ZIGGY July 2014 by ZIGGY

Deap Vally Who run this mutha!

Also: LeFtO Rodarte Die Antwoord Converse x Maison Martin Margiela The Sex Pistols say f**k

Free

July 2014

Contents

Noise

14 Buzz: World Peace is None of Your Business by Morrissey Big Moz strikes again 19 Next: Posse Seattle’s next rock racket 28 ABC: Die Antwoord The filthy foursome in alphabetical disorder 52 Incoming: Deap Vally “Being women, we’re reframing and recontextualising rock ‘n’ roll” 54 Talk: The Boxer Rebellion “The further you go in your career, the more you find your voice”

Style

12 Buzz: Saint Laurent Toile Monogram Collection Saint Laurent’s all-new second skin 20 Collection: 5cm Summer 2014 Oh, to be young and restless 25 Icon: The Marni Fussbett No ordinary slip-on 32 Time: Jean-Michel Basquiat x Komono Komono’s timely collaboration with a timeless artist 66 Spread: Night Work Do the hustle

Elsewhere

58 Feature: Forbidden Fruit What they didn’t want you seeing 62 Feature: Obscene! What they didn’t want you reading 86 Parties: Music Matters Live 2014 A week’s worth of the one thing that matters

Hello

#27: The Rude Issue Never let it be known that we lack in grace or refinement, for in your hands, you hold yet another elegant edition of ZIGGY. Still upholding the utmost in sophistication, we embark on a volume of high art and culture that bespeaks our formal breeding and good manners. Behold the fine ladies of Deap Vally, peruse an array of cleanly cut music, film and books that make for a significant part of our polite society, and cast your eye over a number of fashions that will not dare to tax your imagination. Rude? Good heavens, not us!

Editor in chief

Art Director

General Manager

Min Chen min@ziggymag.sg

Lydia Foo lydia@ziggymag.sg

Yu-Jin Lau jin@ziggymag.sg +65 9844 4417

Writers

Contributors

Marketing Manager

Indran P indran@ziggymag.sg

Aaron Kok Chuck Reyes Emma Neubronner Ivanho Harlim Jeremy Fong Jessie Koh Loo Reed Marie Liang Olivia Sari-Goerlach Rosalind Chua Shysilia Novita

Jarrold Tham jarrold@ziggymag.sg +65 9820 2126

Assistant Account Manager Alex Ho alex@ziggymag.sg +65 9008 2175

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or part without permission from the publishers. The views expressed in ZIGGY are those of the respective contributors and are not necessarily shared by the magazine or its staff. Every effort has been made to ensure all information in the magazine is correct at the time it is sent to print. MCI (P) 083/04/2014 ZIGGY is published every month by Qwerty Publishing Pte Ltd Printed in Singapore by Also Dominie Pte Ltd (L029/09/2013)

Word

“It wasn’t to sell records, because you don’t sell records by being nude and looking crazy.” – Sky Ferreira

Buzz

Paint It White Converse Maison Martin Margiela First String Collection Text: Min Chen

Converse and Maison Martin Margiela have obviously got something good goin’ on. First coming together last year, the footwear giant and French fashion house’s debut collaborative outing saw them apply their distinctive touches to a line of Jack Purcell sneakers, in turn producing a unique dialogue between Converse’s boldly coloured canvases and Margiela’s mighty white paint. It was an innovative and inventive approach to sneaker design that won’t be losing any of its appeal or impact as Converse and Margiela team up for second helpings this Spring/ Summer.

These new Converse Maison Martin Margiela First String goods continue to expand on the collaboration’s original concept: sneakers painted all-over in Margiela’s signature Blanc de Maudon paint, which is meant to flake off and crack up after multiple wears. It’s the actual realisation of wear and tear: the more these sneakers get worn, the more you’ll see of the colour and personality of the shoe underneath. And this season, those shoes include the Converse All Star Chuck ’70 and Jack Purcell sneakers, assembled with ultra-soft premium leather in heritage

colourways like Amber Glow, True Navy, Azure Blue and Biking Red, each featuring the Margiela logo on its tongue. There’s more than enough luxury and comfort to be had in these new leather options, buttressed by a simple elegance and an iconic silhouette that come better accented by Margiela’s all-white treatment. The final effect is, in the house’s own words, “a sort of poetry; with the passage of time, the shoe asserts itself.” Available at Surrender, Raffles Hotel Arcade, #02-31 and converse.com

Buzz

Fearless Form Sia’s elastic heart bounds back Text: Indran P

Writing songs for the likes of Beyoncé, Rihanna, Christina Aguilera and David Guetta, Sia Furler has literally defined the tenor of the pop zeitgeist. Standing on her own as a solo artist though, the Australian singer-songwriter has probed the limits of outlying sounds like acid jazz, trip hop and nu disco, throughout her five albums, riding on a surging star until one fateful incident caused everything to crumble. Descending into drug-fuelled isolation following the passing of her boyfriend, Sia became cagey about the prospect of fame and focused solely on

writing songs for other artists. This was until RCA Records’ CEO, Peter Edge, himself, assured her that she could make an album without any touring or promo work. Thus, her sixth album, 1000 Forms of Fear, was born. Fear’s first missive, “Elastic Heart” featuring The Weeknd and Diplo, made the rounds as the lead single to the soundtrack of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, late last year. And as far as all-ornothing sonic forays go, there couldn’t have been a better accompaniment to the film. Opening with a blissedout, chopped and screwed

neo-r&b sample, the song’s pace very quickly explodes forward with quicksilver hihats and gale-force synths as Sia, simultaneously ravaged and triumphant, sings the quivering declaration of a hook: “I’m like a rubber band until you pull too hard / I may snap and I move fast / But you won’t see me fall apart / Cause I’ve got an elastic heart”. Then, in March, this year, “Chandelier” was released and the world had another reason to gasp in awe. A trap-stadium rock hybrid, with powerfully swelling strings and gravity-defying vocals by Sia, “Chandelier”

features the same levels of mythic emotional drama but delivers its self-deprecating and self-fulfilling reveries with the immediacy of megaton pop. “I’m gonna swing from the chandelier, from the chandelier / I’m gonna live like tomorrow doesn’t exist”, exclaims Sia on the gushing, panoramic chorus, leaving no room for doubt about her assured re-entry into the playlists of Mount Olympus. 1000 Forms of Fear will be released on 8 July on RCA/ Monkey Puzzle Records.

Buzz

Brand New Bag Saint Laurent Toile Monogram Collection Text: Min Chen

Under the auspices of Hedi Slimane, the newly surfaced Saint Laurent may have meant a surfeit of rock ‘n’ roll shapes and chic, but rest assured, Yves, that the brand’s heritage and well-bred elegance have not left the house. In fact, in its recently launched Toile Monogram Collection, Saint Laurent continues to make a good and handsome point of its fine breeding. The star feature here is Saint Laurent’s new monogram pattern, masterminded by

Mr. Slimane who crossed the brand’s classic Art Deco Babylone chain bracelet with the historic YSL logo, designed by Cassandre in 1961. Striking yet subdued, the Toile motif emerges in classy shades of brown and black on a range of 30 utilitarian luggage pieces and accessories – ranging from duffel bags to suitcases to card cases – which are in turn crafted in Italy from natural coated cotton weft canvas and soft leather. The Saint Laurent logo will also not go

missing, it being hot stamped in gold-leaf lettering on every one of the collection’s pieces. With all that, the Toile Monogram range duly meets all the necessities of everyday travel, while entering the Saint Laurent permanent collection with a healthy dose of jet-set sophistication and contemporary polish. Shop Saint Laurent at ION Orchard, #01-25 and ysl.com

Buzz

Agent Provocateur

Morrissey is up to (no) good again Text: Indran P

At every stage of his very storied and very, shall we say, complex, career, Stephen Patrick Morrissey has been amongst pop culture’s most influential forces, its most trenchant critics and its most unfortunate whipping boy/man all at once. And assuring the perpetuity of his conflicted reputation, the Moz is on the cusp of releasing his 10th solo full-length, titled, wait for it, World Peace is None of Your Business. Okay, exhale but know that it gets even better. Emerging from a five-year album drought following 2009’s Years of Refusal, the agitator extraordinaire has been rather active of late. Just last year, he launched his almost 700-page sort-oftell-all, characteristically christened, Autobiography. It was also the same tome where he wrote that the break-up of The Smiths “happened as quickly and as unemotionally as this sentence took to describe it”. Regarded in this light, World Peace is a reassertion that Morrissey needs no other legacy than his own to speak for him. And going by its tracklist alone, the album more than does that: “Earth is the Loneliest Planet”, “Kiss Me a Lot” and “Kick the Bride Down the Aisle” are just some of those bedecked with the patently caustic Moz-ian pout. Spiritually, too, is this album shaping up to be a glam-my, high-stakes pop statement

piece where the lines between affectation and indignation serve as nimble connectors. As he lets on in the title track, in his signature manicured croon, “World peace is none of your business / You must not tamper with arrangements / Work hard and sweetly pay your taxes”, amidst a loud and lush crescendo of ringing guitars and striding drums, sarcasm is just as potent as a protest march in his world. It’s too late to question his methods and motives, but it’s never too late for World Peace. And here’s Morrissey again, doing his part the best way he knows. World Peace is None of Your Business will be released on 15 July on Harvest Records

Runway

Deconstruction Site

Comme des Garçons Homme Plus Spring/Summer 2014 Text: Min Chen It speaks to Rei Kawakubo’s enduring subversion of fashion’s times and tides that after the joyous pastel adventures of last season, she’s chosen to cast a blacker spell for the Spring/ Summer serving of Comme des Garçons Homme Plus. The latest reiteration of her

somber and sobering vision emerged on a Paris runway, featuring brooding creatures bedecked in ensembles of ruched shirts and trousers, frayed hems, leather vests and chiffon tailcoats. Chaotically cut-away and layered, they made for a fine showcase of Kawakubo’s anarchic streak, as much as her deconstruction of traditional tailoring laws.

Providing contrast was a series of abstract prints, serving as a pop-eyed backdrop of the collection’s otherwise muted colours, on top of CdG’s iconic patchwork jackets and white shirts, proving Kawakubo’s got the distinctiveness to match her defiance.

Runway

LA Woman Rodarte Spring/Summer 2014 Text: Min Chen After paying sartorial tribute to their native Northern California last season, the Mulleavy sisters now emerge with an accompanying chapter to that West Coast tale in Rodarte’s Spring/ Summer excursion, which is steered by a love for Los Angeles. But expect not a view of the surf or the beach, but instead, a mirror of LA

as, in the sisters’ words, “a powerful epicenter; a city with so many layers”. All that hard edge and strength is evident in the collection’s mighty array of leather, flannel, denim, fringe and studs, styled together in all manner of street cool. In some of the key numbers: metallic bustiers meet heavily fringed skirts, ultra-short

shorts are smartened up with silk jackets and leather belts, while zebra and leopard prints sit alongside a seriously badass embroidered scorpion motif. The final effect is partcowgirl, part-showgirl and part-street punk, but like the city that inspired it, the collection is all of one fierce sight to behold.

Fresh

Text: Indran P

Shabazz Palaces: Lese Majesty Percolating out into the ether in 2009 with some of the most exploratory sounds to ever bedeck the hip hop canon, the duo of MC Ishmael Butler and multi-instrumentalist, Tendai Meraire, went on to actualise its Afroeccentric M.O. on its first full-length, 2011’s spectacular, Black Up. And taking its rich, spaced-out, ominous tones and air-tight rhymes to even more obliquely evocative vistas, the Palaces have announced a “new sonic action” in Lese Majesty, a sevensuite, 18-track odyssey into dazzling extraterrestrial hip hop. First plays, “Dawn in Luxor” and “They Came in Gold”, will make sure you come for the sounds but stay for the questions. Out 29 July

F**ked Up: Glass Boys

La Roux: Trouble in Paradise

Breaking the rules with a knowing glee, the Toronto hardcore punk outfit furnished a more than an hour-long punk opera in 2011’s majestic David Comes to Life. Long-awaited and already-feted, Glass Boys is a thunderous appraisal of the same heart-on-sleeve anarcho-love. Lead single, “Paper the House”, will blow out your windows ‘cos it’s the right thing to do. Out now

True to its titular promise, La Roux’s sophomore is looking to be a dramatic, high-stakes affair. Now the solo project of singer, Elly Jackson, following the acrimonious departure of producer, Ben Langmaid, the La Roux name has been reconfigured here, as the glowering resolve of new wave stomper “Uptight Downtown” makes clear. Out 8 July

How To Dress Well: What is this Heart?

Jungle: Jungle

Surreal, rain-speckled (read: alt) r&b is the name of the game right now and Tom Krell is the undisputed MVP. But while his outstanding prior album Total Loss was a panoramic snapshot of pain and heartbreak, Heart speaks to a wider emotional and sonic vocabulary. “Repeat Pleasure” is all kinds of beautiful feels. Out now

BBC Sound of 2014 longlistees, Jungle are on an upward trajectory of the most breathtaking kind. And they sure as hell sound like they know it too. With glacial funk breaks spliced with psych textures and rounded off with arms-raised soul, tracks like “Time” and “Busy Earnin’” promise great things to come. Out 15 July

Sharon Van Etten: Are We There

Jenny Lewis: The Voyager The Rilo Kiley doyenne’s first solo album in six years, The Voyager is a calm-after-thestorm work that chronicles a particularly rough period in her life. No tracks have been previewed yet but with Ryan Adams and Beck behind the boards, we trust that it’ll be smooth, if compelling, sailing. Out 29 July

Heartbreak and singersongwriters with a minimalist aesthetic have long been a hand-in-glove combination. But what makes Sharon Van Etten such a revelation is her singularity amidst a rather limited form. On Are We There, she’s at her best yet and “Your Love is Killing Me” holds the key to a wildly original listen. Out now

Underdog Blues Posse and the sounds of settling Text: Indran P

No, this is not a bunch of street-ordained gangbangers. In fact, this Posse is the exact opposite of any defiantly extroverted rap clique. Hailing from Seattle, the trio is a trend-dodging fount of indie quaintness whose uncompromising adherence to the lo-fi modus situates it more in the dusty glow of the past than in the steroid-fuelled contemporaneity of modern pop. And that’s just how the band wants it. It’s not very often that a group is formed around no other ambition than to play and record music, completely

disregarding any consideration of the legacy-making stuff, like touring or aspiring towards hall of famedom. Both its guitarists and songwriters, Paul Wittmann-Todd and Sacha Maxim, met at a lesbian bar and decided to make music together only because Wittmann-Todd, in his own words, “didn’t have a lot of other options”. Shortly after, Jon Salzman became their drummer when Maxim bought him his drum kit. Indeed, the exigencies of necessity and simplicity have been fundamental to Posse’s existence, and are writ large all the more interestingly in its recently released full-length, Soft Opening. But where others have mined predictable results from their hangdog blues, Posse sidestep the old lanes with a red-blooded verve that boldly underscores its insistent down-and-out-ness. Rather than prostrating before college rock signifiers, Posse warp known sounds into twitching shadows of their popular forms. Inspired by the highfalutin swagger of Prince and the downbeat slowcore of Yo La Tengo, the band’s sound is wrought with a bristling tension between

both tendencies with neither ever edging the other out of focus. It’s the guitars that lead this agitation-resignation dichotomy, over which threadbare vocal lines by Wittmann-Todd and Maxim bring the spectrum of human emotions into beguiling focus without breaking a sweat. Opener, “Interesting Thing No. 2”, with its shrugging harangue, “You turned 25, so many things you haven’t tried” and “Zone”, the album’s closing track, where Wittmann-Todd’s Thurston Moore-like deadpan intones, “Don’t touch me / I’m in my zone” before Maxim coos, “Don’t f**k it up / Just let it happen”, make a great case for an album about the everyday pinpricks of unhappiness that we are never too numb to not feel. Real, raw and honest, Posse are so Seattle but so new. Soft Opening is out now on Beating A Dead Horse Records.

