All tracks composed and performed by 惡華
Recorded between 2007-2010 at Symphony Heights Singapore
Mastered by Justin Seah

Opera Box (SPRAYPLASTIC SP-5595) is a nice metallic surprise from Singapore, slipped inside a pink envelope – perhaps this is the traditional Asian way of expressing a friendly greeting to a music lover. Little friendliness found in the contents when I popped open this DVD slim box, though. Awk Wah recorded this CDR item which starts out as shapeless gritty noise but gradually resolves itself into a percussion album of sprawling thrash. Shark Fung is the player here, who also plays in Amino Acid Orchestra, and though it’s a solo record we seem to hear some detuned guitar feedback and thrumbs accompanying his monotonous and futile beats; mayhap he’s kicking a guitar-amp set-up with his free foot while the other one trips the bass drum. While there may not be a great deal of fire or attack in Shark’s arm and foot movements, he does succeed in creating an overall texture of unpleasant grittiness, metallic scrape and unpatterned rhythms that succeeds perfectly for me; it conveys a real sense of defeat and claustrophobia, like a bound man sewed up in a mailsack trying to wriggle free with nothing more than a small nail file to make his escape. “It seems as real as now,” is the metaphysical utterance printed on the back.
By Ed Pinsent