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Simian Mobile Disco presents ‘Unpatterns’

News

May 142012

Simian Mobile Disco is proud to announce the release of their brand new album Unpatterns on May 14 via Wichita Recordings (distribution in South-East Asia by Love Da Records).

“It’s a record full of love, dedication, hard-earned experience, obvious understanding of decades of electronic music from across scenes and styles, and huge fun. It’s completely of the now, showing a band as familiar with Blawan and Lone as they are with Silver Apples and Phuture, but never jumping on bandwagons.”

Watch the video clips for “Put Your Hands Together”, “Cerulean” and “Seraphim”:

Simian Mobile Disco has developed an iPhone/iPad app in collaboration with Kate Moross. It allows the user to listen to the entirety of SMD’s brand new album, Unpatterns, whilst playing with a host of custom designed moire patterns. Each patten can be manipulated by touch screen, to create shifting and evolving interference patterns.

UNPATTERNS Track Listing
1. I Waited For You
2. Cerulean
3. Seraphim
4. A Species Out of Control
5. Interference
6. Put Your Hands Together
7. The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife
8. Your Love Ain’t Fair
9. Pareidolia
10. Everyday (bonus iTunes exclusive)

BIOGRAPHY
James and Jas of Simian Mobile Disco, though quite different in personality, are both modest fellows. In conversation each of them, more than once, puts the success of SMD down to sheer luck – however, this is not really true. Yes, they were in the right place at the right time in some senses, but it takes an awful lot more than that to bring an album as sonically glorious and ambitious as Unpatterns to as broad an audience as they are managing to reach. And as you get deeper into the details of their career to date, it becomes very clear how much tenacity, scholarship, imagination and sheer love for what they do, as well as good fortune, has got them to where they are today.

Most of all, their success has been based on learning as they go. And they’ve had plenty of things to learn from since they were thrown into the deep end of the industry when Simian, the band they formed with Simon Lord and Alex McNaughten at Manchester University, was signed to a subsidiary of a major label in 2000. With the arrogance of youth, the four of them convinced themselves that big things were theirs for the taking, but though their two albums were exceedingly well received in many quarters, global domination evaded them; the combination of thwarted ambition and four very different creative personas led to friction and the band split before completing their third album.

Meanwhile, though, the Simian Mobile Disco project had started to take a vague kind of shape. Originally simply a name under which band members would DJ – in order to, says Jas, “satisfy our urges to do something more freeform, as touring locked us into playing the same songs again and again in the same way.” The name, increasingly just referring to James and Jas, was then used for the band’s own remix of themselves, then for remixes of others, and as Simian came to an end became the duo’s main creative outlet as they made more and more electronic tracks for their own DJ sets.

Certainly they were surprised when, after a couple of releases and remixes, making a connection with Wichita Recordings led to the possibility of an album – and they realised they had at least two full CDs’ worth of viable tracks. Attack Decay Sustain Release emerged in 2007, riding a wave of attention following the success of the “Hustler” single first released on the fledgling Kitsuné label, and Justice’s inescapable remix of Simian’s “We Are Your Friends”. Where ADSR had had a couple of guest vocals, its follow up Temporary Pleasure was veritably star spangled. Beth Ditto features prominently, as well as Gruff Rhys, Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor, Yeasayer’s Chris Keating and more. The results are sometimes as stellar as the lineup, with “Cruel Intentions” in particular being a deserved underground hit, but both Jas and James have reservations: both admit they were acting too much like producers, letting the singers and songs take precedence rather than “the SMD sound”. It was this they reacted against with Delicacies, a record label (and subsequent compilation album) of straight ahead techno tracks purely designed for their own DJ sets; but even the hedonistic blast of these tracks still felt constrained by techno’s own rule sets.

Which brings us to Unpatterns, an album which more than ever shows just how unwilling Jas and James are to rest on their laurels. In the place of big name guests and ventures into booty-bass, all the voices are abstracted, spaced out, woven into the fabric of the synthetic sound. So broken hearted robots croon in “I Waited For You”, a cyborg Chicago house singer implores us to “Put Your Hands Together”, and alien choirs raise their voices in the ambient “Fourteenth Principles.” It’s a monstrous record with none of the poppiness of ADSR, the multiple voices of Temporary Pleasure nor the orthodox dance dynamics of Delicacies: instead it’s the sound of SMD breaking away from any standard structures and going deep into exploring the possibilities of their studio equipment and selection of vintage synthesizers.