Collection

Rebel, Rebel 5cm Summer 2014 Text: Min Chen

5cm has never been the sort for mild and mellow statements, not when the label owns the moody and cutting edge sensibilities to turn in grungy silhouettes, androgynous proportions and a nocturnal palette. It’s an aesthetic that, in all its midnight flash and street cool, continues to make quite the scene on its Summer ‘14 haul. In the name of rock ‘n’ roll rebellion and dishevelment, the Hong Kong label has embarked on edgy Men’s and Ladies’ collections for individuals with the untamed personality and wild heart to spare. Dubbed “Grunge Heritage”, the heart of 5cm’s latest Men’s collection is made plain in a host of graphics, slogans and studs that inform

its casual wear staples. These shirts, shorts, skinny jeans, tees and blazers co-exist alongside more offbeat accents, like asymmetrical cuts and drape-y hems, as well as textural highlights in their paisley, skull and python skin motifs, and the mingling of fabrics such as denim, leather and chiffon. Though largely based on a monochrome palette, splashes of red, blue and khaki offer a seasonal liveliness. Likewise, the Ladies’ department picks up on punk and heavy metal influences with its theme of “Decadent Chic”. While airy chiffon is liberally applied throughout for a feminine and seethrough effect, the range still calls for an attitude adjustment in its line-up of minimalist blouses, leggings, dresses, trousers and light outerwear. Highlights include a leather and cotton-blended T-shirt and a drape-over jacket with chiffon-made sleeves, on top of a colour palette that pops with pink and blue, while upholding the black and white. However mixed and matched, these are pieces that’ll still make for heady and headstrong statements, as 5cm, with its continued and pointed restlessness, is wont to do. Shop 5cm at i.t, Wisma Atria #03-15 and Bugis Junction #02-11

Collection

Text: Rosalind Chua

H&M Sport Autumn 2014

Kate Spade New York Summer 2014 This summer, Kate Spade New York has gone far beyond the confines of its native city and pitched its tent in South America. First stop: Rio de Janeiro which supplies a host of bold and brilliant floral prints, a whimsical toucan motif and earthy tones on a lounge-y line-up of tie-back dresses, casual pants and tees. The Havana collection then ushers in lush greenery in the form of orchid prints, verdurous colours and a casual weekend wardrobe, before the romantic air of Buenos Aires calls up flirty frocks and cupcake skirts in sensual rose prints, and embellished with jewels and ruffles. Let the carnivale begin! Available at Kate Spade at Raffles City, ION Orchard and Takashimaya

Etam x Liberty Summer 2014

It isn’t just sweat and stamina that’s running H&M Sport’s newest collection, but also, a fair amount of urban energy and functionality. The range combines performance and style into one active package, with a seasonal update in the form of autumnal shades. The women get their pick of athletic staples like bra tops, vests and leggings in neon colours and body-shaping, breathable fabrics, just as the men will stay part of the team in tees, tank tops, hoodies and padded vests that provide lightweight, windproof and reflective assistance. Whatever your choice of sport, H&M Sport has, quite literally, got you covered. Available from 24 July at H&M Orchard Building and H&M Kallang Wave

It’s a sunlit and romantic outing as Etam and Liberty team up for yet another capsule collection. Over a range of swimsuits, playsuits, shorts and pantalons, the French lingerie leader and heritage English brand have respectively applied a playful Parisian chic and ‘60s London smarts. Liberty’s sprightly floral motifs and bucolic hues of fuchsia, yellow and pastel pinks are just the things you’d want to keep close to your skin this summer, and thanks to Etam’s cheeky and cute line-up of swim, casual and intimate wear, you most certainly will. Available at Etam stores at Wisma Atria, #01-31; and Raffles City, #02-08

K.BLU Swim Spring/Summer 2014

Before you next hit the beach, you’d wanna first check in with K.BLU Swim. Debuting this season with an elegant line of women’s swimwear, the label is governed by an Asian design philosophy that tends towards refined and sophisticated cuts that also come crafted in soft, light and quality Italian fabrics. K.BLU Swim’s first collection lives up to its name with a slick reflection of the colour blue. All manner of azure shades and intricate porcelain patterns find their way onto an array of sporty yet feminine maillots, bikinis and beach robes, ensuring the smooth-looking silhouettes to match those pristine beaches. Available at kblu.com

Listomania

Dirty Hits

10 songs your mother wouldn’t want you listening to Text: Indran P

Fatboy Silm: “F**king in Heaven”

Madonna: “Like a Virgin”

In a particularly dance-y form of sacrilege, the big beat legend lays a vocal loop repeating the song’s title over slick breaks and guitars, giving us a benevolent 120 f**ks. It’s called “big beat” for a reason, guys.

Prince: “Darling Nikki” When Tipper Gore started pop’s moral watchdog, the Parents’ Music Resource Centre (PMRC) in 1985, she anointed Prince’s inescapable “Darling Nikki” the filthiest song in the world. Today, almost 30 years later, we still don’t know what her deal was. What’s wrong with meeting a “sex fiend” in a “hotel lobby” who’s “masturbating to a magazine” and who takes you to her “castle” where “she’ll show u no mercy”, after which, “your body will never be the same?”

Wayne County & The Electric Chairs: “F**k Off” “If you don’t’ wanna f**k me baby, baby f**k off!” says rock ‘n’ roll’s first transgender singer to time-wasters. Pleasantries and niceties are for the less elevated.

The Bloodhound Gang: “The Bad Touch”

In the early ‘80s, the Madonna song had several family organisations and conservative groups baying for blood but all that actually happened was that Madonna was “touched for the very first time”, making her “feel shiny and new”. It happens to the best and worst of us.

Essentially describing the “kind of stuff that only Prince would sing about”, the song features wonderful puns like, “Let me be Pacific I wanna be down in your South Seas” and “Please turn me on I’m Mister Coffee with an automatic drip”.

Wu-Tang Clan: “Method Man”

Lil Jon: “Real Nigga Roll Call” feat. Ice Cube

Musing about different methods of “torture”, Method Man and Raekwon deliberate between inserting a heated hanger into someone’s rectum and hanging an unfortunate enemy off a “12-storey building” by their genitals, amongst other colourful scenarios, just ‘cos they Clan.

If rap was never a form to be taken lightly, then crunk is fundamentally not for the bashful. Holding the Guinness World Record for most vulgar song, Lil Jon and Ice Cube take up your five minutes with 295 cusses, each more drrrty than the last.

Rage Against The Machine: “Killing in the Name”

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: “Relax”

As Zach de la Rocha shows here, this is the only mantra you need to fight the man: “F**k you, I won’t do what you tell me!” (x16)

Banned by the BBC yet making UK chart history, “Relax” is about nothing more than coming, going and coming again.

Lil Kim: “How Many Licks” Here’s Lil Kim’s dating resume: “Dan, [her] nigga from Down South / [Who] used to like [her] to spank him and c**e in his mouth”; an “Italian” named Tony who “ate her p***y from dark till morning”; and “this black dude [she] called King Kong / [Who] had a big-ass d**k and a hurricane tongue”.

Cult

No Prodigal Son GG Allin was the last punk Text: Indran P Illustration: Loo Reed

Rock’s most decorated emissaries have always been tipped as “iconoclasts”. But high above, or rather, far below, the perfumed and perfect dimensions of the star-studded rock ‘n’ roll pantheon, in its darkest and filthiest nether regions, GG Allin flipped the bird to the normal currents of life in ways the most defiant rockstars couldn’t dream of doing. Variously anointed as the “most spectacular degenerate in rock ‘n’ roll history” and as the “Devil” himself, Allin lived, in the most stomach-turning ways, the fullest extent of the freedom of expression preached and promised by rock. With sh*t, p*ss and volume was his truth writ large. Here, we give the last true punk an antihero’s welcome.

legend. Defecating onstage and subsequently hurling his faeces at the audience before wiping himself with it and eating it up, Allin also assaulted the crowd and battered his face with the microphone. In the early ‘70s, punk broke the barrier between musicians and their audience, and allowed bands to present themselves as equals with the crowd. But in Allin, the punk tradition was reinterpreted in a manner never before and not since seen. When asked about Allin’s aesthetic in 2007, Iggy Pop himself said that what Allin did “didn’t put [him] in a position to compete with him”.

From hell and right back

Kill your idols

It almost seems like Allin’s rise to his putrescent cult status was foreshadowed in his very birth. Allin was born in 1956 and christened Jesus Christ Allin (yes) because of a vision his dad had wherein Jesus Christ visited him with the promise that his son would be a Messiah. Later, seeking refuge from his father’s abusive religiosity in the rebel rock of, first, the banner names of the British Invasion and later, the New York Dolls and Alice Cooper, Allin realised the punk dictate that if you found the prevailing system inadequate, you damn well started

your own. And affirming his sordid, unapologetic individuality at every stage of his two-decade-long career, Allin inverted the star of his birth and stuck by one central self-made philosophy: “Everybody’s an enemy. I’m not part of any scene. I do my own thing. My mind is a machine gun, my body is the bullets, and the audience is the target”. And it was from this bilious wellspring that his

prodigiously offensive body of punk, rock, country and spoken word works was born.

Bringing back the danger

Predating the antics of shock-rock, Allin’s unhinged, and explicitly more-than-visceral theatricality stemmed from his belief that, “Rock ‘n’ roll music has always been about real rebellion and

non-conformity”, and that “[his] mission [was] to put danger back into rock ‘n’ roll, something that’s been missing for a real long time”. In the 1993 documentary, Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies, Todd Philips, then in film school, captured an immortal performance by Allin and his band, the Murder Junkies, at an East Village club that became the most indelible memory of the GG Allin

Walking off two songs into his last show on 27 June 1993 only to die of an accidental heroin overdose a day later, still covered in blood and faeces from the night before, Allin ended his rampage through polite society just as he started it. As pop culture’s one and only unassimilable rebel, he elevated confrontation and effrontery to a level that the quantifying agent of “art” could never reach. Neither his blood-and-sh*t-stained live sets nor recordings like, I Wanna F**K Your Brains Out and Legalize Murder were made for any kind of pretty and replicable cultural nostalgia currency. As Everett True avers, Allin was “the dark side of rock ‘n’ roll made flesh incarnate”. There was only one of him and we’re not sure if we need another.

Collection

The Shining New Balance Neon Lights Collection Text: Rosalind Chua

For something originally designed as a running shoe, the New Balance 574 has chalked up a surprising amount of style miles. Since their first release in the ‘90s, these kicks have been recognised for their superior performance, unparalleled comfort and sleek design to be an instant hit with runners and sneakerheads alike. This many years on, the 574 has emerged as New Balance’s flag-bearing product, and a silhouette that has, in turn, come to define the brand’s aesthetic. Consequently, NB’s icon has undergone no shortage of revamps and updates that have accompanied it into the new millennium, but not once has it lost its classic-retro appeal. As the 574 takes on yet another transformation for Autumn/Winter, rest assured that it’s still got equal timeliness and timelessness on its side. The New Balance Neon Lights Collection does exactly like it says on the tin, resurrecting its classic 574 in electrifying shades of neon. Still boasting a lightweight construction in its one-piece suede/mesh upper, ENCAP midsole and rubber outsoles, these shoes are now also decked out in six

vibrant colourways (three for men and three for women) involving neon blue, yellow, pink and orange. These 574s aside, the collection is also home to three equally feisty MRT580s, which carry a variety of neon-pop hues and reflective material on the uppers. Whether you’re runnin’ or stylin’ with these kicks, there’s no chance you’ll be doing it in the dark. Available from August at New Balance Concept Stores, Leftfoot and Limited Edt stores

Icon

Rubber Soul All the fuss over the Marni Fussbett Text: Min Chen

Sandals of the chunky and thick-strapped variety may not have possessed the most fashionable of reputations, but in 2001, Marni got its foot in the door. By introducing the Fussbett – a sandal masterminded by Consuelo Catiglioni herself, after she found inspiration in a sandal she picked up in Africa that was crafted out of straw and recycled tires – the label purposefully dressed up a low-key wardrobe staple, took it off the hiking trails and the streets, and dropped it directly onto the runway. However much an unconventional fashion statement, the Fussbetts nonetheless conveyed the kind of nonchalance and Marni-styled quirkiness that formed the building blocks of an avant-chic. The trick in the Fussbett is its twinning of comfort and style. Ergonomically minded, the sandal’s rubber insole provides comfortable anatomical aid, while its ropeand-rubber bottom is perfect for pounding those pavements into shape. Meanwhile, the Fussbett’s minimalist design has undergone numerous seasonal variations and colour schemes that offer it equal

personality and pragmatism. In fact, rarely has this much chic been showered on one sandal: the Fussbett’s been bejeweled, laminated, printed, fringed and coloured in an array of shades, while constantly remaining a striking, unique and downright covetable preposition. More than a decade after its debut, in Marni’s newest Spring/Summer and Resort collections, as well as the latest edition of its Saturday Morning offshoot, the Fussbett remains as a glittering protagonist. Reinvented in heeled and platform styles, and in a rainbow of hues, the sandal shows none of its age, and continues to be as chic and as ready for the weekend. With that, the fuss over the Fussbett remains totally warranted. Shop Marni at marni.com and eshop.club21global.com

Sandal With Care

The Fussbett’s many faces

It’s Blitz In a new and limited edition, the Blitz Fussbett’s twin laminated leather bands are wholly coated in glitter, and coloured in the disco-worthy tones of mulberry and granite.

Earth Mother The Runway Fussbett is a star player on Marni’s Summer line-up, featuring two bi-coloured bands against a patent leather fringe in a contrasting colour.

Electric Feel Another variation of the Runway sees a two-band sling-back with an embellished bow, its laminated calfskin body doused in electrifying shades like bluette, rust and quartz.

Jewel Tones The Fussbett also sparkles on in a bejeweled reiteration. This sling-back is heavy with clear and red jewel embellishments, offering a luxe sheen to the Fussbett’s urban appeal.

Profile

Riot of Colour Russian Red gets personal and mythic all at once Text: Indran P

The first song off Russian Red’s bracing debut full-length, I Love Your Glasses, is the much-beloved fan favourite, “Cigarettes”, where the heart-worn persona reflects plaintively on the passing of time with, “Getting older’s not been on my plans”. But the person we encountered when we recently checked in with the Spanish chanteuse, born Lourdes Hernández, couldn’t have been further from the gorgeously crushed-out characters that inhabit her songs. Rehearsing in Madrid for her upcoming tour behind her recent third album, Agent Cooper, the singersongwriter was candid and confident about the musical and personal developments she has encountered since her last visit to our shores. “I want a complete adventure”, she said of the future. And that’s exactly what we came for.

Hernández is an artist who doesn’t need a posthumous retrospective of a vast catalogue of work or a VH1 special to be recognised as a legitimate pop force. In 2008, I Love Your Glasses announced her to the world as an indie debutant with a little something extra. And that very special something else was her ineffably beautiful voice. With hushed, honey-drip coos and vividly dramatic emoting that coyly and adroitly avoided banal, over-the-top belting, Hernández delivered a tour de force with the most basic and dynamic musical instrument. When asked about when she discovered she could sing, Hernández was almost dismissive about her gift: “Well, you always live in your own voice. I’ve always sang. In school, I was in the choir and my teacher decided I could sing. That was the first time I acknowledged my voice”. If that curious little fact about her biography seems incongruous with all she has become, then the circumstances behind her moniker are even more unseemly. She is perhaps the only artist named after a product, and at verbatim too. But any charges of insipidity have to be dropped when you consider her unflinching honesty. “You choose a

pseudonym because it makes sense to you”, she says, adding, “I just didn’t think my name was appealing enough”. Likewise, it’s this unsparing vision that informs Agent Cooper, an album that marks a hard left-turn from her bristling acoustica on the thrall of some colossal sounds. Featuring an all-star panel of producers and engineers, comprising Joe Chicarelli, Mark Needham and Emily Lazar, which has provided the finishing touch to works by the likes of Lou Reed, Beck and Björk, Agent Cooper is an arena-ready missive just raring to go. A declaration of her “getting over the conventional idea of love”, the album, in its best songs like “Casper” and “John Michael”, marries stormy angst with moments of light-giving beauty on red-blooded rock ‘n’ roll. She wanted “a complete adventure” but she has already given us ours. Indelible and elliptical, it is an endlessly explorable work that raises all the right expectations yet again. Agent Cooper is out now on Sony Records

Rewind

The Bravery Lavender Country did the unthinkable Text: Indran P

On the penultimate “Straight White Patterns”, for example, in a wearier and more plaintive register, Haggerty opens the door into bruising hurt with, “We just lay low and hide our pain / and do like we was trained”, bringing the weight of prejudice down to bear on the struggle for acceptance. Even before LGBT emerged as cultural shorthand, Haggerty was fighting the power for those who were being crushed into oblivion by it. And of his efforts, he had this to say recently: “Lavender Country was for us. I knew it wasn’t going to go to Nashville”.

