The dangers of living in London
When I call Meg Lee Chin up in her home it's early May and she is upset. This happens to be the first time for some days she has been allowed to enter her home. A few days ago, someone blew off a bomb in her street in Soho, central London, which has since been evacuated by the police.
- I live on Old Compton Street, which is sort of a gay street, where it also lives lots of different nationalities, she tells me. So some racist maniac decided to detonate a bomb here, and it exploded only eight doors away. It was horrible, but on the other hand I'm happy to be alive.
In her home, Meg has also installed her own Egg Studio, where she has been working on her first solo album. Entitled "Piece and Love", it was out on Invisible Records on September 28. The album has been produced in cooperation with Martin Atkins, Pigface main man, head of Invisible Records and former drummer for Public Image Ltd, Ministry and many others. But they haven't worked together in the studio. Instead, Meg has sent her recordings to Atkins who has in turn added his contributions in his own Waiting Room studio in Chicago.
The result is a clash between hip hop beats, lo-fi electronics and punk guitars, packed together in great pop songs with a fantastic dub production. Everything fuelled by an energetic "do it yourself" attitude.
The first song I heard from "Piece and Love" was "Swallowing You", which was featured on the "Chemical Warfare" compilation, released by Invisible this spring. I was caught directly by the song, a sad piece with very emotional vocals and, more importantly, an absolutely speaker shredding guitar sound.

To combine experimentalism and pop music
Just like much of the music I love the most, "Piece and Love" has its biggest assett in the meeting between pop songs and an experimental production. It is music that is both accessible and challenging.
- I try to do music that I would like to hear, Meg Lee Chin explains. What I really like to do is songs that are very structured and then innovative in the production. Musically, I haven't been inspired by John Cage or similar theoretics. I'm much more fond of classical pop music, but since I also really like music that sounds modern, I try to combine those aspects.

Produced Faith No More with Courtney Love on vocals
Meg Lee Chin grew up in Taiwan, the daughter of a US Air Force engineer and his wife. After a hard time as a slightly criminal teenager, she eventually ended up at San Francisco State University, California. Part of her education was audio engineering, which suited the engineer daughter Meg well. She soon started doing production for bands, among one was an early version of Faith No More with no other than Courtney Love on vocals.
After a series of small musical projects, Meg bought herself a plane ticket and ended up in London where she started the band Crunch. It became an all girl band, since Meg thought it was time for some girls to make really good music.

On Russian tour with all girl band Crunch
Unfortunately, Crunch ended up having a management aiming for huge success. Part of their strategy was to keep Crunch hid and thereby building up a hype around them, and therefor they weren't allowed to play live. Instead they were placed in a studio for a couple of years, recording and learning how to work the gear.
- They wanted us to stay this big secret. Loads of record company bullshit, really. But at least we were allowed to tour Russia, since it's so cut off from the West. So we did a tour there that actually became quite a big media event, since we were one of the first Western bands performing over there.
Russia turned out to be the only place where Crunch's only album was eventually released.
- We met so many amazing people there, Meg says. They were terribly poor, but still so incredibly generous. They helped us a lot, so we wanted to do something for them as well. Therefor we gave them a DAT of our music and all the rights to it for free, and they released the album. Unfortunately I haven't even seen a copy of it myself.

Let down offer to sing in Garbage and joined Pigface instead
Crunch broke up before their management got its wet dreams realized. According to Meg much due to the inhibiting circumstances. After that she felt confused and missed being in a band.
Suddenly she was offered an audition for a new project named Garbage. This was before Butch Vig and the other members had found Shirley Manson and were still looking for a singer. But no wonder things didn't work out. Meg being both a singer, guitar player and an engineer, didn't seem to fit in in the three producer's fixed scheme.
- They were looking for someone who could sing and do exactly what she was told. But since I have quite a lot of technical knowledge as well, I naturally wanted to have my say in that area as well. But I have loads of respect for what Butch Vig does, the way he's using the money he's made on doing the music he feels for.
Even more down, Meg Lee Chin soon got in touch with Martin Atkins and his giant musical collective Pigface. Mostly thanks to two former Crunch fans now running an artist management.
- Martin was looking for a female singer for Pigface, and they tipped him about me. He called me up and we got along great from the beginning. So he didn't even want me to send him a demo tape or anything. He simply sent me a plane ticket to Chicago right away. And he must have had good intuition, because we've been friends ever since.
Do you enjoy working with him and Pigface?
- Oh yeah, Meg says. I'm really happy that I've got the opportunity to tour with Pigface, because I'd probably go insane otherwise. I need those two months a year I usually spend on the road with them as a counterpart to the rest of the year, when I'm mostly in my studio.

Invisible Records Meg Lee Chin's record company