The sound is entirely confident, and brings together all their influences in the pursuit of pure sonic pleasure. In a weird way it brings back the “prog-psychedelic” feel of those very first Simian songs, though with all the knowledge of the dancefloor they’ve gained in the SMD years. And the effect of that is quite uncanny: it completely sidesteps questions of retro and futurism to create a sonic temporal zone all of its own, where the place where relatively primitive electronic sounds stop and the mind-boggling degree of control offered by digital signal processing starts is impossible to locate.
Unpatterns is a record full of love, dedication, hard-earned experience, obvious understanding of decades of electronic music from across scenes and styles, and huge fun.

LINKS
simianmobiledisco.co.uk
facebook.com/simianmobiledisco
twitter.com/smdisco
soundcloud.com/simianmobiledisco

Music Services Asia’s Picks for Music Matters Live!

News

May 142012

With over 50 acts in the span of 3 days, you may find yourself overwhelmed by the boundless amount of live music acts set to send you into sensory overdrive at Music Matters Live! Fear not, for us folks from Music Services Asia has scoured the entire line-up to present you our choice picks of acts you wouldn’t want to miss in and around Clarke Quay this 24^th to 26^th of May.

Hill & The Sky Heroes – Doctor, Doctor

Hill & The Sky Heroes is the self-dubbed ‘alien surf rock’-tinged solo project of Hill Kourkoutis, an award-winning Canadian songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, performer, producer and filmmaker. Interspersed with snippets of quirky old sci-fi films Warning from Space and First Spaceship on Venus, Hill & The Sky Heroes’ viral video for “Doctor, Doctor” is strangely seductive and dripping with other-worldly eeriness. Expect a sneak preview of her upcoming debut album 11:11, due out on June 12.

The Aftermiles – False Alarm

They may hail from sunny Jakarta, Indonesia but The Aftermiles possess a quintessentially British post-punk sound. Fresh from a recent line-up change, Music Matters Live will be the first show of The Aftermiles with their new vocalist, Ringgo Agus Rahman, an actor best known for his Indonesian film ‘Jomblo.’ Be sure not to miss his debut with The Aftermiles.

Monster Cat – Underwater

Monster Cat have proven themselves a force to be reckoned with, as evidenced from their recent feature on Swedish torrent website, The Pirate Bay, where they offered free downloads of their debut EP Mannequins to a global network of pirates thus inciting numerous discussions on the changing modes of distribution for music worldwide. It is therefore apt that they have been named one of the latest inclusions in the line-up of Music Matters Live. We certainly can’t wait to watch their feline fury storm the stage.

Kate-Miller Heidke – The Facebook Song (Are You F***ing Kidding Me?)

This cheeky song inspired by old lovers attempting to reconnect on social media networks makes Kate-Miller Heidke an automatic must-watch at Music Matters Live. (Warning: naughty, expletive-ridden lyrics — so don’t play this out loud in the office or within earshot of your mom!) Thankfully, this Australian songstress’ repertoire extends far beyond piano-driven rants to melancholy serenades, such as those in her latest album ‘Nightflight’.

9 Maps – 4 Walls

This Hong Kong-based threesome charmed our socks off when they played in Singapore for the first time at the UpToTheSky Festival last year so we’re definitely chuffed for another chance to fall in love with them all over again. Also featured in Music Services Asia’s SEA Absolute Indie Compilation, 9 Maps’ introspective blend of ‘harbour folk’ melodies and enchanting harmonies will be sure to light up a night by the Singapore river.

Poubelle International – The Hedonist

Comprised of 3 designers from Hong Kong, Poubelle International shines in this wonderfully-shot music video for their track ‘The Hedonist’, which features the band rocking out amidst numerous light fixtures. With their Bee Gees-esque vocal vibes, clever lyrics and boundless energy, Poubelle International promises to be an absolute riot live.

