Mother Tongues

The pulse of Mother Tongues is the friendship and creative partnership between Cheung and vocalist/bassist Charise Aragoza, who met a decade ago in a Chinatown garage turned DIY punk venue. “Char and I are both children of immigrants, a factor that has a huge impact on your entire life. You’re confronted with the need to constantly justify your existence, and this permeates into every aspect of your life–including how you create. I’ve been trying to see this as less of an obstacle and more as something that charges your work with an intensity and urgency that otherwise might not be possible,” says Cheung. “We’ve never looked like the kids in the magazines so we couldn’t get away with being derivative or a rehash. When you grow up not quite fitting into any space, you end up carving out your own. In many ways that’s what this record is. With the sound, we’ve created this atmosphere and emotional plane where we can exist. We’re peering into the future and imagining what this world could be.”