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The Steel Lions / Blog

What is Heavy Sigma?

One of my major accomplishments as a musician came from playing guitar, songwriting, and musically advertising and marketing alone or with other freelance musicians in the Patrick Lew Band since my freshmen year in high school. We mainly play garage punk and grunge types of music as recording artists, and had gained some recognition and critical success for our music and persistent efforts. As of March 2012, this band is on indefinite hiatus so everyone involved including myself can focus on our own projects individually.

Aside from the Patrick Lew Band, my other focus as a Bay Area rock musician is through my solo efforts and attempts at creating new music under the moniker Heavy Sigma. Sometimes, my fiancee and long-time girlfriend Faith does some electronic production and managing with this one-man rock band. Currently, Heavy Sigma is signed to Seattle based indie label Anti-Nonsense Networking (ANN) and sporadically records in the studio, putting all pieces of music online for recognition and for the sake of being a musician.

The status of my new album...

Pushing my new Dubstep influenced album Taiwanese Rebels to hit the airwaves some time before 2012 is over. Been kind of busy with a lot of important things and trying to better myself as a person. I'm 100% sure and confident that my new music will be unpredictable as always and will offer something interesting to my peeps. Patrick

The Internet helped me become recognized as a musician.

I came during a generation, where bands and musicians didn't need to sucker themselves into signing with a major record label, getting on TV and radio, and doing mass live performing as a way of bigger exposure. I came during a time where the computers and social-media made it more possible for the little or middle fish in the pond to get themselves heard. Despite my love for 90's rock, I highly doubt I would have been recognized back then like I am now supposedly, and it's not a money thing either. It's recognition and making an audience.

A give thanks to my high school Wallenberg.

Whenever my high school reunion happens for Raoul Wallenberg High School for c/o 2004, I will be handing out copies of my music on CD I made with Heavy Sigma to the peeps I went to school with. As a token of appreciation and to give back to everybody. I started my Bay Area music career back in freshmen year at age 15 by the way! :) Patrick

Parts of my new album Taiwanese Rebel is on sale as an mp3 file.

9 minutes of the new album finished. I'll be back to work on it later on the computer. Need that extra smoke break and time to chill on the TV to watch from all that digital music making. :) My work in progress so far is currently can be purchased as a single mp3 file on my Heavy Sigma ReverbNation page for $1.99. I'll be back to work on something epic! Patrick

I got an idea for a new Patrick Lew solo album. Yay! :) Read on.

I'm working on the new Heavy Sigma album right now. Turns out it's gonna be an LP which one long track on it, which is an experimental sound collage which I'm aiming to run at least 42 minutes at least. It's gonna be called "Taiwanese Rebel: The Fall and Rise of Modern Anti-Heroes." When it's finished, I'll let you peeps know and you can take a gander. I'm taking archives of recorded sound files musically to create a strange yet interesting experience on record. Patrick

Haters are my motivators.

I'm gonna vent a little bit. Most of my life, a lot of girls thought I was nothing but a weird sack of shit that is not good enough for them or would never amount to anything in life. When they did that, that really did hurt a lot you know. It put more pressure on me to be the best at what I do, shove what they thought up their kilt, and become a better partner and hubby for my woman Faith. If I didn't have Faith, I would have been the biggest failure so I'm very lucky to have her.

I do everything to stand out from my Asian peers.

In my culture, we're basically taught to be the norm and to be like everybody else. For me, I just want to stand out from the rest and be myself.

One non-Asian person once told me, I'm one of the nicest open-minded Asian guys they've witnessed in their area. I try to be more open and nicer than the average Asian person would be. Plus I have rock and roll in my genes.

I need to practice the guitar more often.

Need to stop procrastinating and put my money where my mouth is: If I am really passionate about making/playing rock music, then I should really put more spare time into playing the guitar.

I am both Japanese and Chinese. But people need to understand it.

I remember being mixed Asian who was both Japanese and Chinese was difficult for me growing up in the Asian American community back in home sweet home of SF. I remember people kept being skeptical about it, and gave me negativity because of my ethnicity. I'm thankful that people nowadays kind of realize and understand what ethnicity I am, because I don't think my ethnicity should have been taken that seriously as a bad thing back in the 90's or the early 2000s. Thank you for understanding.