Direct Influence – Far East

Melbourne-based Direct Influence is fast gaining popularity after their song ‘Far East’ was featured in a Nike video clip featuring BMX star Harry Main. Playing a smooth mix of electro, rock and reggae that’s described as a “cross-Tasman sound” with frontmen Dylan Smith and Marcus Ross hailing from New Zealand and Australia respectively, Direct Influence’s refreshingly unique grooves are a testament to the wide variety of genres featured in Music Matters Live this year.

See you there!

Get Your Ears Ready for This Sanctuary

News

May 142012

A load of artists from the all over the world are dropping by Singapore this month for Music Matters Live. Part of the line-up is the 5-piece Sydney-based pop rock band, This Sanctuary. While they have dabbled their feet once on the South-East Asian region, the band is ready and set to rock the Clarke Quay stage. But first, we had a quick chat with the guys about their recent and upcoming projects, as well as their biggest announcement as of late – signing with the legendary Def Records through global distributor, Valleyarm.

Hi, guys! Congratulations, we heard you’ve just signed with DEF Records. How do you feel?
Hey! We’re so excited to sign with Def Records. Definitely looking forward to the future!

We found out that you’ve once toured Malaysia. What was that experience like?
Touring Malaysia was an incredible experience for us as a band, especially as it was our first international tour. We felt honoured to play to a crowd of 3000 and even to the Sultan of Ipoh! We also had the amazing opportunity to help out some charities on the tour.

Now you’re taking on Singapore for Music Matters Live. Do you notice any difference between the Asian audience and your local Aussie lot?
I definitely think that both Australian and Asian audiences are great to play to, but they both do react differently when appreciating our music. We found out when we were touring Asia that they (Asian audience) are a lot louder at shows — which is the best type of show!

We also heard that you’ve got an album coming. When are you preparing to release it?
We are pumped to announce that we start recording our new tracks for the new album at the end of June. So we are looking to release closer to the end of the year. Keep your eye out for the release date soon.

After performing for Music Matters, what else do you have in store for your fans?
After Music Matters, we have some exciting new releases that we can’t wait to unleash to everyone supporting our music. This will include the bonus edition of our debut EP “Maybe We Weren’t Meant To Get It” which will have four singles, the music videos of our songs “Run” and “Rumour”, a special edition digital booklet and unseen ‘behind-the-scenes’ footage.

Sounds awesome! We can’t wait for those upcoming releases. Meanwhile, you can sit back and check This Sanctuary’s official website here.

Music, Radio, Freedom at Sonar Radio’s Eklektikon

News

May 072012

Eklektikon is one of Sonar Radio‘s freshest radio programmes, which started in October 2011. The FM offer is quite limited to commercial stations in Singapore, and Internet gives a larger playground for music discovery. We had a chat with Kostas Repanas and John Common to know more about the Singaporean radio landscape and their music emission, Eklektikon, broadcasted every Saturday, 2 PM (GMT +8).

Before talking about your radio show, could you give us a brief idea of the radio offer in Singapore?
So, honestly we feel that radio has changed with the advent of internet radio stations and also the many ‘listen again’ services that are provided worldwide.
FM radio is overly bureaucratic in the way it is controlled here in Singapore and as a result that feeds down to the music that is played because of the safe musical selection that is aired. There are a few pioneers out there that push the limits and the boundaries, and fair credit to them, but we feel that there is now many other opportunities that can be accessible to all to broadcast and many more people are doing this with podcasts and blogs everyday.
We are now in a global radio market where the airwaves are now internet waves that have no boundaries. For example, it’s great the response we get to our show from listeners in Russia, Greece, Spain, Uk as well as here in our home city of Singapore.

What are the Sonar Radio audience’s expectations in terms of music and content?
We think people who tune into Sonar expect music that is beyond the mainstream, things that they will be challenged with but also relate to. It’s not that Sonar.SG, Real Radio, doesn’t play popular music it’s just that the audience knows that this will come in a mix with other new music that they are yet to love! Sonar’s strength and uniqueness is that the content is selected by people and collectives that are passionate about music. Most of these people are musicians and DJs that really are immersed in music.

How did you start Eklektikon for Sonar Radio? What’s the emission’s general idea?
Eklektikon was started as a project where we could share our current musical collection and an excuse for us to listen to more of the new great music that is out there. As this is a weekly show we get to meet and discuss music that we like and this forms the selection choices for the final playlists! We try to play different genres of music, with a slant toward the electronic side of things, in an eclectic style. We also wanted to have a show where we invited guests and friends to share and discover music together.

