I’ve been listening to this mix ever since my ears first got wind of it yesterday.
“8BITOFSOUL” is presented to us by the kind folk at BLIND | who deserve all props for first hosting the mix. Put together by DJ R-CADE of BEV MO, you’ll be treated to old new funk soul sounds that are the absolutely perfect aural antibiotics to get your immune system up so you don’t fall sick when life throws shit your way.
Been sort of out of the Interwebs due to an indescribable kind of blue, but I think I’ve had enough so it’s going to be an overload of information. First up, you have a choice of what you want to attend.
Figure8 Agency presents: White Shoes & The Couples Company // SayCet // B-Quartet
Date: 8 November 2011, Tuesday Time: 7PM Onwards Venue: La Salle School of the Arts More Info
Obey Radio: Rome Intl. // Funk Bast*rd // Izaak Stern // Kiat ft. Kevin Lester
Date: 8 November 2011, Tuesday Time: 8PM – 11PM Venue: The Pigeonhole, 52/53 Duxton Road More Info
A good way to get into the mind of someone, is to check out what music they’re listening to. More often than not, DJs express themselves by making mixes. In this case, we have Thom Yorke, frontman of Radiohead with an eclectic collection of tunes that include, Eryka Bahdu, James Blake, Modeselektor, J Dilla.. etc
I’m only the second song in, and what greets you are layers of spacey synths backed by glitchy beats. A very enjoyable way to bash out that piece of work that needs doing. Or you could waste your time with this video I found of Thom Yorke playing a surprise set at the Low End Theory.
I didn’t need to come up with a better headline because the event’s title is pretty much the perfect blend of awesomesauce.
I grew up reading zines here and there, in between buying CDs, loving the DIY aesthetic and reading the opinions of tastemakers, or just people who saw that a life worth living, was a life worth expressing. Zines have a special place in my heart, and now something spectacular is happening round the corner.
GRAPHME ZINE LABS is holding A MOSH! Like a party, ABOUT ZINES. Seriously, zines are the original blog. These analog folk were doing it gonzo style, democratic, anarchic, way before any of this social media bullshite hit the giant fan in the sky.
The mosh features works by Le Messie, Amanda S, Twistii, Zxerokool and Sheryo just to name a few.
It’s happening tomorrow, so be sure to hit up the details and get your pasty hipster butts to the Goodman Arts Centre!
DETAILSZ
Venue: 90 Goodman Road – Goodman Arts Centre – Block B #05-06 Date: 15 October 2011 till 16 October 2011 Time: 8PM, Saturday – 2PM, Sunday GRAPHEME Facebook Event RSVP
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GRAPHEME’s exhibition is open till the end of this Saturday, 22 October 2011, everyday from 1PM – 9PM
Well hello again! Without posting any news, it is still my civic duty to spam my own blog with news of shows I’m playing in Singapore! SHELVES is at it again, and this time we’re joined at Identite 4.3 with space rockers, Interlude as well as the fabulous debut of Obedient Wives Club!
It’s going to be pretty exciting because the bill fits like a glove. Actually, I don’t know why a fitted glove would be exciting. Maybe some really well-written indie tunes and good times would better persuade you. Or bak chor mee across the road.
Venue: Home Club Date: 14 October 2011, Friday Time: 8PM – 11PM Cover: $12
Here’s a video flyer I did up while we rehearsed on Wednesday:
And some extra digital flyers I did up whilst commuting. Instagram that shit!
Band Bios
SHELVES – Singapore band Shelves is a come-back of sorts. With close to 20 years of experience in Singapore’s indie music scene between the members playing in their previous bands (Silverspy, Suchness, Livonia and Leeson), that itself seems to mean little in today’s fast-changing society of instant food, services and music tastes. For Noel Yeo (Vox, Guitars), Ritchie Melvin Ho (Guitars, Vox), Brian Leery (Bass) and Robin Chua (Drums), they were boys struggling to be men in the 90′s. Fast forward to 2011, they are men struggling to be boys again, finding solace in the cathartic arms of playing heartfelt power pop songs that promise the aching melodies reminiscent of Teenage Fanclub, delivered with the urgency of Weezer and insouciance of Pavement.
INTERLUDE – An intervening period. A space before the end. Interlude is an experimental synth rock band from Singapore that embraces the dark roots of early synthesizer music and its potential for making the brightest pop. Against pulsing backbeats and slight wavering of guitar, Interlude invites you to a space where their songs contemplates and celebrates the everyday beauty of the human condition.
