MERRY LAMB LAMB: ‘EMPATHY’ IS A GATEWAY TO MORE POSSIBILITIES FOR RELIGIOUS-THEMED ELECTRONIC MUSIC -loverboy magazine

One idea Loverboy has grappled with over the last few years is the concept of ‘home’. Can it really be as simple as a building? A geographic location? Or is it a period in time, never to be repeated? Hong Kong-born, London-based Merry Lamb Lamb looks at this idea of home on her name EP, Exodus, out now via Mad Decent. Taking inspiration from the bibilical story of Moses leading the people to Israel in search of utopia, the six-track EP echoes that journey with moments of strength, serenity & spirituality.

Exodus’ pilgrimage to euphoria opens with the divine ‘Romantic’ before segueing into the seductive ‘Night’, recalling Aaliyah at her most experimental. ‘Tranquility’ is anything but – with Merry Lamb Lamb guiding us to the floor for the UK 2-step moment of ‘Empathy’. ‘Who Am I’ is as filled with as much chaotic-club energy as the title suggests before we arrive at the blissful ‘FOREVER’ with Merry Lamb Lamb singing, ‘Forever I will stay.’

Loverboy sits down with the multi-hyphenate artist to find out more about how creating the EP, skeumorphizing into a tree and her love for Avril Lavigne.

So, Merry Lamb Lamb, your Exodus EP just dropped! Congratulations! We’re in love with ‘Tranquility’. Can you tell us more about it? 

I have always had a special place for ‘Tranquility’; I always wanted to write a song that could express the inner feisty and angry side of myself, which people might find rare and odd. Because I’m always a nice girl to everyone, this song reflects my roots; growing up in Hong Kong, I never felt like I fit into their system. I always felt unsafe and anxious living in my so-called ‘home.’

Before I moved to London, I lived in the most crowded place in Hong Kong, called Shum Shui Po, which is very dense and orderless, with many mafia and gangsters fighting around the area. I still remember a crazy person who once pushed me while I was living there in the middle of the night without any signal. I was walking back home with extreme blood coming out of my crooked teeth and heavily bruised knees. I started to build an invisible fence to protect myself because I have anxiety every time I walk back home. I constantly felt like people were chasing me behind my back.

The city and the world have been so corrupted these past few years that we all felt helpless and deranged. All these clouded emotions make me want to let my alter ego out to hide and bounce back to my misfit and unsatisfied feelings about my ‘home.’

With the lyrics, can you tell us more about your current relationship with Hong Kong?

After relocating to London for almost three months, I feel like I’m still in a love-hate relationship with Hong Kong. The love side is being able to tell new friends in London that I’m from Hong Kong, and Hong Kong used to have much artistic culture, with the British heavily influencing our culture so much. The second fact is that knowing my friends and family, especially my grandma, will always root for me no matter what I do and how things turn out.

I still remember it clearly; she always loved to cut out interviews from magazines I’ve participated in and put them into her scrapbook. Some small gestures like this will always let me remember what I miss from not being home that often. The hate side is that I still feel very insecure and stressed about ‘home,’ the fact that I’m not able to be comfortable about myself and that I don’t see a future and hope in the city which freaks me out sometimes.

The video for ‘Tranquility’ is major from the lighting to the looks. What’s your creative process when doing a video?
Whenever I do anything visually and sonically, I share my creative process with my partner and art director, Lung. We do everything together, and I’ll share everything I did with him, from demos to a vulnerable poem, and he will react to it quickly with his visuals and third point of view. The’ Tranquillity’ process started as Lung sought an old school, almost rambo-like boxing ring in London. He said that after listening to this song, he wanted to find a boxing ring to develop it as a satire for me to let out my angry and trapped emotions.
It was also a hidden message that we wanted to portray, almost like an alien-like creature wishing to find her way out through her trapped environment. We wanted to show that alien likeness of her by styling the clothes in this whole music video: an out-of-this-world silver mermaid-like outfit in Moncler Eskimo hat, a disco ball-like top from Rotate Birger Christensen, and a denim mermaid skirt from Rick Owens.