Tell us about your next show, broadcasted next Saturday at 2pm (Singapore time)?
So if you want to hear about our next show you will have to tune into Sonar Radio to find out, haha. Basically we don’t know until the day itself and some times until we hit record. We bring 20 tracks we like into the studio and fight it out as to what will get played. As a guess, you can expect to hear quality electronic music from around the globe.

John and Kostas

Find Eklektikon on Facebook and Mixcloud, and listen to Sonar Radio!

Easy Solutions to Selling your Music Online

News

May 072012

Say Hello to Chirpify, Gumroad, and ShopLocket

The Internet has become the place where anything is possible. As a musician, you learn that with this powerful tool at hand, you can reach a wider audience – generally, a good thing for the artist and the business. Widening the scope of the audience attracts a larger fan base, which, in turn, will increase the demand and eventually, the profit.

Sales of both digital and physical items are rampant over the Internet, including that of audio files/MP3s. Purchasing online was said to be a cumbersome and expensive process before, but recently, a number of e-commerce solutions were launched to make things easy for both fans and musicians.

The first on our chopping block: Chirpify, a service designed for digital sales which could include tracks and concert tickets using the Twitter commerce platform. It works as easy as this: the artist tweets his offering, the fans reply with “Buy” – and voila! A Direct Message will then be sent with the link to their purchase. A little note though: buyers need to register a Chirpify account before they could shop. After that, Chirpify will gladly initiate PayPal transactions between the artist’s business account and the buyer’s.

Charges: 4% commission rate per sale on top of PayPal fees
So far raised: $1.3M

Garnering a few fans of its own, Gumroad makes earning money sound like a piece of cake. The genius of an idea of 19-year-old college dropout, Sahil Lavingia, Gumroad follows three easy steps: Make, Share, and Earn. Of course, the artist has to sign up to Gumroad, so he could make as much music, videos, or anything else that he wants, state it as up for sale, and choose its own pricing. Gumroad will then generate a link that the artist could share to take the fans directly to the product. Purchases are done with any major credit card, an email with the download links will be sent to the buyers, as well to the artist to confirm his earnings. A demo could be viewed here.

Charges: 5% plus .25 per transaction
So far raised: $1.1M

The next lightweight solution is ShopLocket, co-founder and CEO Katherine Hague’s thought out solution when she wanted to sell her customized shirts online. The idea is simple: create the product, upload images/photos of it, and enter its price details and description. Sharing options are not limited to links too, as ShopLocket also issues out embeddable widgets for Facebook pages, blog posts, and websites, making it easier for the creator to make a sell. ShopLocket is currently using PayPal and Stripe, and charges a $2 publishing fee on the first sale. You can find out more in their demo.

Charges: 2.5% on going transaction fee on top of PayPal/Stripe fees + $0.30 per transaction
So far raised: No released reports yet, but has already 1, 200 users signed up

With these three options, one could rant less about the business of selling digital and/or physical items over the Internet. Still under the radar is Kout, a soon to be launched service that follows a Create-Paste-Sell set-up. With the growing presence of creators and consumers online, the Internet is one big market place. So go ahead, record that song in your head and pick any of these services: share your work, and who knows? Someone from the other side of the world might be generous enough to pay for your tune.

Garbage returns from 7-year hiatus

News

May 072012

With new album Not Your Kind Of People, Garbage’s unique sound is back, and back to basics. Released on May 14th through their own label STUNVOLUME (distribution in SEA by Love Da Records), this album smells freedom and youth, and that’s a pretty good omen after a 7-year break.
Watch their mind-blowing Buñuel style videoclip for first single “Blood For Poppies”, and read more about the band and Not Your Kind Of People below.

Garbage are to release their fifth studio album, Not Your Kind Of People in South-East Asia on May 14th, on the band’s label STUNVOLUME. The album will be distributed by Love Da Records. As V Magazine recently put it: “The poster girl for ’90s alternative rock is ready to reclaim her reign – and the radio – with a new record from her iconic band, Garbage.”

