking in Taiwanese about what it means to be a good person in the world over melodic instrumentals: “I hope that sometimes everyone will think about it, and step on the brakes, and look back at some of our own ancient things,” he says on the track. “It may help us face the complexities and difficulties in front of us. Why should we choose the method of conflict, when the result is always the same?”

For Taiwanese diaspora musician Jieh, known for his work on Holodec project and collaborations with Timetable Records and Nosaj Thing, mixed media is one method he uses in the album to animate infinite human potential, a space where one can birth a new reality, inspired by one’s past, present and future. “What I always felt the film captured so well, and the mood of Lim Giong’s original song,” says Jieh, “is that life is a bittersweet pursuit. It plays out often in ways we don’t intend because much of life is beyond our control.” What is in our control, he says, “is our intent and attempt to be true to oneself, and in that regard, to strive to be a pure person.” Saxophone player Minyen Hsieh of the duo Non-Confined Space approaches a more technical interpretation of “A Pure Person”, improvising layers of atmospheric, live saxophone with samples of the original track’s spoken word. What resonates most about Lim’s lyrics to “A Pure Person”, is that it flows like the mantras of Buddhist scripture, a reminder that our way of relating to one another comes from what the simple, mundane moments afford us: “Kindness, ordinary happiness. Innocent people, every time they see.”

Looking back on her experience working with Giong, Lin explains how, in another great line in a song of his, called “Love Academy,” he talks about the fact that “we all have to take shits. He’s funny like that. To be ordinary is to be a broken, shitty person but to live with the knowledge that we are all broken.” Thoughtful, melancholic, and visceral, throughout the album, listeners are offered a momentary respite from the chaotic state of the world, an assemblage of personal philosophies that provoke empathy, contemplation, and possibly inspiration as we endure 2020 and head into an unknown future.