Ming Ming and the Ching Chings - Not In Anyone's Gang EP

It's been the best part of a month since Glasgow's Ming Ming and the Ching Chings released their "Not In Anyone's Gang" EP, and it's been even longer since I began this review! So, having listened to it on and off for a while now, what's the verdict?

First of all, at times, much like the cover art, there is so much going on in this EP. So many influences and styles creep up and intertwine. F**k knows how they do it though, because everything just clicks! "High octane" and "high energy" have already been bandied about. Well you can add highly recommended to those. This is a seriously good EP!

Pick of the 5 tracks is "Secrets of Men" which kicks off like The Cinematics' "Love and Terror" before veering off into a psychotic, punk-pop romp!

Secrets of Men

I'm sure, like me though, you still have a few questions (presumably about the band name and cover art), so I took the liberty to ask them for you. Here's what Ming Ming had to say...

Kowalskiy: How did you come to pick your band name?
Ming Ming: The bass players wife came up with the name. It's basically slagging's of members in the band... so it's personal!!

Kowalskiy: So, what's the EP all about?
Ming Ming: The EP has 5 tracks that we'd been working on since we formed in 2007 so there quite old tracks. They sum up a lot of various influences we had at the time. We set out with the intent of going down the surf/rockabilly/rock route when we started but deviate quite a bit. We realised that we find it hard not to squeeze lots of ideas into a track so that's why there's a lot of different styles going on, we wanted the energy and interest to maintain through the 5 tracks.

Kowalskiy: The cover art is quite distinctive. Is there a story behind it? Is that the girl from Avatar riding a shark?
Ming Ming: Ha, no it's not the chick from Avatar... was she not blue anyhow? By distinctive you mean reminds you of Avatar then???
Kowalskiy: Pretty much that and the sharks in space thing!
Ming Ming: It was a piece I came up with when I was working doing various collage stuff last year and always wanted to use it as a cover.

Kowalskiy: What can we expect from Ming Ming and the Ching Chings in the future?
Ming Ming: Well, were working on a lot of new songs at the moment and start recording some of them at the end of the month. We then plan to release another EP in the autumn and do a bit of touring. Were also doing a lot of work to incorporate live visuals in our set. We tried it out at Sleazys on our EP launch. It worked quite well but the computer kept crashing so we're gonna have to sort out a few technical problems before we try it again.

Those of you in Glasgow can see if they manage to sort them out in a few days time!

Upcoming Gig
26th June - Spectrum @ McChuills, Glasgow