“Working with Garbage again was very instinctual,” said Duke Erikson. “Like getting on a bicycle…with three other people.” He adds “We haven’t felt this good about a Garbage record since the last one!”

Garbage – Shirley Manson (vocals), Steve Marker (guitars, keyboards), Duke Erikson (guitars, keyboards) and Butch Vig (drums, loops) – will hit the road this spring in support of the album by performing several headlining shows as well as various festivals throughout Europe and the U.S. with more dates to be confirmed.

“Thinking about going back on the road is both thrilling and terrifying in equal measure,” said Shirley Manson. “(…) but we’ve always enjoyed a little pain mixed in with our pleasure.”

Garbage: Not Your Kind Of People – Tracklisting Standard Album
1. Automatic Systematic Habit
2. Big Bright World
3. Blood For Poppies
4. Control
5. Not Your Kind Of People
6. Felt
7. I Hate Love
8. Sugar
9. Battle In Me
10. Man On A Wire
11. Beloved Freak
Tracklisting Deluxe Album
12. The One
13. What Girls Are Made Of
14. Bright Tonight
15. Show Me
Watch the first single “Blood For Poppies”:

ABOUT GARBAGE
After forming in Madison, WI, Garbage released their self-titled debut album in 1995 and rode a wave of visually arresting, female-fronted alternative rock bands. The album spawned the hit singles “Stupid Girl” and “Only Happy When It Rains” and was certified double platinum in Australia, the UK, and the US. The band won the Breakthrough Artist Award at the 1996 MTV Europe Music Awards, and was nominated for the Best New Artist Grammy® Award. Their second album, Version 2.0, was released in 1998 and topped the charts in the UK. It was nominated for two Grammy Awards including Album of the Year and Best Rock Album. 2001′s Beautiful Garbage was named one of Rolling Stone Magazine’s Top 10 Albums Of The Year. In 2005, Garbage released Bleed Like Me, earning the band it’s highest chart position with a No. 4 on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart. In 2007, the band released a retrospective collection called Absolute Garbage. Garbage has sold over 12 million albums worldwide. They have performed in over 35 countries and will tour extensively worldwide in support of this new release.
GARBAGE BY GARBAGE
Okay so please let’s not retread the history that precedes this record. It’s all on the Internet for anyone to have at it. If you have any interest at all ….you can Google anything you need to know about us in five minutes flat.

Suffice to say we have been gone for 7 years. We now are experiencing what is commonly known as the 7 year itch except instead of wanting to leave each other, we want to return to one another.
We have made, arguably, the best record of our career and for those who have a further curiosity let me say this:

We quit in the middle of our last tour and went home because we were sick and tired of our record company wanting us to make money whatever the cost to our morals or our bodies.
We quit and went home because we couldn’t stand another backstage hang with anyone from the aforementioned record company. They quite literally were making us sick.
We quit and went home and built ourselves a life outside of Garbage and outside of music and outside of the rest of the world.
Then we got bored of doing that and pretty much began to obsess about making music again.
We got together about a year ago now in a small studio in Atwater Village, Los Angeles. There we recorded all of the songs on this new record we are calling Not Your Kind Of People.

We wrote, recorded and mixed it ourselves, old school style.
We are self- releasing it on our own record label STUNVOLUME, new school style.

The title of this record is kind of our mission statement. For too long we almost felt like apologizing for the fact that we didn’t fit in musically with any kind of scene. We didn’t fit in with the electronic scene even though we used electronica. We didn’t fit in with the hipster scene even though we were pretty popular. (Probably because we got too popular. We sold 13 million records over the course of our career.) And we didn’t fit in with the alt rock scene either.
We just didn’t fit in.
We never have.
Now we accept this fact and are happy about our outsider status. We realize that we don’t sound like anyone else and that is a pretty hard thing to achieve in this current climate where we all have access to an infinite sea of musical possibilities.
To have hold on a unique sound is a currency of which we are proud.