We all know Seattle as the epicentre of indie rock’s bloom into golden-age Pride parade In the four decades since proportions. But in Lavender Country’s thousand1973, way before copy pressing, Haggerty has any notion of a ran for local office, married and raised a daughter. And in sub pop existed, 2000, Lavender Country, his Seattle was carrying only album, was inducted into the torch for new, the Country Music Hall of Fame. But like all visionaries, boundary-burning the 70-year-old Haggerty sounds, sensibilities is emphatic that the prize This led him back to the ‘50s, Even Bowie wasn’t and most crucially, is, has and will always be the “in terms of what was ingrained enough perpetuity of the cause: “It’s worldviews in a in [him] musically”. And that’s Lavender Country belongs to not my victory, it’s our victory. how the honky-tonk jangle and different but no less a class of work that enters Everyone who’s capable of “in-your-face punk sh*t” of powerfully resonant into the cultural bloodstream Lavender Country was born. listening to Lavender Country gets to be in on the victory. way. Confounding, with all the subtlety of a brick through a windshield. But Congratulations to all of us”. challenging and Cryin’ these Haggerty’s story is one of c**ksucking tears steadfast defiance and so is enriching the The 2014 reissue of Lavender Rarely has there been a Lavender Country’s. The son of Country is available now on prevailing mores message that was articulated a comely and understanding Paradise of Bachelors of the time, the through a medium that Washington dairy farmer, who couldn’t have been more told him to be proud of his city of Seattle antithetical and hateful to it. “immortal soul”, Haggerty was the site from It’s all writ large on Lavender was awakened to the abject which one Patrick Country’s most provocative marginalisation of sexual song, “Cryin’ These minorities by the Stonewall Haggerty who, as C**ksucking Tears”, which riots of 1969, when New York Lavender Country, City police conducted a violent over a lilting swirl of crystalline released the first raid against the gay community piano and fiddle notes, of Greenwich Village and by his articulates Haggerty’s scathing gay-centric album eviction from the Peace Corps call to arms: “I’m fighting in the country because of the institution’s “no for when there won’t be no music canon. In homosexuals” policy. And while straight men / ‘cos y’all have a common disease”. Delivered he felt that what was “closest every aspect of to [him] politically and sexually in a stylised Southern twang, its conception, Haggerty’s screed here is was probably David Bowie”, Lavender Country playful but eviscerating, the latter “wasn’t hitting the and testifies to the album’s nail on the head when it came was as shocking simultaneously confessional to gay rights”. “[He] was then as it is today. and confrontational bent, poles pretending he might say it in Here’s why we are the next song. But he never which come into heartbreaking focus near the album’s close. did”, remembers Haggerty. the better for it.

ABC

Die Antwoord The gruesome foursome show all their dirty letters Text: Indran P

as in Afrikaans. One of the eleven official languages of Die Antwoord’s native South Africa, Afrikaans is also the main language that MCs Ninja and Yolandi Vi$$er rap in. Also, “Die Antwoord” is Afrikaans for “The Answer”.

as in “Beat Boy”. At over eight minutes, “Beat Boy” is only Die Antwoord’s third longest song. With its glitch-y, raveready rhythm, it’s as good a Die Antwoord song as any. And there’s the hook: “Beat boy, beat boy / Hit that perfect beat boy / Hit that perfect, hit that perfect / Hit that perfect beat boy”. What’s not to like?

as in “Cookie Thumper”. Recently dropped, “Cookie Thumper” is a new song detailing the following story: “There once was a little girl / Who had a crush on a bad, bad boy / But when that bad boy got out of prison / That little girl’s ass was in big, big trouble!” ‘Cos he’s coming to get her with his cookie thumper. Get it?

F D

as in Donker Mag. Donker Mag is the third full-length “f**k you” by the band and it sees it ultimately reconfiguring the notion of “irreverence”. Indeed, there’s a lot to be said about an album whose cover is a shot of its female singer, nude and suspended and whose first three tracks are, “Dont Fuk Me”, “Ugly Boy” and “Happy Go Sucky F**ky”.

as in Elysium. Sci-fi wiz and director of the 2013 thriller, Neill Blomkamp, recently shocked Hollywood when he said that he wanted to cast Die Antwoord’s principal MC, Ninja to play the role that Matt Damon eventually got. In turning the role down, Ninja called it a “f**ked up, difficult decision”.

as in “Fatty Fatty Boom Boom”. The video for the band’s 10th single had Lady Gaga herself up in arms. Essentially an almost six-minute clip of the band caricaturing the pop megastar’s diva-ness, the vid saw her likeness in such scenes as giving birth to a locust and getting devoured by a lion. Gaga tweeted back with, “You don’t have a hit”. But we think they hit pretty hard.

as in “Girl I Want 2 Eat U”. It’s bad enough that Ninja opens the first verse of this new song with a chest-thumping declaration of how he’s going to “sip champagne with vagina” but when Yolandi comes in on the second verse with how she’s got a “selection” of “white girl, black girl, skinny girl, fat girl” for him to “eat”, you know it’s just wrong.

as in DJ Hi-Tek. Don’t get it twisted. This is not the same Hi-Tek who made hits for Mos Def and Talib Kweli during the golden age of New York hip hop. This Hi-Tek is Justin Nobrega, Die Antwoord’s in-studio beats-maker, who’s a lot fonder of low-end than his legendary namesake.

ABC

as in “Never Le Nkemise 1 and 2”. Opening and closing the band’s 2012 sophomore, Ten$Ion. Each numbered variant is an aggressive payload of a boast with 1 seeing Ninja keep it “motherf**kin’ gangsta” and Yolandi “keep[ing] it pumping off its motherf**king face!” on 2. The point was so pertinent they just had to repeat it.

as in as in Interscope. In 2011, Die Antwoord left their major label home after it tried to rein in the beyond-outré ways of the band. In a statement, Yolandi said that the label wanted the band to be more “safe” and commercially viable, adding that, “If you try to make songs that other people like, your band will always be sh*t.”

as in Olympic athletes. When asked if Die Antwoord was a “conceptual art project” in 2011, Ninja famously replied with, “We’re more like Olympic athletes.” As a rule of thumb, stay off sensitive topics.

as in Jane’s Addiction. Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro have been open about their support for the band. Navarro, in particular, has been the bigger of the fanboys, showing his love with this recent bit of gush: “Die Antwoord is such a lifestyle band”. Guess, for some people, a lifestyle is a death wish.

as in Lisbeth Salander. David Fincher approached Yolandi to play the main character in his big-budget remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It’s only because she declined that the role went to Rooney Mara.

as in Max Normal. Before he became the pre-ratchet fire-breather, Ninja, Watkin Tudor Jones spit motivational rhymes as the MC of the live hip hop act, Max Normal, in three-piece suits. It’s obvious he’s come a long way.

as in Umshini Wam. Finding Ninja and Yolandi so enchantingly telegenic, director and hype-magnet, Harmony Korine, made a 16-minute short film where they both muck around in furry costumes and wheelchairs. Sometimes, the premise is the casting.

as in Progeria. Progeria is a rare genetic disorder where symptoms of aging are manifested at a very early age. Unfortunately, Die Antwoord lost one of its closest associates, DJ Leon Botha to it in 2011. At 26, when he passed, he was one of the longest survivors of the disease.

as in Rats. Yolandi likes rats but we’ll let Ninja tell you more about that: “The black baby girl rat is called Yin. The white baby girl rat is called Yang. Her white big boy rat is called Spookie. And her fokken massive black boy rat is called Gommie, which means ‘scum bag’”.

as in Wu-Tang Clan. Die Antwoord swear by the Clan and count RZA and co. as key stylistic and musical guiding stars. Ninja’s favourite, though, is the late great Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

as in Sixteen. Ninja and Yolandi have a daughter and her name is Sixteen. She’ll be nine this year and she was first introduced to the world in the video for the single, “I Fink U Freeky”, with a snake around her shoulders.

as in “XP€N$IV $H1T”. A non-album single that tore its way through the blogosphere, “XP€N$IV $H1T” is a hilarious gold-standard in the trolling of the rap game’s clichéd love for money. The hook, “I rub my di*k on XPEN$IVE SH1T”, is subtle enough.

as in Zef. An oft-heard epithet throughout the DA catalogue, “zef” is the Afrikaans equivalent of “chav”. But here’s Yolandi with a better explanation: “Zef is, you’re poor but you’re fancy. You’re poor but you’re sexy, you’ve got style.”

No B.S. music

Power Of Pop Shamir spares no sound Text: Indran P It must be heart-wrenchingly tough to be a purist in 2014. Nothing’s sacred anymore and the old rules that once policed the boundaries between different styles and sounds are now being gratuitously broken in the service of a fuller, vaster pop. Yes, pop. Today, with the maximalist aesthetic of the Internet age in full and heaving bloom, the power of the pop song has been multiplied more than tenfold. And in the ranks of its makers, Shamir Bailey stands out for going even further in making pop from whatever he wants, however he wants. Even a casual listen of the self-proclaimed “musician, comedian, singer, rapper and twerker[’s]” scant number of songs will yield that entire epochs of music and music history reside in his gleefully schizophrenic aesthetic. Raised by his mother and her twin sister across a pig farm in north

Las Vegas, a rural area long overshadowed by its much more mythologised other side, Shamir took to music to escape from the tedium of having not much else to do besides “drive around and look at dirt”. And from this aversion to the mundane comes his debut EP, Northtown, a marvel of disco, house, r&b and psychedelia that is as mesmerising as his implacably androgynous vocals. Yet, all over the place is a verdict the 19-year-old so dazzlingly avoids. True to him being “really old-faithful when it comes to music”, Northtown’s many-splendoured sounds are curated with a scholarly precision and care that exudes a sense of unbridled whimsy while evading the pitfall of coming off as a muddled mishmash of cut-and-paste sounds. The fantastic, dance pop of “If It Wasn’t True”, described by Shamir as “not your typical breakup song because it’s more optimistic” is a spirit-lifting, perfectly blended cocktail of sounds that also functions as the banner of the EP with its seamless fusion of diverse body-moving traditions. Likewise, on the hooks-aplenty soul of “I Know It’s a Good Thing”, dirge-y bells and

springy beats run the gamut of sound and emotion on a driving funk tempo that doesn’t stop to explain itself. And it doesn’t need to. Even the inclusion of a quivering cover of country music smash, Lindi Ortega’s “Lived and Died Alone” into the fold of Northtown’s dance songs is right as rain. But that’s what Shamir does, he takes all and gives back more. The Northtown EP is out now on Godmode Records

Time

Crowning Glory Jean-Michel Basquiat x Komono Text: Min Chen Since no boundaries have ever been drawn at Komono, the accessories label has been fearless in dealing equally well with the classic and the contemporary, the bold and the understated, and the worlds of fashion, art and design. With that, it’s no surprise that this season, the Belgian label has warmly embraced the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat in a watershed collaboration that conjoins the man’s raw visual art with Komono’s classic-cool craft. That Basquiat’s neoexpressionist creations continue to exude raw energy and visual aplomb this many

decades on is testament to the artist’s highly original and remarkable vision. His influence continues to abound amongst street artists and designers, while his artwork has become an indelible part of popular culture and now, helped form a unique Komono capsule collection. Aggressive, anarchic and primitivist, his works have been translated into six Komono timepieces, each bearing a different detail of a Basquiat painting and imprinted with the authentic Basquiat crown logo. Across these watches are the artist’s contrasting forces of light and dark, calm and chaos, as well as visual shorthands of

multi-hued faces, skulls, rats and princely figures. In each instance, Komono responds with timepieces that carry a minimalist touch in the form of muted clock faces and subtle wristband detailing. This collaboration also duly launches Komono Curated, a high-end accessories series that underscores the label’s thirst for ideas and cultures beyond fashion. And in joining forces with the art of Basquiat, Komono Curated looks to have got both its art and heart in the right place. Available at A Small Goods Shop at Playlab, Tangs Orchard, L4, and ashop.asia

Paint

Wild Life

Because tame is for the tired, go for these bolder shades and sticks that mix the fierce with the feminine Text: Min Chen

Givenchy Prisme Libre in Mousseline Pastel Givenchy’s iconic loose powder quartet returns this season in new shades and the same light and sheer qualities that offer a soft and glowing finish

Urban Decay 24/7 Glide On Eye Pencil in Perversion Perversion, one of Urban Decay’s most beloved and matte-blackest of shades, now gets its own standalone eye pencil to better deliver nonstop rock and roll

Grace Jones Portfolio Illamasqua Glamore lipstick in Luster Because your beauty kit could always do with more glamore, here’s one of Illamasqua’s newest creation in a stunning shade of crimson

Kate Spade New York Paint The Town Red large notebook All the better to document last night’s shenanigans

Clinique Chubby Stick Baby Tint Moisturising Lip Colour Balm in Flowering Freesia It ain’t just playful tints that Clinique’s newest Chubby Stick is offering, but also, a surge of moisture to keep your smackers soft and supple

Marc Jacobs Beauty Style Eye-con Eyeshadow Palette in The Siren In The Siren are these seven bright hues – armed with advanced pigments and a long-wear formula – that would fit the colour palette of any modern femme

Nails Inc Latex Effect Collection in Bermondsey Street Nails Inc’s recent groundbreaking formula means your tips can now flaunt all-new waxy, latex textures in an array of electric colours

Majolica Majorca Lash Expander Edge Meister F Each smooth coat of Majolica Majorca’s latest filmtype mascara with a liquid lengthening base is a promise of glossy and super-curly lashes

Word Up! Let your wardrobe do the talking Text & styling: Min Chen

Alexander Wang Spring/Summer 2014

Shopping

Raf Simons Yoga print document holder

Izzue University of Nowhere cap

Manic Street Preachers Know Your Enemy

Undercover Some Candy Talking printed T-shirt

A.P.C. Luxembourg Park loopback sweatshirt

Maison Kitsuné College Kitsuné navy sweater

Tatty Devine Aarrghhhh Perspex necklace American Apparel New York is For Lovers power-washed T-shirt

ASOS F**k Yeah T-shirt b + ab Stop handbag Charlotte Olympia Wish You Were Here transparent clutch

Cayler & Sons Weezy summer beanie Kate Spade Two To Tango T-shirt

Worn By WTF is Mick Jagger grey marl T-shirt

Jeremy Scott Spring/Summer 2014

Moschino I Do Speak Moschino T-shirt

Pull & Bear I Love Nothin’ tank

Nude Awakening Grow your own second skin

Calvin Klein Spring/Summer 2014

Shopping

AL&ALICIA Pale Skin tent parka COS Cropped top

H&M Dress with tassels

Michael Kors Spring/Summer 2014

Acne Studios Adrian Dot Slub Cotton-Blend Shorts

Helmut Lang Lambskin cut-out top

Marni Clutch

Pull & Bear Drawstring sweatpants

Topman Oatmeal cable jumper Converse Chuck Taylor Sneakers

Rihanna Unapologetic

On Pedder x Victoria Beckham Harper shoulder bag

Topshop Sleeveless waist-tie jumpsuit

Charlotte Olympia Blush suede heels

Izzue Two-panelled trousers

Miss Selfridge Bandage pencil skirt

The Clash

When prints and patterns collide

Issey Miyake Men Autumn/Winter 2014

Shopping

Topshop Folk panel shirt

Pull & Bear Slip dress

House of Holland Embellished Oxford shirt

b + ab Graphic bandana Iron & Wine Kiss Each Other Clean

Mary Katrantzou Spring/Summer 2014 Vans x The Beatles The Era sneakers

Tout a coup Patchwork bomber jacket

Givenchy Robot print T-Shirt

Chanel Multi-coloured resin square bracelet

Givenchy Printed tote Thom Browne Cotton raglan shirt dress

Neil Barrett Panelled sweatshirt

Prabal Gurung Black trousers with embellished stripes

Billabong Quilted jacket

ASOS Embellished jacket

Alexander McQueen Printed pouch

The Raw Deal Photography: Ivanho Harlim & Shysilia Novita Styling: Marie Liang Models: Hege @ Upfront, Nadya and Bence @ Mannequin

Bralet, Nadyaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own (worn throughout)

Spread

Studded leather jacket by Pras the Bandit, and cotton knickers, Hegeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own (worn throughout)

Vintage ruffle trim dress from Flea & Trees

On Benceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hair, Gatsby Rough Nuance Hair Jam (used thoughout)

Utilitarian jacket and printed cap by Pras the Bandit, and vintage necklace from NewmanHall on Etsy

Denim jacket with hand stitched details and printed shirt by Pras the Bandit

Lightweight neoprene shirt with open back by COS, and high waist printed shorts by Pras the Bandit

Cotton shirt by Sifr, printed pants by Pras the Bandit, and sneakers by Converse

Double wool crepe blazer by COS, and sheer mesh skirt from NewmanHall on Etsy

Incoming

They Run This Town Now Deap Vally’s got rock ‘n’ roll by the balls Text: Indran P

It used to be that mutton chops, and scores of screaming, bra-flinging groupies, were amongst the most identifiable signifiers of rock ‘n’ roll. Not anymore. Taking what was once regarded as a man’s game to

task on its very own terms, the Los Angeles all-girl, all-rock duo, with Lindsey Troy on guitar and vocals and Julie Edwards on drums and vocals, has been making sweaty, sweltering rock ‘n’

roll for no other reason other than the fact that it can and that it’s really, really good at it. Shaming misogynists and doubters alike, the band has been cultivating an arenafilling sway that has seen it share

stages with rock’s own patriarchs like Iggy Pop and Thurston Moore. Then, last year, the girls released their debut full-length, Sistrionix, a doubleedged rapier of an album that saluted the greats of the

past while hacking a path to the future of big, heavy sounds. We checked in with Julie to find out more about the band’s fist-raised ethos, why bass is so overrated and why The Rolling Stones are better than the Beatles.