Between the start and the end, between rupture and rapture.
OBEDIENT WIVES CLUB – Obedient Wives Club was conceived on the rooftop of Tapas bar over Sangria and Coke Light. Fueled by Keith Tan’s (rhythm guitar, ex-Johnny Shameless & His Minions) almost unhealthy obsession with Phil Spector-inspired, fuzz-pop girl-fronted bands like Best Coast, Dum Dum Girls, Frankie Rose & The Outs, the idea was brought up to Robin Ng (lead guitar, ex-Camra), and thus, the band was born. Roping in Lennat Mak (ex-Midnight Marvel) on drums, and by serendipity, newcomer YinQi Lee was brought in as vocalist, based on her penchant for polka dots, and a voice you’d want to make love to. Completing the lineup is Sulaiman Supian, sometime bassist and effects man for The Stoned Revivals. Obedient Wives Club intends to bring fuzzed out girl group indie pop that is missing from the Singapore indie scene.
This was literally love at first listen. I suspect that synth drums have a special place in our hearts, the children of the eighties, because we pretty much listened to them as we were growing up, even if we didn’t realise whether we liked them or not.
Sleep ∞ Over’s music evokes all the sort of latent emotion that we buried beneath walls of detachment, and seeks to find some sort of catharsis for it. This unofficial video is the perfect allegory for what I’m talking about.
We had the day off today, so I re-watched Patlabor 2: The Movie, and these particular scenes stood out for me.
A False Peace
Arakawa: “You as a policeman, Gotoh, me as a Self-Defence spook. What is it the two of us are actually trying to protect?
It’s 50 years since the end of World War 2. We’ve lived our whole lives never having known war, violence yes, but that’s recognised as criminal, never a time when the whole country was dedicated to legal violence.
Peace. Is it peace we’re working to protect?
What has peace meant for this country? For our city? For us? All the effort and passion Japan put in the war ended in Hiroshima in defeat. Then the Americans came, bringing their nuclear deterrent, their Cold War, their Hollywood chewing gum war, and now all over the world their are bullet wars, civil wars, suffering, misery.. death.
We’re a rich country, and what is our wealth built on? The bloody corpses of all these wars. They’re the foundation of our peace. We now put the same effort into indifference that our parents put into war. Other countries comfortable far away, pay the price for our peace. We learn very well, how to ignore their suffering.”
Gotoh: “No matter how repulsive the peace, it’s still vital to guard it. It may be an immoral peace, maybe an unjust peace, but an unjust peace is still better than a just war.”
Arakawa: “I share your revulsion about just wars. If there was ever such a thing, it was the war against the Nazis, our allies, Gotoh. Our allies.
But how many millions throughout history have died, in the cause of what their lying leaders have called, “just wars”? In the end, it seems to me that the line between a just war and an unjust peace is very faint indeed. If the just war is a lie, is the unjust peace a less of a lie?
We’re told there is peace, but if we look around us, and even if we cannot give it words, our lives tell us that we cannot believe what we’re being told. In the end, every war gives way to peace, so called, and every so-called peace is the dormant seed of war.
So it’s only a matter of time, till the hard reality of war sweeps away our illusion of the absence of war, is peace.
So I ask you again, what are we working to protect? We enjoy peace on our TV screens, while just outside the camera shot, the war is raged. We forget we’re just a camera angle behind the battle lines. No, we don’t forget, we just quite simply refuse to remember it.
That cannot go on. Some time, somehow, we will be punished.”
Gotoh: “Punished? By who? By God?
Arakawa: “Anyone in this world can be like God. Most in a universe no bigger than their own minds. All present, all knowing, most impotent outside the confines of their own heads. And what God cannot do, man will attempt. Unless, we stop them. They must be stopped.
That is our task.”
Unnatural City
A beautiful sequence of events with an equally spell-binding soundtrack. I love animation because it exists in a state of hyperreality rather than try to mirror it. It exists beyond reality because there are no actors, only moving illusions passing off as movement. A trick of the eye, that tricks the mind, and knowing it, does not require you to care.
I absolutely love the direction for this music video done by Tyrone Lebon for Mount Kimbie. The montage just sorts of, pulls you into this staccato-like filmic world, with accents in all the right places. Old friends or new, familiar or unfamiliar, your favourite cities never looked this endearing in awhile.