If you have further interest in us or the making of this record, please feel free to schedule an interview with our press office. We will be happy to accommodate your curiosity. Otherwise, thanks for reading.
Garbage.
LINKS
www.garbage.com
www.facebook.com/garbageofficial
www.twitter.com/garbage

MSA x Reeperbahn Festival

News

Apr 302012

Achtung! Exciting times await at Germany’s Reeperbahn Festival, taking place on 20 – 22nd September at Hamburg’s once-famous “wicked mile”. Now an entertainment boulevard lined with countless cutting-edge music clubs, the Reeperbahn will be playing host to one of the leading music industry conferences and festivals that Europe has to offer. Music Services Asia is proud to represent the Asia Pacific at this festival, with the aim of bridging music industry professionals as well as bands and artists from around Asia to the European and international music market.

Reeperbahn Festival consists of three central components: Reeperbahn Festival Music, a three-day event that features more than 200 shows in over 40 locations; Reeperbahn Festival Campus, an industry meeting which features workshops and conferences for the music and creative industries and finally Reeperbahn Festival Arts, which includes exhibitions, readings, walking tours, street art and film screenings, the Flatstock Europe Poster Convention and Comicfestival Hamburg. Needless to say, attendees and delegates of Reeperbahn Festival can expect to be thoroughly entertained and inspired by the various activities surrounding the Reeperbahn Festival.

As the official representative office for Asia at Reeperbahn Festival, Music Services Asia will be inviting more than 200 music industry professionals from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China, Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan to attend the festival and participate in all conference activities of the Reeperbahn Festival Campus, thus presenting numerous networking opportunities and fostering collaborations within the Asian and international music industry.

“We are very excited to work with a fresh and vibrant European festival with whom we’ll be able to open a window to the Asian music industry,” says Dona Inthaxoum, Business Development Manager for Music Services Asia. “One of our missions is to build up a sound platform for the development of Asian businesses and artists in the region and overseas, and we feel like Reeperbahn Festival is the right partner to implement a first link towards Europe.” Registration opens on 23^rd April 2012 via Reeperbahn Festival’s official website. Potential conference delegates from the Asian music industry are warmly invited to register via Music Services Asia to enjoy special packages on accommodation and flight deals.

In addition, MSA will also be curating a special Pacific Asian showcase at Reeperbahn Festival, featuring four bands from Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia and Singapore. To further heighten the hype of the festival, a video contest will also be held on the Music Services Asia Facebook page, where the top 10 bands and artists from Singapore with the highest number of votes will stand a chance to perform, all expenses paid, at the Reeperbahn Festival, which has hosted acts such as Foals, The Get Up Kids, Gotye and Bon Iver. Interested bands and artists simply need to enter the MSA Contest with a picture, their band’s name, contact and link to a video or website showcasing their music. Applications close on May 31^st and votes close on June 30^th 2012. Further details as well as terms and conditions can be found here.

The Hell You Want

News

Apr 302012

The Observatory, “Catacombs” Album Launch, The Substation, 21 April 2012

“FOLLOW THE HEADWORM HOLE TO THE HEAD / FIXATIONS / OBSESSIONS / BLOOD/ PHLEGM / YELLOW BILE / BLACK BILE / IMMOBILE / HEADWORM”

(“Headworm”)

Heavy metal tries to be this good: to transport listeners to the murky, cavernous depths of their psyche by sound. Sometimes the genre delivers, sometimes we allow it to continue to aspire while we nod along to a blistering guitar solo. Yes, ostentation is entertainment if done artfully enough. The Observatory, however, are sonic alchemists of another plane.

On their latest offering, The Observatory evoke a nightmarish landscape of interminable proportions as angular and discordant guitars swirl around syncopated drumming like the chilling miasma around jagged stalagmites. Eerie keys mock and goad the travellers on the sonic hellscape of Catacombs. Every song adheres to the same rules of this unearthly terrain. There is no empathy here, only experience. Leslie Low, lead vocals, is not singing about how he knows and feels your pain or your doubt. Nothing in his words suggests this. Rather, his is an oracular function: he pronounces pain and self-doubt on the listener, ordering them on the “lunatic’s way” (“Accidentogram”), “down through the hall of worms” (“Insomnia”), “for the coil of madness needs soothing” (“Out of the Furrow”).

Why all this? Why fetishize the grotesque and macabre? To answer with “because they can” is myopic and derivative. It has to do with the nature of Catacombs. Not really an “album” in the conventional sense of the term, it emerges as an art project posing as both exhibition and inquiry at the same time. Through meticulously structured and masterfully overlapping sonic structures, the band posits the hell they have envisioned through their recording process. Ominous guitars have never sounded this ominous. Prophetic drums have never heralded a deathmarch as convincing as the rhythmic backdrop, the beating of the black heart that propels this album, song by song.