Incoming

Hey Julie, we heard you’re on the road. Where are you now? Yes, we’re in Columbus, Missouri. The Midwest, as they say. We’re on tour with Band of Skulls. It’s been great. They are a really inspiring rock band. We also just finished playing in Nick Zinner’s “41 Strings” performance piece at the Royal Festival Hall in London.

So what does Deap Vally stand for? We stand for women’s rights all over the world. I could talk about that for hours! One great thing about the album is how personal stories are given loud expressive vent. And “Bad for My Body” sounds like you’ve really been up to no good. What’s the story behind that song? Ha! I don’t think that “Bad for My Body” has any fixed narrative. Lindsey says that it’s about a summer night out with friends. But I’d like to add that we don’t endorse rock ‘n’ roll excess. We endorse rock ‘n’ roll excess volume! For me, the chorus is about how we think we’re so badass, but someone else already did all those things. The Ramones did it too! Doing the things we’re not supposed to do is universal.

Oh yes, he’s amassed quite a fantastic line-up for that project. How did Deap Vally get involved? We played a couple of shows with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and we’d run into Nick at festivals. He said he wanted to work with us so we went to a studio and did some tracks. That’s how it happened. Legend has it that you and Lindsey met at a croquet class. Is that true? Yes, that is correct! I used to run a knitting and croquet class. Lindsey came in one day, and I taught her how to knit and croquet. I don’t think stuff like that is odd for people in a rock band, though. There were female musicians from all kinds of musical backgrounds who came for the classes. And that led to Sistrionix, perhaps the most badass rock album in recent times. Was that your intention? Thank you! That’s what we wanted – to capture the live feeling of rock ‘n’ roll was something we wanted to do from the moment we started. Zeppelin and Sabbath are all over the record. What led to the “classic” rock sound being so huge on Sistrionix; and why do you think there aren’t very many young bands revisiting those sounds? I can’t imagine why that is. It was such an inspiring time in music. It created the iconography of rock ‘n’ roll. Besides, it was very expressive and very cathartic to play. I can’t do without Cream, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin!

On to the age-old rock ‘n’ roll debate: are you a Stones girl or a Beatles girl? Ah! Depending on the era of my life, I’ve always picked the Beatles over the Stones. But recently, I’ve found myself coming back to the Stones. They have a very pure attitude. Just dirty and raw; very sublime. They’re not about making things new but about making the best out of fundamentals, like song composition and attitude. I feel that now, more than ever, with recording technology being so advanced, it’s important to have that raw element. Speaking of which, when did you realise you could do without a bassist? Well, before Deap Vally, I was

in another band called the Pity Party. We didn’t have a bassist too. I never felt that we needed a bassist. Before Deap Vally became what it is, we had a friend, Ashley, who played bass, but she couldn’t ever make the time to jam. Still, I never felt that we were missing her. Do you see yourselves as a feminine alternative to the masculinist discourse of trad rock? Absolutely! Being women, we’re reframing and recontextualising rock ‘n’ roll. It’s a whole new perspective. We don’t see it as old music, though. It’s just the stuff we love. But to answer your question, I’d say that all our struggles have benefitted us. We still encounter

condescension from venue operators who think we don’t know how to work our stuff. People think that it’s gimmicky, but it’s only gotten us more exposure. It’s all been very rewarding. Much of Sistrionix is filled with very empowering lyrics, especially on “Gonna Make My Own Money”, “Creeplife” and “Woman of Intention”. Was this a selfconscious feminist move on your part? I never knew I was a feminist because I guess I always was. Lindsey goes through periods where she thinks she’s one. We’re just writing from our point of view. Some people see it as feminist anthems and songs of empowerment. But it’s just how we see things.

So do you think that it’s possible for bad boy/girl rock stars to exist in 2014? No. It’s because of the Internet and social media. There’s just too much exposure. The fan is now the star. Or, rather, the fan’s opinion is now the star. Another thing that has led to this is digital photography. There are no shadows now, no mystery. The age of rock stardom has gone. Too much is asked of you these days. There’s no way we’re going back. People point to Jack White, but he’s more a genius than anything. He’s not a Jimmy Page in terms of the lifestyle. What else is on the horizon for you? We’ve started writing our new record! We’ve also got some festivals in the US and Europe. Once we’re done touring, we’ll go to the studio and record the new album. Sistrionix is out now on Island Records

Nathan wears Oxford shirt by Fred Perry

Talk

Calling All Mavericks The Boxer Rebellion and its grand indie plan Text: Indran P Photography: Olivia Sari-Goerlach Apparel: Fred Perry

By now, the highspeed trajectory of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;indieâ&#x20AC;? phenomenon has reached a point where its original meaning and impetus is lost in the blog-buzzing din and high-gloss fads. But for The Boxer Rebellion, it has been an ethos and rite of passage that has seen it emerge from the ashes of Britpop as leaders of the bolder and

darker phase of British pop and rock. For more than a decade, London-viaTennessee singer and multi-instrumentalist, Nathan Nicholson, bassist, Adam Harrison and drummer, Piers Hewitt, have tenaciously fused post-rock grandiosity with urgently driving arena-rock for a widescreen sound that has played out over the

course of their three albums the best way they know: by going it alone. Furthering their singular and uncompromising path, the band kissed off 2013 with its fantastic fourth showing, Promises, to universal acclaim. In town for Music Matters Live 2014, the lads stopped by to shed light on their good fight and the time they almost beat Pharrell.

Nathan wears his own T-shirt and varsity bomber jacket by Fred Perry

Talk

57 What’s the band been up to post-Promises? Nathan: In the beginning of the year, we did a lot of touring in Europe. Lately, we’ve been sitting down to write our new album. We’ve also got a few festivals lined up. Touring and writing are mostly what we’ve been doing since we released Promises. Just flying to Singapore alone kept us busy for 26 hours! Adam: The good thing is we don’t have dates every single weekend. It’s pretty much half-in-half in terms of rehearsal and writing. It doesn’t really do you too much good if you go too long without writing. It’s like exercising a muscle, you have to keep doing it. Nathan, how does a guy from Knoxville, Tennessee, end up in London? Nathan: I ended up in London through a “study abroad” programme in Florida State University. This was in 2000. I met the rest of the band and I didn’t want to go back. The music also kept me there. I liked a lot of Britpop from the ‘90s. I also loved the fact that in London, you can feel close to everything. It’s also easy to get to Europe. I also enjoyed living in a city after growing up in small town. My parents were like, “We’ll see how this goes”, but now they’re cool with it. On that multi-cultural note, what was it about the actual Boxer Rebellion that made you want it as your moniker? Pierce: We needed a name and that’s always tough to

find. At that the time, we were all a lot younger and we just wanted a name that sounded good to us. So, we dug it out of a book. It was the first name that at least one of us didn’t turn up his nose at. We spent three or four months just thinking of the name! Adam: Yes, it had a story that we hadn’t known about. But first and foremost, it sounded like a good name. There were a lot of sh*t names. Nathan: Like this band I saw at SXSW a few years ago, called Metalltica 2! 15 years in, what do you think of how your own sound has evolved? Nathan: It took us about two or three years to even find a sound. Our first album was very guitar-driven and dirge-y. Since then, we’ve kind of morphed into more defined kinds of songs; maybe slightly more polished as well. Adam: Exactly, when we first came out, we were paying more attention to what was around us, thinking that, to a certain degree, we had be like the surrounding scene that included guitar-heavy bands like the Cooper Temple Clause. But it’s like any art – the further you go down the road of your career, the more you find your voice. I think we continue to find that. Yes, Promises has such a distinctly mythic overall sound. What was different about that record? Nathan: Our third album was quite mid-tempo so when it came to writing Promises, we wanted to write more upbeat stuff with a bit more positivity. We wrote it in a very different way. The previous album was written as a band, in a jam setting. With this one, we’d craft the song part-by-part, then, record the song and add layers to it. Adam: And then, analyse every single part! You’ve said before that Promises was “written to sound rather than lyrics”. Was this what you meant? Adam: We always write to music; the music usually comes first. Sounds and music influence the mood and therefore, the lyrical content,

rather than the other way around. It’s not a poem turned into music. Nathan: Very rarely have we locked in a lyrical idea ahead of a musical idea. This approach has certainly paid off over the years. Promises is your best charting album to date. Can you tell us more about the hit single, “Diamonds”? Piers: I feel like the song came quickly but we finished it slowly. That’s often, for me, a sign of one of our better efforts. You can kind of buzz off what you’re doing sooner and your enthusiasm for the song is strong. That gets you over the finish line. Nathan: When we first did it, though, I didn’t think it’d be a single. It just didn’t sound like one to me. It was only when a good friend of ours said that it was the best thing we’ve ever done that I thought it could be a single. How do you feel about the success of “Diamonds” then? Nathan: That song was weird, ‘cos it really connected in the Netherlands. Adam: Yes, it was our first big radio hit. We came in second in the Netherlands’ song of the year, second to “Get Lucky”! You beat “Blurred Lines”! Adam: Yes, it’s crazy to think of it like that! We haven’t been that kind of band. We haven’t had “Second Biggest Song” anywhere, or “Top 10

Songs of the Year” in terms of pop and everything. Nathan: We didn’t beat Pharrell completely. He won in the end! Adam: Pharrell always wins in the end. Besides finding a distinctive sound, being avowedly independent is inextricable to the identity of the Boxer Rebellion. What keeps you indie? Nathan: The ability to choose what we do and the freedom to make the albums we want to make – control issues. Adam: We had to learn from the circumstance of our second album that we had to do it ourselves. No one was there to help us. Once you have that knowledge, you have a far higher standard for other people taking over. Once you have that luxury of having complete control, there has to be something really special to come along and take that away from you. Piers: We’ll never say that being on a major label doesn’t work, because it does, obviously. But this works for us. And speaking from your own experiences, what advice would you have for emerging indie bands? Nathan: It’s so easy to put your stuff up on any online platform now, so make sure you’re ready. Adam: Bide your time until you’re absolutely certain it’s right. We were really lucky that when we were sh*t, we didn’t have these outlets. That stuff sticks around. Piers: There’s so much availability to music today that it can be a poisoned chalice. So, be patient, pay your dues and get good.

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Forbidden Fruit Banned art across time and media

Text: Indran P

Look at that body The body and the extent of its depiction have been tremulous concerns for the moral police since time immemorial. Nothing’s been spared, not even works that hold up a mirror of truth to the mores of the day. Long before pop culture’s fixation with “keeping it real” became a mantle to aspire to, the French Realist master, Édouard Manet, confronted the realities of such an endeavour with his 1863 painting, Olympia. One of the first 19th century artists to capture modern life on oil canvass, Manet wasn’t interested in reproducing the polite parlour proprieties of the immaculately powered bourgeoisie. Instead, turning his easel to society’s underbelly, he produced a stunningly true-to-form painting of a fully nude prostitute starring dead-on at her clients, the viewers (you). Banned by the cognoscenti of the French Salon, it was later accepted in 1865 but had to be hung up high to prevent defacement.

Jimi Hendrix, however, wasn’t so lucky. His final album, 1968’s Electric Ladyland, widely regarded as his best work, featured 19 naked women on its sleeve. It was the first sleeve to ever feature nudity and the first to be pulled from the shelves in record stores all over the UK for that offense, but what made it even more shocking at the time was that the women were offered the demeaning sum of five pounds to appear topless and 10 to go fully nude for the shoot. Oddly enough, it was Hendrix’s label boss, Chris Stamp, and not Hendrix himself, who commissioned the shoot. Years later, one of the models, Regine Sutcliffe, had this to say about it: “It makes us look like a load of old tarts. It’s rotten. We were trying to look too sexy, but it didn’t work out.”

And while Hendrix’s mind-tripping sounds made spellbinding waves throughout polite society, the 1972 skin flick, Deep Throat (with the sub-title, “How Far Does a Girl Have to Go to Untangle Her Tingle?”) burst onto the screens to offer up a more than titillating feast for the eyes. The first of its kind to feature

Electric Ladyland

a plot, character development and production value, the film also didn’t hold back on vivid enactments of oral, vaginal and anal sex, orgies and masturbation. Also, its leading lady and future XXX doyenne, Linda Lovelace, was depicted as having been born with her clitoris in her mouth. Banned in 23 states in the US after its release, Deep Throat later came to be celebrated by Hollywood for its use of the rights promised by the First Amendment, proving that, sometimes, “freedom of expression” does trump all.

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Cut ‘em up! Violence too has been assiduously censored across the history and spectrum of art. But sometimes, you just have to let the rage out, subtleties be damned. Heavy metal heroes, Motörhead, built a legacy around living up to the latter point and their 1988 video, directed by Rod Swenson, manager of the equally notorious, Plasmatics, “Killed by Death” is a bold appraisal of that. Beginning with Lemmy literally smashing through the walls of a conservative family’s living room and whisking away their teenage daughter on his motorcycle, the vid culminates in him being shot, beaten and then fried in an electric chair by the police. MTV refused to air or play the song, citing “excessive and senseless violence”, consigning it to the obscurity of fanboy conversation. Five years later, stateside groove metal vets, Pantera, set the watchdogs on themselves with the cover of their seventh album, Far Beyond Driven, which was also one of the first heavy metal albums to top the charts in the US and Australia. Now, the explicit violence of a female anus being impaled by a drill bit may not seem as gratuitous or sexist when you consider that frontman, Phil Anselmo, was injured

with ruptured disks in his back at the time, or that, at its label’s insistence, the band replaced that image with a drill going through a male skull instead. Needless to say, the female cover is now a coveted collectors’ item. Yet, Motörhead and Pantera had nothing on cult provocateur, Wes Craven’s 1972 remake of Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, The Last House on the Left. An exploitation film that centred on the brutalisation, rape and murder of two teenage girls by a group of escaped convicts, and the subsequent revenge exacted by one of the girls’ parents and the police (by chainsaw, amongst other delightful methods), the film was banned in Canada, New Zealand and Australia. In Britain, it chalked up 113 convictions under the Obscene Publication Act between 1983 and 1987. And as per the dictates of the British Board of Film Classification, an uncut version of the film was only available for sale there in 2008.

