SINGAPORE : I'm Waking Up To... Riot !n Magenta - CTRL Do androids dream of electric sheep? One thinks of such things when the contrast between the organic and inorganic meld together into a primordial blur of passion. Riot !n Magenta gently slip into the stream of your thoughts with Hayashida Ken's dark, pulsing rhythms and Eugenia Yip's wispful and forlorn vocal delivery. There's tension in every stem as the words haze through: "I [...]
In the annals of post-punk otherness, Josef K has long held a rather exalted place and here's one of the reasons why. The jagged perfection of "Crazy To Exist", one of only a handful of songs this Scottish band recorded in their short existence during the early eighties, still sound singular and not the least dated. I first got exposed to their music quite a few years back via the reissue of The Only Fun in Town , and the unrelenting sonic deviance of Josef K's sound remains lodged in my head ever since. And every time I plug [...]
My occassional fliratatons with new age music, if you could even call it such, brought me through musicians who today aren't quite known for that genre even if lasting streams of those influences clearly remain in their subsequent work. And I never quite enjoyed it. Sarah McLachlan's debut album Touch (1988) surely looked the part with the ornately (and of course slightly eerily) decorated sepia toned cover art. I found myself liking her subsequent albums more, probably owing to their stronger rock and pop leanings, and soon gave away my copy of the album to a friend who [...]
Television's "Marquee Moon" is an epic of a song, bringing together such muscle and grace in its ten-minute form. Compositionally it builds majestically as the guitar solos weave their interlocking lines. Yet, more than the solos, it is the duelling guitars from Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd that make the song the achievement it is. The tight interplay between the two guitarists foreshadow the democratic relationship of other guitar duos – Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien – who share the work between lead and rhythm, between melody and mood. Moving between the propulsive rhythms of [...]
SINGAPORE : I'm Waking Up To... Sonicbrat - Bed Of Forty Winks Sonicbrat is the enduring moniker of sound artist Darren Ng, whose work is characterised by an intricate tapestry of field recordings and found sounds, strung together by subtly processed acoustic instrumentation with a classical bent. Gentle, stirring and complex, Ng's music is the sort that invites itself into and comfortably inhabits one's imagination. His latest release, Hana, is his musing on the [...]
"Baby baby baby ohhh like, baby baby baby nooo like, baby baby baby..." Great pop songs have great hooks, and this is why Justin Bieber's "Baby" is one. In terms of great pop songs called "Baby", it's right up there with Os Mutantes, who gave us their very own in 1968. And if the chorus isn't catchy enough, check out Ludacris' backup vocals. "Yo, uh huh. Yo, uh huh." Yo, you know what I mean, dawg. Two great hooks for the price of none, right here on Youtube. Uh huh. - Song-Ming . [...]
SINGAPORE : I'm Waking Up To... Magus - Riders On Psychedelics Magus is a new collaboration between Mark Dolmont and Leslie Low, the latter best known for his work with Humpback Oak and The Observatory. Their debut effort is fittingly the first release by Ujikaji Records , a new independent label and distro focusing on experimental music in the region. The album, titled Sun Worshipper, presents a dark and spiritual brew of kraut-inspired [...]
Most of the dust has settled following the mid-year hype and fashionable mystique surrounding young Manchester outfit WU LYF , but it seems never quite completely. I needed some distance from the flurry of media attention surrounding their self-released debut Go Tell Fire to the Mountain , but within a couple of months I couldn't resist sneaking a peek, finding myself drawn instantly to the band's stirring rallying call, manifest primarily in Ellery James Roberts' ravaged, war-battered and often indecipherable (at least to my non-Mancunian ears) vocals. "Spitting Blood" is arguably the finest example of their radical brand [...]
Of course I'm sad that it's going to be B-Quartet 's last gig this coming Tuesday, as they vacate the niche they've comfortably carved for themselves at the intersections, on one hand, between post-apocalyptic poetry and (most recently) the philosophy of Theodore Adorno, and on the other, across an astounding diversity of musical genres. With only two albums and an EP released in over a decade, their's may seem a less than-prolific career and the impending infinite hiatus coming a tad too soon. But the upcoming Lasalle gig, together with White Shoes and the Couples Company from [...]
Black Kite is by no means a perfect album, but this debut from Silver Tongues shows skyward ambition, opening with a prayerful exhortation and closing with an angelic vision. In between, the effervescent vocals of David Cronin echoes through the songs, sometimes with the church hall ambience of a Fleet Foxes hymn, and at other times booming with the polished bombast of My Morning Jacket. It's very much still a work in progress, with the band searching for its identity through the album, prompting the listener to look out for and witness the moments where they do [...]