Yet, the band doesn’t seem above their art. On every soft strum, on every cymbal flourish is a fleeting elegy to the something lost on the descent into the seamier side of the imagination. A metamorphosis in reverse, “black bile” rarefied to the point of fixation, past the point of pessimism and waaay beyond the shallow puddles of “emo” but deeper, deeper into the belly of the beast, ourselves. When you truly let yourself go, where do you roam? When you are that deep in, where else can you go?

—Indran Paramasivam

Indran is a freelance writer especially interested in culture and the arts. In this age of speed and connectivity, the relationship between art and society and between art and culture is complex and dynamic. Situated in Singapore, Indran is actively involved in exploring how art, particularly, music, is produced and received amidst a backdrop of ever-evolving trends and influences.
Contact: indranparamasivam@gmail.com

Hannah Cohen – Child Bride

News

Apr 302012

Raised in San Francisco in a family of artists, Hannah Cohen soon integrated with the New York photography and music scenes when she moved to the city as a model. She started learning the guitar and writing songs by herself, then worked with producer Thomas Bartlett/Doveman and blue-ribbon NY musicians to turn her musical experimentations into a well-produced album of spontaneous and delicate songs: Child Bride (Bella Union, distribution in SEA by Love Da Records).
Read her (success)story and watch her first stunning, black&white videoclip “The Crying Games”.

Hannah Cohen comes from a family of poets and musicians, broadcasters and booksellers. Her grandfather, Bertie Rodgers, was a much-lauded poet, BBC broadcaster and good friend of Dylan Thomas. Hannah’s mother was a 17 year old British schoolgirl on holiday in San Francisco when she met Hannah’s father, a jazz drummer from the Midwest, and there Hannah was raised surrounded by music, musicians, and hippie intellectuals.

She left home as a teenager to travel the world working as a model, soon finding herself in New York and becoming over the next few years something of a muse to the city’s art scene, posing for Richard Prince, Terry Richardson, David Salle, Will Cotton, and Ryan McGinley. Working on the other side of the lens, Hannah shot album covers and music videos for friends, and her first book of photography, “Fotografias Brasil”, was published this year.

She also immersed herself in NYC’s music scene, working at the Village Vanguard, staying out all night; in the East Village at Nublu’s legendary Brazilian parties, becoming friends with singers and writers and producers. And quietly, privately, she started teaching herself guitar and writing songs. They were simple songs, sung to herself, private reflections on love and loneliness. But when she did start sharing them with her friends, usually in the wee hours as a party was winding down, rooms were hushed, jaws were dropped, and it became clear to everyone who heard them that these songs were something very special indeed.

Hannah’s debut record, “Child Bride”, was produced by Thomas Bartlett, aka Doveman, known for his keyboard work with artists like The National, Martha Wainwright, and Antony and the Johnsons, and also producer of upcoming records by Glen Hansard and Julia Stone. Drawn from Hannah and Thomas’s mutual friends, the core band is a small but potent group of some of New York’s finest musicians, including Sam Amidon, Rob Moose (Bon Iver, Antony and the Johnsons), Brad Albetta (producer for Martha Wainwright and Teddy Thompson), Doug Wieselman (Laurie Anderson, the Lounge Lizards), and Kenny Wollesen (John Zorn, Bill Frisell). Their sessions together were captured by engineer Patrick Dillett, equally known for his work recording powerful female vocalists like Mary J Blige and Mariah Carey, and as a producer for art rock legends like David Byrne and Arto Lindsay.

Together they have created an expansive, haunted album, lush and welcoming, but also at times almost painfully intimate. Hannah’s strikingly distinctive voice and casually assured phrasing are at the centre of it all, from the heartbroken outpouring of “The Crying Game” to the dark insomnia pop of “Boy + Angel” (a Doveman cover, and the record’s only non-original), to “California”, an irresistibly catchy love letter to Hannah’s home state, with a sunny disposition that can’t quite hide the undercurrent of melancholy and homesickness.