Burn the flag Political injustice is both a cause and result of controversy and art has been the reliably evocative call to arms. American film pioneer, D.W. Griffith, first learnt this with his wildly provocative 1915 silent film, The Birth of a Nation. While breaking run-time (three hours and 10 minutes) and box office records, the film’s retrograde portrayal of black characters – played by white actors in blackface – caused it to be banned in several cities including Chicago, Las Vegas, Denver, Pittsburgh and St. Louis and several other states and jurisdictions. Forced by the outcry of racism, Griffith devoted the entirety of his next film, Intolerance, to making amends. And then, there was The Sex Pistols. With one and only one album to its name, the band incited what journo, Sean O’Haggan, called, the “last and greatest outbreak of pop-based moral pandemonium”. Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, the foundation

stone of British punk, was as acerbic as it got but no one song was more vicious than “God Save the Queen”. With the line, “God save the Queen / She ain’t no human being”, the song was banned not just by the BBC but by every indie radio station, becoming the most blacklisted record in British history. But as to its “political” nature, founding member and guitarist, Steve Jones, was incredulous then: “I don’t see how anyone could describe us as a political band. I don’t even know the name of the Prime Minister.” As Jones and the rest of the Pistols showed, loutish irreverence was one artistic way to stand your ground against an impinging regime. But Ai Weiwei, dubbed by many as the “most powerful artist in the world”, made his point in a much more sweeping and picturesque manner. In 2010, marrying firebrand rhetoric with heartbreaking social commentary, the Chinese artist exhibited Sunflower Seeds at the Tate

Modern. Alluding to the harsh socio-economic realities of the “Made in China” phenomenon and to the individual lives that have been crushed by years of government-sanctioned social and economic exploitation, Ai covered the Turbine Hall of the gallery with 100 million individually handcrafted and hand-painted sunflower seeds shaped out of porcelain. The vastest of his “social sculptures”, this exhibit was inspired by, in Ai’s own words, “Chinese society, the kind of political struggle it has, and [his] memories of it” as well as by the “current condition”. For his efforts, he was placed under house arrest in November, a month after the epochal exhibit. Then, in early 2011, he was branded a “deviant and plagiarist” throughout statecontrolled media. But that’s baseless, though. Sunflower Seeds is without precedent.

The Birth of a Nation

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Live It Loud Showtek reign at the summit of EDM heaven Text: Indran P

Adjective, noun and verb all at once, the “banger” has become an inviolable and sacrosanct part of club culture. How much of a “banger” a song is has become a discerning marker of how much people will lose their sh*t to it and correspondingly, how crazy the night will get. After all, EDM is as EDM does, but for Wouter and Sjoerd Janssen, such considerations don’t matter at all. As

Showtek, the Dutch brothers have been responsible for some of contemporary dance music’s most enduring and most recognisable bangers since forming in the early aughts. Mining from an uncommonly diverse range of styles that counts techno, hardstyle, EDM and prog house in its empyrean sway, the pair has burnt its thunderously juddering imprint into millions of clubbers the world over through bona fide, yes, bangers, like “Cannonball”, “Booyah”, “We Like to Party” and 2014’s “BAD”. Already reeling from many nights spent with the heady pound of Showtek’s widescreen slammers, we sought out Wouter and Sjoerd to find out more about their mythic touch before their set at Zouk.

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How’s life on the road been treating you guys? Wouter: We’ve been going crazy on tour. Before that, we also took the first month of the year off to make some tracks. That’s how “BAD” with David Guetta and “Bouncer” happened. But since the end of January, we’ve been touring like mad. I think we’ve been home for a total of 10 days since then! It’s crazy right? Sjoerd: It’s funny, we tour so much that sometimes, even I don’t know where we’re going to next. But it’s fine, we’re enjoying it. The both of us agreed that as long as we’re enjoying it and it’s not killing us and we’re still able to produce music, which is always a priority for us because it brought us to where we are, we’d continue to do this. You started out with techno, then moved to hardstyle and then, to EDM sounds like prog house. What caused the repeated change-ups? Wouter: A lot of stuff. We co-produced a lot behind the scenes with Tiësto and Marcel

Woods. I’ve been doing a lot of studio work since 2009, which is also when Sjoerd joined full-time. So, we’ve actually been playing music but never as Showtek. It’s when we went with Tiësto to his shows and heard him play his tracks that we wanted to make our own sound that was slower but had the same energy. Besides, playing more than one style of music like hardstyle gives us more opportunity to grow. And when we went to Ultra and EDC, we saw how insane EDM was and we fell in love with it. Yet, at every stage of your evolution, you’ve maintained a distinct sonic identity. How did the “Showtek sound” come about? Wouter: It’s the mixing and the way the riffs are played. The riffs are always very recognisable. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what we do for our sound’s signature because we always look for a certain feel and the feel is the “Showtek signature”. Sjoerd: Yes, the reason why we are successful in the scene we’re in right now is because we did techno and we did hardstyle. This made us sound very diverse in the studio and allowed us to sound different. Without this background, we wouldn’t be Showtek today. What’s it like working and playing as brothers? Sjoerd: Easy, actually. We play around and since I’m the younger one, I’m the one who gets bullied the whole time! It’s fine, I’ve been used to this since I was a little kid.

But, it’s really good, though. Wouter: We just don’t have to struggle with things that other people struggle with, like being honest. We’re very open and we fully trust and rely on each other. These things are very important. You mentioned Tiësto earlier. It’s well known that you and him associate closely with each other. How did you first come to work with him? Wouter: I think it was in Ibiza in 2009. He was doing a collab with Marcel Woods and we were also working with Marcel Woods behind the scenes, doing co-production. So we met him and we just clicked in the studio. We went to Ibiza one day, and he had another track that he wanted us to help him out with. After that, we went to a bar together and slowly, we bonded. He liked the way we produced and it also just seemed like the perfect time for us to grow. Let’s talk about your fantastic bangers like “We Like to Party”, for one. What goes through your mind when you’re making such pounding songs? Wouter: We are always looking for something new. “We Like to Party” was actually made in 2011 but we couldn’t release it because we had so much stuff coming out. It was one of our first electro songs. It always comes down to making something new and cool. I remember when I went to parties and heard these big tracks for the first time, thinking, “What the f**k is this?” That’s what we want to

do when we’re in the studio. We want to make tracks that astonish people by how big they are when they first hear them. You recently said that you were like the Beastie Boys of electro music. Are you into rap and hip hop as well? Wouter: As far as rap is concerned, I’m more a fan of the older rappers like, Wu-Tang, Dre, Snoop, Tupac, KRS-One, Eric B and Rakim. I’ve got all the Wu-Tang solo albums because they were my biggest inspiration. RZA, the producer, was such a magical guy. The riffs he made and the magic of the melodies was just insane. Sjoerd: They were one of those acts I liked when I was younger. I was just trying to say that they were pretty different even though they were in an existing scene. And as Showtek, we would like to be seen as producers as well. Timbaland and Dr. Dre for example, in the hip hop scene, are legends for making these weird beats and songs. Likewise, the power of Showtek comes from the fact that it’s the songs that make the difference. On that great note, what’s in store for Showtek in the future? Wouter: More bangers! If we go on like this, we’ll be really happy in the future. It’s getting crazier and crazier every year and we’re just so blessed and privileged to be able to this. That we actually have a second career is amazing. So we will see. Hopefully an album or something.

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Obscene! The printed word on trial Text: Min Chen

The poem is holy On a night in October in 1955, Allen Ginsberg stepped up to a podium at the Six Gallery in San Francisco to read his newest poem, Howl. It was a sprawling long-line creation, divided into four parts that lamented the conformity and “pure machinery” that had crushed “the best minds of [his] generation”, while rhapsodically celebrating all that was “holy!” in the human mind, soul and body. Within its lines were frank and fearless depictions of sex, drugs, madness, suicide and jazz, which bebopped along a jagged rhythm and offered up electric visions previously unseen. Unpublished, down and out at that time, Ginsberg nonetheless delivered Howl with what he called “a strange, ecstatic intensity”, and with little idea of the reverberations that his poem would have on the city’s literary milieu and the world at large. The heady content of Howl did indeed set the counterculture alight, but a large part of its cultural heft and significance would also emerge from its subsequent prosecution for obscenity.

would be made flesh in the consequent beat generation. “I think what is coming is a romantic period,” Ginsberg once wrote to his mentor, Lionel Trilling, “A reassertion of naked personal subjective truth.” And true enough, the poem would serve as a prelude to the publication of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, while setting the tone and momentum for San Francisco’s bubbling and restless beat scene.

In 1957, City Lights Books was put on trial for printing and distributing Howl, which, particularly in its reference to the joyous sexual practices of “saintly motorcyclists”, was deemed obscene. And yet, as publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti sat in court, what he fought for was less a ruling on Howl’s supposed lewdness than that everlasting right to freedom of speech. Hence Ginsberg’s own contention

that for all the offense taken over its homosexual content, the poem stood for “a promotion of frankness, about any subject”. And as much as poets and literary experts would rush to Howl’s defense, it was Clayton W Horn, the presiding judge at the trial, who delivered Howl into immortality. Finding it “not obscene”, he would go on to state, “An author should be real in treating his subject,

and be allowed to express his thoughts and ideas in his own words.” The publicity that surrounded the trial and its verdict naturally transformed Ginsberg into a radical figurehead who was featured in magazines, feted at poetry readings and could be found hanging out with Bob Dylan. As Howl flew off the shelves, so its prophetic message

The revolutionary promise inherent in the verdict at Howl’s obscenity trial, however, would only come two years later. In 1959, Grove Press, emboldened by the Howl ruling, approached the US District Court to challenge the federal obscenity laws and in a stunning coup, lifted the historic ban on DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Separately, the long-exiled Fanny Hill would also see the light of day in 1966. Once censored for their sexual subject matter, these books were newly considered to possess “redeeming social or literary value”, and everyone was now at liberty to consume their very naked and subjective truths.

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Richer for the record The ban on Lady Chatterley’s Lover wouldn’t the final obscenity law that Grove Press overturned. Once a fledging press until it was bought over by one charismatic Barney Rosset in 1951, Grove would (accidentally or otherwise) surface as a champion of the literary avant-garde in the ‘60s when it decidedly published titles at once frank, radical and raunchy. In Rosset’s own words, he’d pretty much remade the company into “a breach in the dam of American Puritanism – a whiplashing live cable of the zeitgeist”. And American Puritanism responded in kind, prosecuting Grove in a number of obscenity trials that required the publisher to defend such titles as Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. The former was already contentious when it was published in paperback by Grove Press in ‘61 and upon its appearance on American bookshelves, was subject to no less than 60 obscenity lawsuits from 21 states. Written long before Ginsberg even let out a Howl, Tropic of Cancer was a rhapsodic stream-of-consciousness – “a screech of defiance, a war whoop!” – that emerged from the years Miller spent amidst Parisian bohemia. In court, though, it was judged to be obscene for its “sordid narrations dealing with sex in a manner designed to appeal to prurient interest”, and it took three years for

the US Supreme Court to finally recognise its literary and artistic merit. For the trial’s protagonists, all that fuss remained unfounded. As Rosset has said of Tropic of Cancer, “It never occurred to me that it was about sex. What interested me was that Miller didn’t like Americans very much.” And Miller himself offers, “If it was not good, it was true; if it was not artistic, it was sincere; if it was in bad taste, it was on the side of life.” And on the same side of life would also land Naked Lunch in 1962. Burroughs’ novel had already been published in Paris in ’59, where it garnered little notice, but lo, when it arrived on American shores under the auspices of Grove, it very quickly and suddenly was found to contain unacceptable levels of indecency. The book was put on trial in Boston and Los Angeles, declared obscene and banned. Granted, Naked Lunch isn’t the easiest thing

to read or to stomach, what with its abstract language and hallucinatory imagery colluding on a loose science fiction-esque plot that strung together spies, sexual deviants and junkies in a wasteland known as Interzone. It was a vicious yet sensual vision, as real as it was surreal, that sat none too comfortably in the eyes of the establishment. Naked Lunch’s day in the Boston courts would become significant not just for the testimonies from the likes of Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer, but also for being the last of its kind in recent American literature. Upon the book’s vindication in the Massachusetts Supreme Court, Mailer could be counted on for the last word: “We are richer for the record, and we are more impressive as a nation because a publisher can print that record and sell it in an open bookstore, sell it legally.” Indeed, the many trials of Grove Press may have won it the right to publish freely and legally, but more vitally, overturned taboos, raised questions on what might be deemed artistically important and relevant, and effectively put an end to censorship of the printed word in America.

This is not a book Though Naked Lunch was the last notable obscenity trial in America, in the years since, books continue to be prosecuted all over the world for containing “obscene” words and ideas. Hubert Selby Jr’s Last Exit To Brooklyn and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things have been tested in court; Oz Magazine accomplished the feat of exposing the obscenity trial for the farce it was in 1971 in Britain; and more recently, Turkey’s Sel Publishing House faced charges for producing a translated volume of Burroughs’ The Soft Machine.

outmoded dualistic puritanical academic theory-ridden world of values can you fail to see I am talking about the realisation of love.” Similarly, techniques such as Burroughs’ cut-up, James Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness and Ginsberg’s conversational poetry, though initially found to be stylistically and morally repugnant, have since been acknowledged as raw and honest creative expressions. Every burned book, after all, does enlighten the world.

Then again, it’s been consistently proven that yesterday’s obscenity could well become today’s art. It may be that forbidden fruit tends to taste sweeter, but also that the cultural and literary mainstream will always be quick to balk at the introduction of new, forward and wild ideas. While Howl was prosecuted for its then-shocking depiction of homosexuality, Ginsberg clearly fell on Miller’s “side of life” and has said of his poem, “Only if you are thinking in an

And finally, it’s again Henry Miller who delivers the greatest blow to any charge of obscenity in his own “obscene” Tropic of Cancer. “This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character,” he writes, “This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty… what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing.”

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Other Sounds LeFtO bridges worlds on his left-field jams Text: Indran P

World music is often understood as a pan-cultural phenomenon of highly colouristic sensory offerings. But even that sort of undersells LeFtO’s worldevoking sounds. As Europe’s tastemaking ambassador for hip hop, funk, soul, jazz and bass, the Belgian DJ and producer commands a colossal length-andbreadth musicality that brings entire compendiums of music history into kinetic dialogue with each other. Yet, gifting the dance underground with some of its most revelatory sounds is not the

sum of LeFtO’s endeavours. Besides Out of the Blue, his remix album of the catalogue of legendary jazz label, Blue Note, the boundaryburner par excellence has also brought worldmoving attention to the underground in sets alongside greats like Slum Village, De La Soul, Talib Kweli, Jurassic 5 and Gilles Peterson. In town courtesy of local sonic agitators, Darker Than Wax, the restlessly inventive muso stopped by to bring light-giving focus to his worlds of music.