In video-making, we always love to DIY everything ourselves, from video concepts to form a crew of friends with whom we hang out often and styling everything ourselves. Lung and I started an art and video team in 2020 named STAYHOMEKIDS.TV, where we created custom-made, almost utopian set designs for my live sets to make me feel comfortable and almost ‘blend in’ while performing.

But after a few set designs, we started incorporating more units such as art directions, music video directions, fashion-related videos (better known as the Fashion Cool Kids series), photography, etc. We believe that no matter what kind of art media we’ve chosen to portray, the first rule of it has to be fun, DIY, and stay true to ourselves.

There’s also a moment when you are in the ring and your vocals come in through a certain vocoder and from the visuals to the vocals it took me back to Madonna’s Hard Candy era. Maybe this is a reach but was this on the moodboard at all? Haha…

It was interesting to see questions like this because it was not intentional, but now I see a relationship between Madonna and myself after listening to Madonna’s album Hard Candy.

Through the visuals or the song, I wanted to portray a warrior fighting all her fears and kicking them out individually. Therefore, a more vocoder came up in the middle of the second verse; I wanted to create an alien persona to express my inner savage by kicking out my fear one by one, like Chun Li from Street Fighter game, attack, tackle, and score!

The first single from the project, ‘Empathy’ gives us that delicious warm feeling of Y2K era UK garage, 2 step. Thank you! Are there any anthems from that period that you love?

The first UK garage song I instantly loved was the song from Overmono ‘Daisychain.’ It was a song I found on Soundcloud when I graduated from university and returned to Hong Kong to pursue music.

I was still very into J-pop and Japanese-related electronic music during that time. Then I stumbled upon this tune on Soundcloud, and my first reaction was: “Oh my god, this flow and the kick coming into my head!” I like how it flows naturally to your blood cells, and it was also the first time I had witnessed such an impactful four-sequence loop. It could be so emotional and captivating to listen at the same time.

Therefore, I took the aura and inspiration from it and threw it back to where I wanted to write about Empathy: A little admonishing moment with God about my uncanny life that tugs your heartstrings out with the immersive kick and rhythm.

I’ve read how important religion is for you, and I imagine in this song you are singing to God. I am so used to hearing religious themes in RnB, Gospel, Disco – I can’t think of a time I’ve heard it so explicitly in this kind of electronic music before. For me, this feels fresh and new. Do you feel the same way?

I never really stick to one specific genre; when I produce my music, I always go with the mood and theme first, and afterwards, I’ll decide what sort of style I want to go for to convey that particular mood. For Empathy, this song, in particular, I’m directly singing to God. It is a song that I wanted to yell to God sometimes: why do I have to suffer all this pain from my younger trauma from bullying, relocating from unknown places to places? And until COVID, when I hit the point where I had very low self-esteem after relocating back from Beijing to Hong Kong, feeling misfit once again and powerless.

I always questioned myself: why am I still alive, and what am I doing here?  I’ll shout to the sky about life being unfair and all. And I remember clearly how I stumbled upon the Overmono song and thought this mood would be a good fit for me to record my state of mind right now about loneliness and self-affirmation from God. But I think ‘Empathy’ is definitely a gateway to more possibilities for religious themed electronic music.

With regards to Christianity then, why did you choose Exodus & Genesis for your two EP titles? How do they differ with regards to the titles/meanings and do you see this as an ongoing series?

I feel like every time I’m writing an album or an EP, I’m always ‘on the journey’ with it or things that I was struggling with and realizing after the album was finished. As for Genesis, it means a fresh start to everything. I chose this name because it also means a sense of self-realization and being reborn again.

