Continuing (and may I say surpassing?) his previous debut effort "Your Side", his latest offering contains a sumptuous feast of rock tracks plus a varied-range of  rap, metal and hip-hop music.  Virgin Music has reportedly allowed Stanley to venture further into this area of music because his last third single "Scholar" (or Zhuang Yan), a hokkien-rap number, was unexpectedly well-received by his Taiwan fans.

Listening to this album is like hearing Stanley venting his rage and frustration at a host of issues like the Taiwan music industry (witness his "mockery" on the "safe ballads" music policy adopted by many record companies in his first single cum title track "Circus Monkey"), work overload (in "I Need A Holiday) and people who tried to act cool (in "Cool, Not!").  Like Zhang Zheng Yue, he has even resorted to the use of the 4-letter "f" word in not one, but two tracks.

No wonder the media has labelled Stanley as the runaway rebel of Virgin Music, alongside its "goody-goody" artistes like Beauty Ho, Elva and Ken Wu Ke Qun.

Cool, Not!  你裝酷，我想吐 --------  

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Produced by Chen Zi Hong and Huang Yi, her latest album features ten vocal numbers all written by Penny herself.  The songs incorporate a range of music styles like folk, country, rock and jazz.  A note-worthy mention is that the entire album adopted a live recording method whereby Penny and all the musicians congregate under one studio to record every single vocal track.

The first single "Date" is a light-tempo folkish song with a touch of rock.

The second single cum title track "How Will It Be" is a nice ballad that boasts chart-topping material.  I first heard it when Penny performed live in one of Taiwan's variety shows and fell in love with the song immediately.

Besides the ten vocal songs, the album also contains two interlude tracks and five solo pieces performed by various international musicians such as Australia's guitarist Jamie Wilson, Malaysia's bass player Andy Peterson, Singapore's keyboard player Goh Kheng Long (or Wu Qing Long) and Taiwan's guitarist Huang Zhong Yue.

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For those uninitiated, Chen Guo Hua is a veteran producer and composer whose previous works include Gigi Leung's "Short Hair" (or Duan Fa), Stella Zhang Qing Fang's "Cun Cui", Sammi Cheng's Cantonese hit "Chemistry" (or Mo Qi), Romi Li Qi's "Thoughtfulness" (or Ti Tie) and more recently, Sandy Lam's "Reunited" (or Chong Yu) and Jacky Cheung's Taiwan McDonald's jingle "Every Time Is A Good Time".  Of course not forgetting his personal contributions to Julia Peng's staple of hits like "The Day That I Walk On The Red Carpet" (or Zou Zai Hong Tan Na Yi Tian), "Heartache Love Song" (or Xin Suan De Qing Ge), "Willing" (or Gan Yuan) and her latest hit "Reminisce" (or Hui Wei).

I first heard his vocals on What's Music's brilliant song-writer tribute album "Demo 1" in which he sang the demo for Gigi Leung's "Short Hair" and was immediately blown away by his heartfelt and soothing interpretation.  This guy can sing all right.

Coming back to his debut release, all the ten vocal tracks and one instrumental work are composed and produced by himself.  Each song contains a story behind it and is well documented inside the album sleeves.  

Most of the tracks are easy-listening mid-tempo ballads, intermixed with a few up-tempo light beats.  The first single "Waiting" is a R&B-style ballad which showcases his high-note falsettos. 

The album "Visual Music" is so titled because it allows the listener to enjoy both listening and visual pleasures in one album package.  The CD comes bundled with a VCD which contains the music videos for ALL (yeah, u heard me right) of the songs, including even the instrumental track.  

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For the first time, Alex is producing some of the tracks in his latest offering.  Other producers include Valentino Bao Xiao Bo, Eric Chen Zi Hong and Johnny Chen (or Xiao Chong).  As expected, his music remains Western-oriented and comes with a mix of varied-style dance tracks (R&B, robotic-beat, techno) and a string of his trademark R&B ballads.

The first single "Rainbow" is a mid-tempo, unplugged and guitar-acoustic track with a refreshing tinge of folk.  This song is actually a cover of the work by China duo-group Yu Quan (formerly known as Wild Boy or Ye Hai Zi).

The second single in Taiwan is the pulsating Korean-composed rap-dance track "Sexy Baby" while the second single in Singapore is the R&B ballad "Bind".

Other highlights : 

- The album has a lot of Korean input : Korean compositions (such as the afore-mentioned "Sexy Baby" and the slow cover track "I Believe); Korean rap artistes are featured in some of the songs; the album's post-music production is done in Korea; and the whole album cover and MTV shoot are done in Korea.  Speaking of the cover, Alex is spotted putting on an "injured" makeup which consists of a bruised cheek and at the same time shows blood streaming from his eyebrow.

- There is a duet ballad "She's Always There" sung with China female singer Ching (or Liu Qin) who also wrote the track.

- A bonus Cantonese track "Speaker" is included.  It is the main-theme song for Alex's upcoming new Hong Kong action movie.

- As with the rest of the recent Rock Records' releases, Alex's album CD comes with a bonus Power CD which allows his fans to catch the music videos of his first two singles "Rainbow" and "Sexy Baby", as well as to access other exclusive multimedia privileges online.

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