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What was your last stop before Singapore? I was in Seoul, which was very, very good. I was in a cool spot called Cakeshop. It was opened by two foreigners with a big indie music focus. The crowd was cool too. They screamed at every song I played! Before that, I was in Japan. That was great too. You’ve been here a few times. What is it about Singapore that keeps bringing you back? The diversity of the island that is not that big but still holds five million people – I find that really interesting. The mix of the different languages, the tropical weather and the crazy combination of greenery and condos is great. Besides that, Singapore has always had one of the main clubs in Asia in Zouk. I’m also happy with the local music scene. It’s good to see labels like Darker Than Wax and Syndicate doing their thing. Shout out to Van Detta as well. For a small island, Singapore’s vibing. From your vantage point as a tastemaker of cutting-edge sounds, can you remember what your first exposure to music was? For me, it wasn’t really about an album or a song. It was when I saw a local hip hop band on TV that I wanted to be involved in music. The DJ

was scratching and doing body tricks. I fell in love with that and I just immersed myself in hip hop culture after that. Yo! MTV Raps was another thing that pulled me into the musical world of hip hop. I also grew up with classical jazz because my dad was a huge fan. From him and what he liked, I discovered alternatives like spiritual jazz. From that, how did the LeFtO “world” sound come about; what made you want to integrate different sounds from different cultural epochs? I think travelling was the main part of it, just because I got in touch with so much non-Western types of music. Those sounds were so good that I made it my mission to share these sounds with other people. Good, funky and groovy sounds that make people feel good. That’s why I started with hip hop and later moved to the influences of hip hop, like jazz, soul and funk. After that, I explored folk and psych-rock. I just like being all over the place and to keep people guessing. Do you see yourself as an alternative to more popular forms of modern dance music? Maybe. I think every underground music is an alternative to the mainstream stuff. I think the underground is very

important to the mainstream. There’s a lot of influence that the mainstream takes from the underground. But as far as my own music is concerned, I don’t think everyone is into world music or hip hop. But at some point, there just might be something in there that speaks to the individual. EDM, for example, is such a wide umbrella. It doesn’t just include Guetta or “Gangnam Style”. Four Tet’s in there too. So, you don’t think that you’re in competition with the EDM phenomenon? No. I think that underground music is the art inside the mainstream. The mainstream makes music in a formulaic, pattern-following kind of way. But the underground is where people really express themselves. There are lots of mainstream EDM artists that have a different artist name for when they make underground music. Your remix, Out of the Blue, for Blue Note is fantastic. How did that come about and were you nervous about undertaking such a project? The crazy thing is that Blue Note asked me to do a compilation for them, just a compilation. So I said, “Why don’t I do a remix-type thing?” And they were like, “Okay, try it.” And so I sent

in my demo and they used that! I wasn’t nervous about it. The project was just me expressing myself. Of course, you get bad critics that say you can’t touch these old songs. But that’ll end soon. It’s a generational thing. How do you think a DJ can add to the experience of jazz? It’s the feeling; I can’t really pinpoint what it is exactly. In a way, everything I do during my sets is kind of jazzy. It’s a free set. That’s how I see it. In my experience, jazz is that one special thing that people recognise as something else. People go nuts to jazz, not house. But I don’t think a DJ could add anything to a jazz band. Those guys are so good, what’s a DJ going to do? Scratch? I find that corny. I respect DJs who recreate jazz, like D-Styles. He can recreate jazz on two turntables. So, what do you think of what Flying Lotus, a fellow jazzminded DJ, is doing? Oh, that’s my boy! He’s a good friend. I was just with him in Tokyo. I was one of the first guys to bring him over to Europe, back in 2005. I’ve seen him grow from someone who was making demos and who was an intern at Stones Throw into someone who is one of the main figures in the electronic music circuit with his own label and playing crazy venues. What I really admire

about what he’s doing is that he’s showing the kids the jazz, the art and the possibilities. Going back to what you said earlier, do you think older styles like jazz matter to a new generation of kids who’re so used to a diet of a mainstream sounds? Yes, definitely. The media doesn’t get it but youth today can handle so much more than what they get on the radio. The mass media forgets about that; they think it’s all about Gagas. They need to realise that kids these days listen to a lot more. They’re ready for so much more. Even when I play, I see kids go crazy for jazz. I know that it’s a beautiful generation we have. I’ve been asked before why I share my music so freely with the radio and my crowd. I believe it’s our job to share music to get other people interested in different kinds of art. If you give them the names, they’ll go do research and get led to whole new and different kinds of music. That’s the whole point of what I do. Gilles Peterson once called you the “best DJ in the world”. How did that make you feel? Well, Gilles is my spiritual father. Being considered that way by him is just funny. I think I’m just a DJ. The music is way more important. If I didn’t have the music, I wouldn’t be anything. It’s all about the music.

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Night Work Photography: Chuck Reyes Styling: Aaron Kok Styling Assistant: Jessie Koh Models: William @ Upfront, Spencer and Ondrej @ Mannequin

Beanie by H&M

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Coat by H&M and shorts by adidas

Top by Uniqlo, shorts by H&M and corset, stylistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own

Jacket by Sandro, shorts by Uniqlo, socks and shoes by adidas Originals

Sweater by Mash Up and cap, modelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own

T-shirt by Mash Up, shorts by Uniqlo and hat by Sandro

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Shirt by H&M and shorts by Uniqlo

Jacket by H&M, shorts by Sandro, socks and shoes by adidas Originals and sunglasses, modelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own

Distro

Find Bars

Acid Bar 180 Orchard Road, Peranakan Place Alley Bar 180 Orchard Road, Peranakan Place Bikini Bar 50 Siloso Beach Walk Sentosa #01-06 Blu Jaz Cafe 12 Bali Lane Club Street Social 5 Gemmill Lane Maison Ikkoku 20 Kandahar Street Outdoors Café & Bar 180 Orchard Road, Peranakan Place Overeasy One Fullerton, #01-06 Paulaner Brauhaus Millenia Walk, #01-01 Sauce Bar Esplanade Mall, #01-10/12 Tanjong Beach Club 120 Tanjong Beach Walk, Sentosa The Merry Men 86 Robertson Quay, #01-00 The Vault 23 Circular Road

Clubs

Kyō 133 Cecil Street, #B1-02, Keck Seng Tower Taboo 65/67 Neil Street The Butter Factory One Fullerton, #02-02/03/04 Zouk Singapore 17 Jiak Kim Street Mansion Bay 8 Raffles Ave, Esplanade

Hair & Nail Salons

Artisan Hair 42A Lorong Mambong, Holland Village Choeur Raffles Hotel Arcade, #02-23 Essensuals Orchard Central, #B1-20; 1 Vista Exchange Green, #B1-22 Kizuki Raffles Hotel Arcade, #03-03/04 Manicurious 41 Beach Road Next Salon 271A Holland Ave, Holland Village; ION Orchard, #03-24A Prep Mandarin Gallery #03-34 Toni&Guy 170 East Coast Road; 24B Lorong Mambong; Rochester Mall, #02-01

F&B Establishments

Bar Bar Black Sheep 879 Cherry Ave; 86 Robertson Quay, #01-04; 362 Tanjong Katong Coq & Balls 6 Kim Tian Road Cupcakes With Love Tampines 1 #03-22 Doodle! Pasta Oasia Hotel, Novena Square 2 Estee 47 Duxton Road Forty Hands 78 Yong Siak Street, #01-12 Habitat Coffee 223 Upper Thomson Road IndoChine Restaurant 47 Club Street Island Creamery Serene Centre, #01-03; Holland Village Shopping Mall, #01-02 IZY 27 Club Street Kuro Clarke Quay, Blk 3C #01-11 Little Part 1 Cafe 15 Jasmine Road Loysel’s Toy 66 Kampung Bugis, Ture, #01-02 Oblong Place 10 Maju Avenue Oceans of Seafood PasarBella, #02-06 Open Door Policy 19 Yong Siak Street Outpost St. James Power Station, #01-11 Papa Palheta 150 Tyrwhitt Road PARK. 281 Holland Ave #01-01 PasarBella 200 Turf Club Rd Potato Head Folk 36 Keong Saik Rd Selfish Gene Cafe 40 Craig Road Shots 90 Club Street Skyve 10 Windstedt Road, Block E, #01-17 SPRMRKT 2 McCallum Street SuperTree 18 Gardens by the Bay, #03-01 Sushi Burrito 100 Tras Street Symmetry 9 Jalan Kubor #01-01 The Forbidden City Clarke Quay 3A, Merchant’s Court, #01-02 The Fabulous Baker Boy The Foothills, 70 River Valley Road Veganburg 44 Jalan Eunos; Golden Shoe Carpark, #01-28D; Marina Bay Financial Centre Tower 3, #02-05; 200 Turf Club Road, #01-32 Wheeler’s Yard 28 Lorong Ampas

Hotels

Hotel 1929 50 Keong Saik Road Klapsons The Boutique Hotel 15 Hoe Chiang Road New Majestic Hotel 31-27 Bukit Pasoh Road Sultan Boutique Hotel101 Jalan Sultan, #01-01 The Club Hotel 28 Ann Siang Road The Quincy Hotel 22 Mount Elizabeth W Hotel 21 Ocean Way, Sentosa Cove Wanderlust Hotel 2 Dickson Road Wangz 231 Outram Road

Schools

LaSalle College of the Arts 1 McNally Street, Block E, Level 1 Reception Nafa School of Performing Arts 151 Bencoolen Street NTU Students Activities Centre 50 Nanyang Avenue, Level 1 NUS Radio Pulze National University of Singapore, Office of Student Affairs, Level 3, Yusof Ishak House, 31 Lower Kent Ridge Tembusu College University Town, NUS, 28 College Avenue East, #B1-01 Thunder Rock School 227A Upper Thomson Road

Fashion Boutiques

actually Orchard Gateway #03-18 agnès b. ION Orchard, #03-24; Wisma Atria, Isetan Orchard; Shaw House, Isetan Scotts; Raffles City Shopping Centre, #01-26; Takashimaya Department Store, L2 Ben Sherman Paragon, #03-48; VivoCity, #01-24 Dr. Martens Orchard Central, #03-05; Wheelock Place, #02-17A Flesh Imp Bugis Junction, #03-22 Fred Perry Orchard Cineleisure, #03-07A; Ion Orchard, #B3-01 Front Row Raffles Hotel Arcade, #02-09 Granny’s Day Out Peninsula Shopping Centre, #03-25 J Shoes City Link Mall, #B1-22 Leftfoot Orchard Cineleisure, #02-07A; The Cathay, #01-19/20 Little Man 7C Binjai Park Mdreams Wheelock Place, B2-03 New Balance *Scape, #02-15; 112 East Coast Road, #02-25; Tampines Mall, #02-18;

Velocity At Novena Square, #01-39/42 Porter International Wisma Atria #03-06 P.V.S Orchard Cineleisure #02-05 Rockstar Orchard Cineleisure, #03-08 STARTHREESIXTY Wheelock Place Unit #02-08; Marina Square #02-179, VivoCity, #02-09; Paragon, #03-08 Strangelets 7 Yong Siak Street Surrender Raffles Hotel Arcade, #02-31 The Denim Store Mandarin Gallery, #03-09/10/11 Topshop & Topman Knightsbridge, #01-05/06; Ion Orchard, #B2-01 & #B3-01B; Raffles City Shopping Centre, #02-39; Tampines 1 Mall, #01-26/27 & #02-16; VivoCity, #01-72 Vans Orchard Central, #01-22/23; Marina Square, #02-160; Bugis Junction, #01-43/44; Orchard Cineleisure, #03-07; VivoCity, #02-111/113 Victoria Jomo 9 Haji Lane Wesc myVillage @ Serangoon Gardens, #01-04; 112 Katong, #02-19

And Everywhere Else

BooksActually 9 Yong Siak Street Bottles & Bottles Parade Road, #B1-83K/L, Parkway Parade; 10 Tampines Central 1 #B1-28; 131 Tanglin Road Tudor Court Shopping Gallery Camera Rental Centre 23 New Bridge Road, #03-01 Grafunkt Park Mall, #02-06; 85 Playfair Road, Tong Yuan Ind. Bldg, #02-01 Hairloom 11 Collyer Quay, The Arcade, #03-08 Lomography Gallery Store 295 South Bridge Road, #01-01 Mini Habitat (Showroom) 27 Leng Kee Road OCBC Frank Vivocity, #01-160; Singapore Management University, Li Ka Shing Library, #B1-43; Nanyang Technological University, Academic Complex North, Ns3 01-01; Singapore Polytechnic Foodcourt 5, (Fc512) PACT Orchard Central, #02-16/17/18/19 Show Ning Lab 751 North Bridge Road, #02-02 Supplies & Co Raffles Hotel Arcade,#03-07 Tokyobikes 38 Haji Lane The Central 6 Eu Tong Seng Street The Golden Rule Barber Co. 188 Race Course Road, #01-02 The Panic Room 311A Geylang Road The Substation 45 Armenian Street What He Wants 181 Orchard Road, #03-30; The Cathay, #01-06 Vinylicious Records 35 Selegie Road, #01-26 Parklane Shopping Mall

Rest of the World

Zouk Kuala Lumpur 113 Jalan Ampang, Kuala Lumpur Malaysia

Review

Text: Indran P

Jack White: Lazaretto

Jack White already had his name on the sign-in book of rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest musicians with The White Stripes alone. Sure, The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather both issued varyingly fresh gusts of sound that White has made his mission, but neither band came close to the bewitching interplay between the raw, gravitydefying virtuosity and the winking, almost defiant incompleteness that the Stripes perfected. Following the lulls and hiatuses of his post-Stripes bands, White went solo and on 2011’s Blunderbuss, the first record under his own name and inspired by his divorce, fleshed out the blues-rock he once deconstructed so gleefully to darkly triumphant effect. It may have seemed like he had nothing left to prove after

all this but Lazaretto, and the sheer monolith that it is has come to keep us guessing all over again. Written and recorded over a two-year period at White’s famed home studio in Nashville, Lazaretto is the most carefully considered and time-consuming project that White has ever worked on (White Blood Cells was finished in a week, Elephant, in two). And the devil really is in the details – by any standard, this is the most imposing, schizophrenic, indulgent and challenging work of White’s career. No song, whether veiny stompers like “Lazaretto” or the audacious instrumental pile driver, “High Ball Stepper” or fluttery folk ballads like “Temporary Ground” and “Entitlement”, is predictable or one-dimensional. This is outlined in dark blue on the opener, “Three Women”,

where the gregarious opening keys-and-drums phrasing gets updated throughout with clashing, interlacing piano, pullulating drum patterns, sustained organ notes and even a careening harmonica solo near its end. As our generation’s six-string saviour, White’s guitar-playing has always been central to anything he touches, but more so here. “I didn’t spend as much time on my guitar sounds and solos on Blunderbuss”, he recently said. And this heightened attention to the detail explodes all over the pedal-heavy blitz of the aforementioned showstoppers. The title track’s lyrical angst is more than matched by acid-drenched riffs and a freeze-dried solo that is a note-by-note scorcher. “High Ball Stepper” and “That Black Bat Licorice” show just how well gravelly, overdriven guitars and amok fiddle

sweeps compliment each other if left in the hands of the right madman. Just past the album’s midpoint, on the deceptively upbeat “Just One Drink”, White spits the line, “You drink water and I drink gasoline”. Taken in its original love-lorn context or in the fire-breathing connotations just as applicable to White, it is an apt estimation of where he’s at with Lazaretto. As rock ‘n’ roll’s last few visionary-eccentrics, he’s made something that most definitely and most winningly puts him beyond the pale. After all, a lazaretto is a quarantined area for lepers, so whatever White has long contracted, we hope it keeps festering.

Review

Little Dragon: Nabuma Rubberband

Ought: More Than Any Other Day

“Is there something you were trying to express? / Something you needed? something you needed? / Is there something you were trying to express? / And you can’t get on without it, and you can’t get on without it”, goes one of the many plainspoken, blearyeyed exhortations that litter the entirety of Day. At first listen, lines like these have the enchantingly jarring effect of being instantly relatable but too much so. But once the obfuscating veneer of self-consciousness is shed, it becomes so much easier to appreciate the bare-bones beauty that this Montreal outfit brings on its debut. Transplanting punk and post-

punk from their conventional (read: aesthetically certified) confines and situating them in the beating heart of the inescapable rigours of everyday life, Ought elevate bleeding earnestness to a powerfully poignant art form. Bringing to mind the rabble-loving bluster of Fugazi on “Today More Than Any Other Day”, with frontman Tim Beeler’s urgently screamed missive, “And everything’s gonna be okay together / Today, we’re all, all, the f**king same”, the band later evokes the metallic thrum of the Velvet Underground on closer, “Gemini”, rounding off an endearing and exhilarating album that’s already resting on our AOTY shortlist.

Little Dragon was last seen on some of the best songs on Big Boi’s chameleonic 2012 sophomore, Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumours, in service of an all-encompassing metapop. Likewise, Nabuma is the parchment for a similarly widescreen pop manifesto but unlike Big Boi’s on Vicious, the band’s grab-bag approach to pop here doesn’t accomplish enough to define it in any singular way. The musicianship, though, is undeniably competent, with the bossa nova rhythms of opener, “Mirror”, flipping to the electro-pop of lead single, “Klapp Klapp”, and the dusty ‘80s synth of “Pretty Girl”. But beyond tipping its hat to pop’s maximal sprawl these days, it doesn’t offer anything to the listener in the way of distinction. It doesn’t help that frontwoman, Yukimi Nagano’s lyrics are mostly cake toppings that go no further than skim on the surface of prosaic emotions. To this end, the refrain on “Paris” packs the vaguest of punches: “Spirit divide, drift alone / I waved a goodbye, I carried on / Trams pass, my black dress / Folded on a big mess”. Ambitious, over-diverse and nearing “generic”, Nabuma shows that volume and scope are still no substitute for personality.