During that time, I was struggling hard with the process of reflecting on my past. I always had a hard time opening up about things like being bullied and the fear of self-affirmations from people. I felt like I was always hiding and pretending to be confident in front of people. There was a turning point when I went to Shanghai for a music contest, and I realized I got lost by fame and glory instead of my love of music. It was also an essential process for me during that time to accept both my hateful past and the loveable side of me.

As for Exodus, it is a continuous chapter of Genesis. I feel like I’m on the other stage of life, where I’m searching for my ultimate dream = a music dream almost throughout my life.

I chose Exodus specifically as an EP name because I always prayed and asked God, “What’s next, God? What will my next stage in life be?” And suddenly, one day, this image came into my head: the story of Exodus, where Moses brought everyone from Egypt to Israel to search for their utopian dream.

And now, I’m talking with you in this interview; it all felt like a purposeful dream to me where everything happens for a reason, where God somehow is here to prepare me for a plan of what God did to Moses.

I’m not sure if this will be an ongoing series, but I’m definitely enjoying where my life is taking me, and I’m also excited for the next unexpected one to come.

Can you tell us more about the sequencing on Exodus?

I purposefully put everything in order like this because I wanted to take everyone on a journey to a long Exodus desert walk. From ‘Romantic,’ I wanted to start by bringing everyone into a lonely traveler, looking for a sense of belonging at home or even an unknown upcoming home. As for ‘Night’, it was a track about insomnia and the feeling of relocating so many times, where you sometimes feel almost ghost-like and wake up in an unfamiliar hotel you called home. For ‘Tranquility,’ I wanted to have a considerable tipping point where ‘Tranquility’ comes into play as a high-energy accuse, where I started to feel fed up and tired of my surroundings and ‘trying’ to push away all my fears about my future.

For ‘Empathy,’ I wanted to have a more honest conversation, and I added ‘Empathy’ into the play, a more subtle but honest song about the uncanniness of life. For ‘Who Am I,’ I crawl back into my emotions about who I am and why I exist with a more upbeat, almost nightcore-like song. This is also a song that I am most drawn to within the EP because I laugh about it a lot; I find myself pathetic in finding answers without no end, like an ant following the crowd who needs to be recognized as an individual.

For the last piece of the puzzle, I added ‘FOREVER’ to complete my whole EP. ‘FOREVER’ is one of those rare ones with a positive energy. Because I realized sad happenings and emotions lead most of my songs. But I figured home is not a physical thing to look for; perhaps it is where God is. That’s where I could find my place and forever home.

You’ve said that for Genesis you channeled a cloud. I wondered how that changed for Exodus?

If I have to skeuomorphize myself, I think I’m a tree in Exodus, whereas I was a fragile seed back then that was waiting to be nourished and watered. But after I’ve been through a few thunderstorms and witnessed a couple of storms, I can grow as a beautiful and unique tree. In which I turned my weakness into strength. And I can stand through anything because I’ve been through it already.

I know you are a big Avril Lavinge fan. Can you tell us more about why you connected to her?

Being a shy teenager, Avril Lavigne is a person I looked up to a lot because there was no one or a family member like her that I could have a shoulder to cry on and tell me everything would be okay, and I could just be myself. That might be why I was drawn to her music as a teen and grew up listening to her songs a lot.

I also wanted Merry Lamb Lamb to be the same; feeling relatable is very important. And to have fans that could feel empowered and empathetic. Or people with similar experiences could feel that being related to me is essential.

Our own personal musical spirit animal is Mariah Carey, who loves a lamb herself, and we always ask as a final question, what is your favourite Mariah song?

The song ‘Touch My Body’ is like a favorite tune of mine from her. This song, to me, exudes confidence and empowerment of femininity, which I love. And the vocal stacking from the chorus gives me shivers and surprise at how minimal and good this song is every time I listen. And I love how she calls her fan a lamb too, I’m digging it!

The Exodus EP is out now.

Main photo by Yum! Laksa