Clear some space out, so we can space out . Shabazz Palaces ' Black Up , an album big on ideas and rich in detail, finds its sweet spot when the space is cleared and all that's left behind is the barest and most essential of ingredients. Ishmael Butler's crisp no-nonsense rapping takes its rightful place at the forefront, finding an almost hypnoptic rhythm buoyed only by a neatly sampled vintage chorus of meandering oohs. Meanwhile, Tendai Maraire's agreeable beats flit comfortably between the two while giving generous room for stretching out. On paper at least, this may [...]
Listening to Megafaun reminds me of that magical feeling of hearing Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot for the very first time, of marveling at its perfect balance of country-folk balladry and pop experimentation. While Wilco has since, for better or worse, moved towards solidifying their monolithic sound, Megafaun has in their recent eponymous album resisted the boundaries of genre in producing what must be the most playfully rewarding release of the year. "These Words" opens with half a minute of guesswork, with its storyline coming together in a dizzying whole through the course of the track. The [...]
SINGAPORE : I'm Waking Up To... Etc - Big Girl's Blouse Etc is truly one of Singapore's best-kept secrets. There are no fancy fashions or trends associated with the duo of Ben Harrison and Harvey Chamberlain, just well-written guitar-rock to a steady beat. Harrison's jangle-raggedy guitar work is exciting and tasteful enough to balance perfectly atop Chamberlain's near-primal approach to the beat, yet also easy enough for that slacker sway. They have an album [...]
This is a hazy moment in my life. I can't see clearly, the air stinks like Pulau Bukom and Kalimantan burning together, and I can't locate the hotspots giving off all this smoke, let alone put them out. And then R.E.M. disbands. I go through their discography in this haze, music that I knew pre-haze, and continue to learn about. A darker, edgier fan favourite ("Star Me Kitten"? Or "How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us"?) accompanied me as I brooded, but somehow this complacently shiny happy ditty shone through into my consciousness. It reminded me of [...]
My affair with R.E.M. started when I was voraciously reading through interviews with Radiohead. Time and again, Michael Stipe's name kept popping up and Thom Yorke would describe how he and Stipe were good friends. At the time, I decided that it wouldn't be too bad to have an American version of Radiohead, and decided in 1998 to buy my first R.E.M. album that didn't contain "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?". I settled for New Adventures in Hi-Fi (1996), which was their latest album then. What greeted me was a sprawling mess of an album that almost [...]
My first introduction to R.E.M. was their 1994 album Monster . I had probably heard "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" enough times on the radio to finally decide - a few years later - to spend that twenty bucks at Tower Records for my own copy of the album. It was a limited edition gold CD (which was all the rage back then) commemorating the band's tour of the region that generously included a Singapore leg. I can't quite remember my first impressions of that album, but I followed up whatever interest garnered the years after by slowly trawling through [...]
Out of Time (1991) sees R.E.M. at a point of reinvention. Their previous album Green (1988), their first on major label Warner Bros., featured relatively straightforward tunes and a consistent if conservative sound palette. On Out of Time , they incorporate baroque instrumentation, guest vocalists (including rapper KRS-One), spoken-word poetry ("Belong"), and Mike Mills even plays some slap bass on the funky opener "Radio Song". A patchwork of genres and moods, the album arguably features R.E.M.'s most diverse collection of songs. With the band stretching out so far, and half the album being upbeat songs, it's [...]
This week, we pay tribute to R.E.M. by selecting tracks where we felt they were at their most beautiful. And so the announcement came late last month that R.E.M. have officially called it quits, after 31 largely successful years and an expansive back catalogue of 15 studio albums. I must say that the news felt a bit like a twitchy wake-up bomb to some of us longtime fans, filling us with as much sadness and gratitude as bittersweet feelings, especially for those among us who honestly weren't [...]
A late afternoon conversation led us to the Kinks , which was a good enough excuse to relisten my beloved Village Green Preservation Society album. I remember buying a copy after reading a Kinks feature in BigO , which championed the band's pioneering move in recording a concept album in the 1960s around their obsessive pining for the old English countryside. It was refreshing listening to the album again after all this while (itself a nostalgic exercise), and of course picking out new favorite moments (previously, the cheeky opening note on "Picture Book" or that infectious [...]
Look out, look out , for the man who came in with little fanfare and left just as unassumingly not too long after. For that brief hour or less, Mike Hadreas - performing as Perfume Genius - was laid bare for all, his music an intimate, knotted struggle. As in their recorded versions in his debut album Learning , the songs all sounded too short and ended too abruptly, drawing out each time an awkward pause before the applause. But Hadreas knows awkwardness well enough to let those moments linger, keeping the tension going with an audience probably more [...]
i'm waking up to...
Miike Snow – Paddling Out (Jacques Lu Cont Remix)