Sam Smith: In the Lonely Hour

Wearing two crowns as the princeling of pop, having topped the BBC’s Sound of 2014 and easing to the forefront of the zeitgeist as the Critic’s Choice at this year’s BRIT Awards, and for being one of the guilty parties involved in the most danceable non-Pharrellfeaturing song of 2013 with “Latch”, Smith surely had to come through on Lonely Hour, his first full-length showing. And let’s just say that the good thing about it is that he doesn’t give you a lot to be discouraged by. Inspired by being in the “dark place” of “unrequited love”, this album is writ large with the familiar. Pianos, strings and guitars are all melded into a sepia-hued tapestry, through which Smith’s legitimately gorgeous vocals are laced, conveying the jilted-lover clichés – aching hurt, sorrow and veiled anger – that his experience has left him with. This stylised trip of aggrieved, late-night soul where Smith plaintively coos, “When you call me baby, I know I’m not the only one,” on chief deal breaker, “I’m Not the Only One”, is exactly just that – a demonstration of a cautiously well-followed safe-bet formula. Our sincerest hope is that he draws more inspiration from album opener, “Money on My Mind” – that is princely brilliance.

Damon Albarn: Everyday Robots

Just because of the nature and status of his earliest band’s work, Albarn’s contemporary output will always brand him as a take-me-for-who-Iam-now kind of performer. And as his first solo offering apart from his far-ranging collaborative projects, Everyday Robots is every bit the high-stakes statement piece that its title defines it as. Personal, while hewing to the preferences of modern radio palettes hungry for in-vogue melancholic beats and elaborate textures, this album takes soul and folk to interesting territories that Albarn has ventured into before, but never in such an uninsistent and poignant fashion. The vivid mosaics of “Hollow Ponds” and “Lonely Press Play” testify to the burning of the barrier of affected cool here, especially on the latter’s hook, “When you’re lonely press play / ‘Cos you’re not resolved in your heart / You’re waiting for me / To improve / Right here”. Brain Eno even shows up on the mid-album drug lament epic, “You and Me”, and on the gospel-kissed closer, “Heavy Seas of Love”, for a quietly stirring vocal performance that chimes in with the many other sounds and worlds that populate this horizon-spanning album.

Review

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: Days of Abandon

Three years after its fantastic sophomore, Belong, and the departure of three of its original members along the way, leaving just frontman and guitarist, Kip Berman, and drummer, Kurt Feldman, the Pains are still twee as f**k. Sounding more explicit than this verdict, Days is the fuzzy, ethereal, filigreed sound of past Pains records taken to the haziest extreme, with all its rough edges filed down for graceful measure – and it works. With the mix engineer of My Bloody Valentine’s late-career third album, Andy Savours, overseeing production here, Days is yet another evolutionary phase for the band. And joined by A Sunny Day in Glasgow’s Jen Goma on vocals and horns-maestro for Beirut and Arcade Fire, Kelly Pratt, this incarnation of the band serves up indie pop dynamism that is simultaneously wispy but tactile. From janglecentric ditties like “Kelly” and “Masokissed”, to the gleefully sugar-high emo anthems like “Eurydice” and “Simple and Sure”, Days is pop pleasure with just the right dollop of reflection.

The Black Keys: Turn Blue

The Roots: ...And Then You Shoot Your Cousin

In one particular essay from a series of heartfelt and indignant ones about how “Hip Hop Failed Black America”, ?uestlove recently commented that hip hop, “originally evolved to paint portraits of real people and handle real problems at close range”, is today a form where “the winners, the top dogs, make art mostly about their own victories and the victory of their genre”. These concerns are writ large on Cousin, a concept album that explores the bleakness behind the vapidity of contemporary hip hop. At 33 minutes and with more than half its 11 songs not breaking the three-

minute mark, this is the shortest work by the band. Moodier and darker than anything The Roots’ve done, Cousin also feels like less of an “album” and more of a cultural diagnosis expressed through fragments of discordant jazz and fractured bar-on-bar delivery. And even though isolating tracks is near impossible because of the album’s airtight, hermetic nature, the closer, “Tomorrow”, is a bruisingly beautiful clincher. Taken as a whole, though, this is one of the most accomplished and daring works to come out in a long time – hip hop’s own S.O.S. signal.

Shrugging off the early impressions they made as throwback blues-rockers with somethin’ heartfelt to say, The Black Keys have become a veritable Big Name in the million-selling, arena-filling, celebrity-beefing sense of the term. But that also means that each successive record has veered further and further away from the make-good-with-what-wehave indie ethos that got ‘em noticed at all. Turn Blue is thus far the hardest left-turn on the band’s rolled-sleeves, blue-collar rock, serving up as it does, bristling, sludgy psych-rock and soul, helped along by the Mad Hattertouch of producer, Danger Mouse. All this also makes Turn Blue the riskiest postfame work that the Keys have ever attempted since slick, surefire, arena standards are noticeably missing here. But that’s completely fine. As the extended opener, “Weight of Love”, shows, with its crushed-out but broodingly atmospheric melodies, the Keys have earned the right to do whatever the hell they want. It testifies to the band’s keen musicianship and artful adherence to their concept that even slow songs like the singles, “Turn Blue” and “Fever”, are interestingly absorbing and everything unlike the languid, trudging duds they could’ve been. Turn Blue may not seduce the mainstream with Grammywinning ease, but that’s what great about it.

Conor Oberst: Upside Down Mountain

“I’m blessed with a heart that doesn’t stop”, Oberst proclaims on “Zigzagging Toward the Light”, in the adolescent half-smirk that made him a long-standing fixture in the emo pantheon. Like the very, very few in his class, Oberst has remained trend-immune throughout the evolution of the indie and pop worlds, maintaining an carefully crafted evergreen sound that you just know is his. As such, Mountain is a reprise of his verbose, patently indulgent meditations, but this time, pared down with studiosculpted precision for more immediate, pop-py heft that is in no way compromising. The rise and of falls of teenage times which then come into focus in the trial-by-fire process of adult life forms the lyrical length-and-breadth of the record, with a big band set-up of heaving folk pop and Americana giving compelling vent to his alternately wistful and fable-esque lyrical wanderings. The standout, “Time Forgot”, for example, is a lovely, crystalline ballad, where, in hesitant, quivering tones, Oberst awkwardly gushes, “They say everyone has a choice to make / To be loved / Or to be free”. Wide-eyed and punishmentweary as ever, Oberst is still undoubtable.

Happy Hour

Text: Jeremy Fong

Bewitching Brew Bruichladdich Black Art 4 walks on the dark side While the Scotch whisky industry now largely runs on industrial processes, the Bruichladdich distillery, centered in Islay in Scotland, holds true to its commitment to artisanal and finely nurtured product. It’s not just a century’s worth of heritage that Bruichladdich’s got on its back, but also integrity and pedigree that infuse its single malt whisky with heart and soul. And it’s that vein that Bruichladdich mines for the fourth incarnation of its Black Art, a whisky that delves

into the soul and spirit of the artisan, while wielding a fair amount of secret alchemy. Exploring the esoteric relationship between spirit and wood, Black Art 4 marks a personal and magical voyage for Bruichladdich’s master distiller, Jim McEwan, into the heart of the independent distillery. This marriage of the finest American and French oak, as well as McEwan’s own mysterious formulae, has birthed an exquisite texture that’s at once sleek and sensual, on top of a mesmerising aroma that mixes rich yet fruity notes. A limited 1990 vintage that’s been matured entirely on Islay, Black Art 4 is also deeply desirable for being mellow on the taste buds and ready to complement your every sunset. Each sip of the Black Art 4 conveys the passion and integrity of Bruichladdich, and rarely is a message more handsomely manifest.

Party Spirit Desperados brings good times Because no party should go unaccompanied by great fun, spirits and that amount of spice, Desperados has arrived in town to make the very best of your every night out. The legend begins almost a decade ago in France, where Desperados emerged as the planet’s first tequila-flavoured beer, landed itself directly on the European party circuit and boldly stood its ground. Having just launched itself in Singapore, this amber-hued party-starter isn’t just intent on quenching thirsts, but also on delivering a rich and vibrant experience. As a beer flavoured with tequila, Desperados guarantees the double whammy of the sweet zest of tequila, and the light bitterness and refreshing citric notes of a premium lager brew. However off the wall, this mix of spirit and beer has birthed a distinct and original flavour that surely lives up to Desperados’ taste for adventure. It also comes further hallmarked by a golden tan and by a 5.9% APV that promises a sparkly kick to your beer-drinking exploits. With one of these in hand, you know the party has only just begun.

A VISION OF

ELEGANCE

Martell VSOP unveils Elegantology, a philosophy that embraces the elegant life and empowers you to rise above with style.

Elegantology represents an independence of mind and spirit that encapsulates style, identity and taste. It celebrates individuals whose unique style, selfconfidence and charisma are honed by a sense of curiosity and discovery that defines them as possessing the essence of elegance. The philosophy of Elegantology focuses on three aspects of contemporary life that represent Martell’s point of view on elegance: Look; Music and Bar. Look goes beyond surface appearances; it encompasses the confidence, charm and style of an individual. Also crucial to the essence of elegance is the Bar, which sees the individual embracing the finer pleasures and appreciating the aromas, textures, and subtle favours of a good drink. Likewise, Music manifests itself in the elegant life through a simple appreciation of authenticity and craft, which transcends genres. Music is a vital channel for personal expression and a great testament to the art of elegance.

Stay current with the latest events, style tips and music playlists compiled by the Martell VSOP influencers by following Martell Singapore on Facebook (facebook.com/martellsg)

Martell VSOP’s vision of Elegantology is brought to life by a group of individuals who define this spirit of holistic elegance. Well respected in their separate fields, they continue to redefine the standards of their craft, all the while epitomising the art of elegance. One individual who personifies the philosophy of Elegantology is Daryl Chan,

partner of KIN, a multi-label boutique and Sifr, a menswear label. Recently, along with a few like-minded businesses, Daryl also opened a multi-faceted store called PACT, that offers a variety of creative services. Building on his skills in branding and creative aspects of both establishments, Daryl has broadened his range of expertise to now oversee the business development as well as the marketing and events-planning arms of his companies. Like the best success stories, Daryl has fused his interests and inspirations, such as graphic design, street art, photography and music, with a personal vision and an untiring dedication to emerge as a maverick in his field. And just as admirable is the fact that despite all his accomplishments, Daryl continues to remain true to his craft and passion with an inspiring personal philosophy: “Design only because you have a clear purpose and want to make a difference in society”. In matters of style, Daryl is likewise composed and assured. “Elegance, to me, is a quiet confidence. It’s about understanding yourself and being comfortable in your own skin”, he says, adding, “It’s the confidence of knowing that your personal style has been there all along”. What a touch of class.

Enjoy Martell Cognac Responsibly

Nosh

To The Joy Of The Table

CAD Café serves up the hearty and homely Text: Indran P

With a heart-on-sleeve approach to all it stands for, CAD, short for Coffee, Art and Design, has established itself at Haji Lane with an array of scrumptious choices from a menu that looks like it was planned with a winking sense of whimsy. Besides its range of gourmet coffees, craft beers and juices, CAD also counts elements of Vietnamese and Mediterranean cuisine amongst its wares, all in a setting that is quaint and invitingly relaxed. But that’s not the only thing that sets CAD apart from gardenvariety cafés. Begun as a passion project by Chad Samson and Dave Ahier, DJs from funk and hip hop collective, the Pushin’On Crew, CAD’s décor and music curation also reflects the art, and undoubtedly, tunes that inform the fresh sounds we’ve been hearing from the Crew. As Dave himself says, CAD was inspired by “anything that

promotes discussion”. And on that note, let’s get to the food. Across its menu, CAD offers a gastronomic trip through a multi-cultural spectrum of irresistible flavours. For breakfast alone, a refreshing fruit salad, served with a

side of natural yogurt and honey, sits alongside a kingly beef sausage omelet that is topped with spicy Brazilian beef sausage sautéed with red peppers and onions. For those looking for something a little closer to home, there’s the Breakfast Banh-Mi, a Vietnamese delicacy, where a

toasted baguette plays host to flash scrambled eggs in peanut oil and chilli. Like the Western options, this Asian one is destined to deftly and surely set off your pleasure centers. For lunch, CAD’s five sandwiches promise a delectably homely flourish,

with the grilled veggie Panini, the Cajun prawn baguette, the roast beef Panini, the beef, bacon and brie sandwich, and the smoked salmon bagel, all ensuring that your mid-day nourishment needs are more than met. Special mention must be given to the latter offering for its light but savoury payload. Dinner, too, is a lush affair at CAD, where you can criss-cross the globe’s flavourscape with Vietnamese rice paper rolls, jerk chicken wings, Cajun potato wedges served with lemon mayonnaise and even a meze platter of hummus, tzatziki, curried avocado and beetroot yogurt served with the warm Turkish flatbread, pide. And all this amidst a patently laidback ambience where the blissedout tunes of J Dilla interlace with funk, ‘80s boogie, disco and drum ‘n’ bass. If you’re looking for an oasis in the city, CAD is it. CAD is located at 23 Haji Lane

Advertorial

Through Eyes Of Us Thais An all-Thai experience with Chang Beer As Thailand’s top-selling and most recognised beer, there’s no doubting the passion and pride that Chang Beer’s got for its native land. Indeed, Chang isn’t just lovingly brewed and crafted in Thailand with the finest of ingredients, but has emerged as one of Southeast Asia’s top beers and an icon in Thai culture. With that, Chang Beer has been well-poised to help present the recent Through The Eyes of Us Thais (TEOUT), a photographic exhibition that offers a view of Thailand through the eyes of its locals.

Thai Sights Masterminded by Nara Thai Cuisine Singapore, and with the support of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, the showcase was launched in May at Resorts World Sentosa, unveiling some of the country’s up-and-coming photographers, as much as its many scenic gems. Amongst the many stunning locations framed in this exhibition were Wat Phu Tok in Nong Khai, Mu Koh Hong in Krabi and Sam Pan Boak in Ubon Ratchathani, which have been captured by Thai photographers, Kit Bencharongkhul and Rattanachot Srikhongmuang. Following an opening ceremony attended by the starstudded likes of Tata Young, Mario Maurer and Poyd Treechada, who shared their obvious affection for their hometown, TEOUT added sounds to its many sights with a night of electrifying Thai music.

Thai Sounds TEOUT’s Thai Music Showcase, which happened at the neighbouring The Coliseum at Resorts World, was certainly thrilling for its line-up of Thailand’s premium musical acts. There was Tata Young, who showed up with her sassy brand of pop music and compelling choreography, as well as Big Ass, Bangkok’s premier punk rock act who kicked out the jams with its hardcore shapes and sounds. Last but not least, Thanida Thamwimon (who also fronts Thai rock band, Endorphine, as Da) stepped in to charm one and all with her soulful singing chops. Throughout the night, Chang Beer didn’t just provide cool and smooth accompaniment to all the on-stage action, but was just the brew to complement a total Thai experience. Cheers to that!