The Crying Game is her first single:

Child Bride: released by Bella Union/Cooperative Music, distributed in SEA by Love Da Records – 23^rdApril 2012.
Find more information on Hannah Cohen on her Facebook Page, and on her Bella Union’s page.

Singaporean Contemporary Music: May We Sit In The Room For Improvement?

News

Apr 302012

Janice Koh, the current Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP) for the arts community in Singapore’s first two speeches reminded us the importance of the arts’ role in society building, and evaluated the impact of arts policies. A theatre veteran, NMP Koh voiced well-researched key issues of the music community, which was very welcomed by its members. However, the government’s response may have ruffled a few feathers, leaving us with more questions and suggestions for improvement.

In late February, NMP Janice Koh’s maiden speech covered three issues, one of which was simply to promote local work. Koh suggests the need “to make [our] arts, culture and heritage a source of civic pride…to make them easily accessible to Singaporeans from all walks of life” through a “collective ownership of this process” and not through the Ministry for Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA) alone.

Her second speech called for support of local contemporary music after reviewing the Arts and Culture Strategic Review (ACSR), which is a review of the high profile Renaissance City Plans (RCP I, II, III) proposed to invest in creative capabilities, invigorate the local cultural landscape, explore arts business as a growth opportunity, and expand the demand base.

NMP Koh noted that, “the proposals put forward by the [ACSR] report seem to prioritize infrastructural and business needs over the longer-term development and promotion of individual musicians and bands,” citing that musicians themselves have felt that the “local contemporary music sector has been suffering from a lack of opportunities to showcase upcoming artists as well as experienced, export-ready talent.”

She also pointed out a bigger obstacle to developing an audience for homegrown music: not having sufficient airtime on radio, thus calling for a quota for broadcast of local music. This would a) help to support the development of a unique local music culture and the forging of a common cultural identity and b) allow regular access to local music, which will feed demand.

MICA’s Yaacob Ibrahim’s reply to NMP Koh became a hot topic, most specifically the stated fact that S$4 million has been spent on the music scene over the last three years, citing talent development and training, overseas promotion, participation and profiling, and platforms and opportunities for collaboration and showcase as areas of expenditure. These involved several grants of varying amounts awarded to some local bands.

The minister conceded radio airtime was a challenge, but did not cite reasons, although both NAC and the Media Development Authority (MDA) have been co-operating to give local music talents a platform to showcase their work (through Noise Singapore for example).

Responses to the minister’s reply flooded the social media playground- most of which were questions of how and why musicians themselves have been unaware. The most heartfelt response came from one of Singapore’s own music talents, Vanessa Fernandez, who noted that apart from not being publicized enough, the amount did not seem adequate to groom musicians. More importantly, the ex-Mediacorp Radio presenter voiced a likely reason why there has not been enough radio airplay for local music thus far – because most of the “people who play the music you end up listening to are not musicians” and are not inclined to local music.

Journalist Zul Othman’s article published in The New Paper in mid-April raised a similar issue, among others: Do the ones administering and approving the monetary grants to musicians appreciate the musicians’ needs? Several musicians and artiste managers interviewed also asked for transparency in how these grants are approved.

Perhaps the key to the current issues of the local music scene, apart from a quota on local radio to jumpstart demand, is to give more authority to industry practitioners (like Fernandez and those interviewed by Othman) closer to ground level. Can relevant, objective industry practitioners be consulted by NAC and MDA in the process of awarding grants? Why not hire or nurture policy makers who are academically qualified and more deeply rooted in their art form? Perhaps there are many practicing fine artists or dancers in NAC, but surely not enough people in the contemporary music scene.

Alternatively, allowing more transparency about processes and pushing more publicity about available grants will catalyse improvement in quality of local music content, as more musicians will apply, breeding healthy competition. The best local content will get the international exposure they need and the not-so-good will try harder. At the end of the day, we will gladly co-operate, because the local music community shares the same goal as its governing body- we just want our art to be appreciated.

By Audrey Fenghuang

Audrey Fenghuang is one quarter of rock band The Auditory Effect, and an oddball fascinated by music in the context of pop culture. She graduated from Lasalle College of the Arts with an Honours Degree in Arts Management.
Email: audreypere@gmail.com