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Text: Indran P

4 July @ Velvet Underground – Dance

12 July @ kyo

12 July @ Zouk

Para//el presents Alex Niggemann (GER)

4 July @ kyo

Danny Krivit (US)

As the United States celebrates its 238th birthday, the nation’s own hip hop, house and soul titan, Danny Krivit, will pay tribute to the birthplace of those storied movements with a celebratory extravaganza of sounds. Establishing his roots in musical meccas like The Loft and Paradise Garage, and subsequently playing alongside legends like Grandmaster Flash and Africa Bambaata, Krivit cemented his reputation as amongst the most prolific mixers and scratchers around. And later, with the rest of the revered Body and Soul team, including Francois K and Joe Clausell, Krivit brought good vibes and good times to millions the world over. But don’t just take our word for it. Head over and get swept up yourself. Entry: $20/25 (incl. one drink)

Berliner, Alex Niggemann is a bona fide house and techno stalwart (but you already knew that) whose kinetically spellbinding wares have taken over the very summit of the dance world in venues like Space and Privilege in Ibiza, D-Edge in Brazil and Berlin’s Watergate. And with ubiquitous and chartdominating releases like “Don’t Wait”, “Lately” and “Just A Little” going far and deep into dance music’s bloodstream, you just know that this night’s one of those you’ll feel sorry you missed. Entry: $28/33 (incl. two drinks)

5 July @ Art Bar

Straatosphere Celebrates The Big One

Straatosphere, Singapore’s fastest growing urban lifestyle portal, has spent a whole year schooling y’all in the art of fresh with its sartorial and lifestyle picks and now, celebrations are in order. There’ll be lots of celebratory good vibes to go around as Art Bar resident Dave Does and Darker Than Wax’s Marcoweibel and Funk Bast*rd lock arms to serve up the party-ready sonics while a collection of limited edition sneakers curated from Singapore’s biggest collectors ups all swag levels. Entry: RSVP at tinyurl.com/ thebigoneRSVP

Transfix presents Super8 & Tab (FIN)

Oliver Deutschmann (GER)

This night’s for the inhabitants of the underground. For over a decade, this Berlin DJ and producer has reigned supreme in the alternative lane with a bristlingly raw and analogueinfused strain of techno, that really takes no prisoners, as tracks like “New World Order” and “Fever” boldly demonstrate. Those who know, know. And for those who don’t, head over to be in on techno’s best kept secret. Entry: $20/25 (incl. one drink)

Responsible for gifting the trance world with its most sweeping anthems in recent times, in the form of “Helsinki Scorchin’” and “First Aid”, this duo has since been unstoppable. And wise to this, the god/father, Armin Van Buuren himself, recently sought the dudes out of a remix of his own songs. This night, come experience what led Armin there. Entry: $28/33 (incl. two drinks)

13 July @ Tanjong Beach Club

JBAG (FRA)

In honour of Bastille Day, TBC’s keeping it French with JBAG, fashionista favourites who’ve spun for the likes of Vivienne Westwood, Givenchy, Colette and Gareth Pugh. For fresh, crisp cuts of indie, electro, disco and funk, this night’ll be tough to beat. Entry: For table and daybed reservations, email book@tanjongbeachclub.com or call +65 9750 5323

Listings

85 19 July @ kyo

18 July @ Velvet Underground – Dance

Kitsuné Club Night with Gildas (FRA)

There’s not a lot more that needs to be said about the tastemaking powerhouse that is Gildas. As one of the two honchos behind the Kitsuné label, he ushered in the scintillating sounds of acts such as Digitalism, Simian Mobile Disco, Boys Noize and Delphic, and rung in a new era of pop and dance music for the world to enjoy and for idolisers to emulate. Check out our chat with him and come see him at work after. Entry: $28/33 (incl. two drinks)

Iron Curtis (GER)

That he mines the wisdom of the temples of Chicago, Detroit and Hamburg is just one reason behind Johannes Paluka’s formidable moniker. There’s the bracing power of his sound too, where deep house and soulful techno are cross-pollinated for devastating and melodic effect. Savvy labels like Mirau, Morris Audio, JackOff and Mule Electronic have all picked up on this and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t do likewise. Entry: $20/25 (incl. one drink)

25 July @ Velvet Underground – Dance

Para//el presents Miss Kittin (FRA)

Leftfield to the letter, Miss Kittin has been transforming techno, rave classics and acid house into fierce new shapes unrelentingly for two decades now. There aren’t very many DJs with megahits like “Frank Sinatra” and “1982” around, and rarer still are those whose vocals figure as powerfully as their beats in their tracks. Entry: $28/33 (incl. two drinks)

26 July @ Gem Bar

25 July @ kyo

Hey Gildas! How have you been and what have you been occupied with lately? At the moment we have great music releases coming from Maison Kitsuné: Kilo Kish, Years and Years. We have also the new Café Kitsuné in the jardin du Palais Royal in Paris plus a great new Maison Kitsuné clothing line for men and women. What do you think is the most important ingredient in Kitsuné’s enduring success? We are very curious and we question ourselves all the time. We also love to propose new concepts. What was your philosophy behind the brand, and has it changed over the years? We are still looking to try to give pleasure to people in different ways. You were part of Daft Punk’s inner circle from the very beginning. What was it like working with them during their early years? I was very lucky to be working with them for more than a decade. I learnt a lot from them. First, that there are no rules and second, that style is very important. What sounds interest you, personally? I love great songs. I look for emotional songs.

Jazzy Sport (JP)

Edu Imbernon (ES)

One great thing about dance music is that it is constantly getting updated by visionary upstarts and Valencia’s Edu Imbernon is up there with the best of them. From clinching “Best Underground Track of the Year” on Beatport in the late aughts to a perpetually booked-out touring schedule that has seen him take his luscious blend of electronica, house and indie to venues like Watergate, fabric and Space Ibiza, the Spaniard has most certainly graduated into a brand all his own. Entry: $20/25 (incl. one drink)

31 July @ *SCAPE, The Ground Theatre

No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. Japanese hip hop institution, Jazzy Sport will indeed bring its trove of beats, breaks and grooves to our shores for one legendary night of body-moving, showstopping virtuosity. From its revered stable of artists, Grooveman Spot and Masaya “Fantasista” Kobayashi will take to the decks and spin you right round.

Slowdive

Yes, Slowdive is back and we get to be in on it! Playing one of its first few reunion shows in our very shores, the English shoegaze legends’ presence here promises nothing short of a retrospective of a true golden age. Incandescent and sweepingly beautiful gems like “Shine” and “Spanish Air” will be delivered with that airy, ethereal touch that no other band has successfully or convincingly replicated. Sweet, crushing grandiosity this way comes and for that, we are immensely grateful. Save the date for this glorious second coming. Tickets: $75 (early bird), $90 (standard) and $100 (door), available at eventclique.com

Parties

Music Matters Live with HP 2014 @ Clarke Quay Text: Indran P Images: Branded Ltd.

It’s been dubbed many things – “Asia’s biggest music festival”; “the only Business2Business2fan event in Asia”; Jason Mraz called it,“TED meets SXSW”, but, snappy descriptors aside, Music Matters is exactly just a glorious celebration of music across its many different facets and fields. Indeed, for the understanding of just how music is produced and delivered to fans and consumers in the Internet age of today and for revelling in a fantastic musical offering, there is no other in Asia. Returing for another revelatory run of performances and conferences from 21 to 24 May, Music Matters 2014

did the good work it always does but, this time, with more bands, speakers and talks than ever before. And while it’s always left us being spoilt for choice, this year’s was something else entirely. Join us in our reliving of a week of a magnificent immersion into all things music, because, as you very well know, music matters.

Parties

Sound advice As an enterprise that exists for the flourishing of the production, consumption and appreciation of music, Music Matters Live unspooled its vast array of forums and conferences in a focused and targeted manner across the umbrellas of Music, Digital, Social and Sponsorship in a multi-track grouping aptly dubbed “All That Matters”. Wise to the fact that music these days isn’t simply about making an album and playing shows, these key pillars were established as irreducible to the ecosystem that sustains both the creative and commercial facets of music today. And with a panel featuring 210 speakers who, as industry leaders, tastemakers, executives and performers, have contributed singularly to the cause and craft of music over the years, “All That Matters” proved to be the sounding board for a wildly insightful exchange of ideas. Like it has shown year after year, the Music arm of the conferences were curated around an immediate and unequivocal on-the-ground sense of the health of the industry. In the conference, Sold Out: The Future of Live Music in Asia, five delegates from the biggest regional and global creative agencies, such as Live Nation, Artist Voice and Livescape, deliberated on the challenges facing concert promoters hoping to book shows for their acts in the highly saturated Asian market of 2014. But acknowledging that as long as ticket prices were reasonable and the acts didn’t overlap, the panel concluded that the future for live entertainment in Asia could only get brighter. And that’s good news for all of us. Then, addressing the burgeoning bloom of the indie phenomenon as a viable

creative and business model, All By Myself: Building a Successful Independent Label shone a light on how four indie players, including Daniel Glass, Founder/President of Glassnote Records and Andrew Lazonby, Founder of Hostess Entermainment, defied the odds and built their brands, all the while following their own uncompromising philosophies. Emphasising the entrepreneurial spirit necessary for an indie label’s survival in the long haul, the panel agreed that imprints had to be wholly in service of the music of their stable of artists and not the other way around. And on this point, Lazonby was emphatic, stressing that the Hostess Club Weekender series was inspired by the aim of getting people to “discover, explore, engage and fall in love with artists and their works”. But beyond brand strategies, Glass, in a separate keynote interview, Hitting the Right Note, affirmed that unfaltering endurance in the face of adversity is an indie’s best asset. “Be relentless”, he urged as he recounted how Phoenix weathered the “torture” of taking 58 weeks to break into the charts with their first hit.

the beating heart of All That Matters: that Asia too was fertile ground for spectacular musical endeavour.

Apl.De.Ap speaking to Dom Lau at Music Matters

Meanwhile, as aspirations were given urging vent by Music Matters, back-end strategies in the Digital, Social and Sponsorship realms were being developed. Tackling issues that are inextricable from the modern music marketplace like advertising, analytics, mobile streaming services, content innovation and establishing a brand identity in cyberspace, these pillars of All That Matters both furnished a concise walk-through of the mechanisms that powered the delivery systems of the music industry and mapped out just how these platforms and services could be streamlined and fine-tuned for greater efficiency and ultimately, a better and more fulfilling experience for music-lovers. By making the esoteric relatable and relevant, these conferences were amongst the many triumphs of All That Matters.

And chiming in on how music is ultimately the survival of the most hardy and dynamic, the Filipino-American rapper, Apl.de.ap of the The Black Eyed Peas, in a keynote interview of his own, spoke on his band’s rise from a niche sidewalk attraction in the streets of California to the second most downloaded band in the world. Unlike pop’s usual rags-to-riches tales, this one was a lot closer to home. And furthering that note, Apl shared his vision of “starting a movement in Southeast Asia” with his new entertainment and branding company, BMBX. Leaving us with, “I wanna be the Jay Z of Asia”, he echoed Scott Dinsdale (Accenture) with Guy Nicolucci (Emmy winning screenwriter) at Social Matters

Parties

Live and direct Ash Grunwald

Empra

Festivals aren’t just places to see bands playing music, they’re also places for wish fulfilment. To this end, this year’s incarnation of Music Matters Live more than delivered but with one crucial twist: the bands on the line-up were unsigned, undiscovered talent that people just had to experience. And true to its christening and reputation as the largest music festival in Asia, the mega-shindig offered a mammoth bounty of sounds from over 60 bands from 18 countries that played more than 170 shows in 13 different venues across Clarke Quay that was, thanks to the good people of YouTube, simulcast online. With every sonic strain across the spectrum of music more than ably represented and with an infectiously uproarious energy that spread from the performers to the crowds, it was four unforgettably heady days of good times, vibes and sounds. Here’s all the fun we had.

In the multi-national, pansonic spirit of the festival, Irish indie rock and electo outfit, Hogan, were given the honours of sounding off with the opening set of the festival at Crazy Elephant. Across the street, just a while later, at various venues, Filipino r&b singer, Quest, whose sensual, slow-drip croon has earned him a collab with Joss Stone herself, local rock chameleons, The Pinholes, and Indian electro-guitar wiz, Dualist Inquiry, who’s warmed crowds for titans like DJ Shadow and Fatboy Slim, set up shop and got to wowing. Day one also saw the breathtaking staging of the showcase by Australian music market development initiative, Sound Gallery, which served up a dazzling array of folk, blues and pop sounds in envoys like Lyon Apprentice, Bec Laughton, Ash Grunwald and Sophie Koh. Day two also blitzed off to rousing sounds with the Australian showcase. Like the previous night, the seven bands on the roster played fantastically compelling sets, with sweaty, fists-raised rock ‘n’ roll being the common denominator this time around. Special mention must be given to the uber-‘90s grungerockers of Empra, led by Sanny Veloo, frontman of local punk legends, the Boredphucks, for gifting us with one of the best performances of the entire festival. But not to be outdone, the acts from the Japanese showcase turned the heat up at the Fountain Stage with bump-and-grind hip hop from Cream and bracing alternapop from The Oral Cigarettes. Philippines Fiesta, as the Filipino showcase was dubbed, also proved to be as generously eclectic, with metalcore vets, Slapshock, sharing the stage with soul brothers, Quest and Rocky.

Fernandez, Ming Bridges and Sezairi showed, there was a mighty lot for us to be proud about. Yet, driving home the international focus of the entire Music Matters platform, the Korean, Taiwanese and Canadian showcases were held simultaneously at the Fountain Stage, Aquanova and Beer Market respectively, making for sonic largesse on a truly epic and varied scale. Mad props have to be bestowed upon the godfather of Chinese hip hop, Taipei’s MC Hotdog and Calgary’s indie pop starlets, Sidney York, who in different ways burned their mark into the proceedings with their sonic sway. By the time the last day of the festival rolled along, the fact that it was a resounding triumph for music was more

than clear. Capping off the joyous live extravaganza that the earlier days had been, the final day reprised the acts that had played before but sent energy levels even higher with an even more eclectic grouping of acts. Those who caught Aussie punk destroyers, Dune Rats, playing right before Portuguese blues-rockers, The Stonewolf Band, know just what we’re on about. And, as a final, beauteous flourish, UK post-rock rockers, The Boxer Rebellion brought the sweeping wealth of their latest full-length, Promises, to richly enchanting life. “Diamonds”, “Always” and “Fragile” were all performed with heaving splendour. So, just like its swooning scale promised, Music Matters Live 2014 came, conquered and became a treasured memory.

Gentle Bones

The homefront took the stage at Paulaner Wirsthaus on the third day, and as the likes of Gentle Bones, Gareth The Boxer Rebellion

Parties

YouTube FanFest 2014 With HP @ *SCAPE Text: Indran P Images: Brand Ltd

Tyler Oakley Ryan Higa

Besides featuring some of the biggest power-players in the worlds of music and entertainment and a vast banquet of sounds from local, regional and international emerging talents, Music Matters Live with HP 2014 also brought with it the starstudded extravaganza that was the YouTube Fanfest on 23 and 24 May. With this year’s roster featuring a mammoth 18 YouTube celebrities, fans got to experience the biggest helping of their favourite online personalities yet. It was truly a wild time as comics like Jenna Marbles, Ryan Higa and Tyler Oakley locked arms with multi-talented stars like

David Choi, Bethany Mota, Superwoman and the Jakarta Beatbox Clan to regale the audience with their viral gold. And powering the festival with their fine payload of technology were the good people at HP. Since YouTube is a fundamentally interactive technological medium, HP was on hand to affirm the integral role that technology plays in the creative process and in the enjoyment of art, music and entertainment. With the recent launch of its new game-changing device, the HP Pavilion x360, a convertible hybrid laptop with a 360° touch screen, and which features Beats Audio to enhance music and audio from the built-in speakers, HP provided the catalyst for the creative juices of the YouTubers, all of whom were issued one. Thanks to HP’s resilient innovative strategies, creating rich, detailed content on the go is now possible. Likewise, HP also enriched the audience’s experience of the festival with its slew of remarkably interactive devices and services. Great examples of this include HP’s big screens

that allowed for the huge crowds to be in on the festival, and the live streaming platform developed by HP and operated by students from Singapore’s Republic Polytechnic, which allowed the festival to be streamed from YouTube all over the world. With technology becoming an integral element in the matrix of creativity and entertainment, HP’s nextgeneration products can be counted on to deliver an unparalleled audio-visual experience. And in the hands of forward-thinking creators like this year’s YouTube stars, you can bet that great things are due to come our way.

Red Carpet at YouTube FanFest

Durasafe Retail Store

Westech Building, 237 Pandan Loop, #01-06, Singapore 128424 Tel: 6659 8455 | Westech@durasafe.com.sg | www.durasafe.com.sg Opening Hours: Monday - Friday, 10am - 6pm / Saturday, 10am - 1pm

Parties

Postiljonen @ Pink Noize Text: Indran P

What: A dance party with a difference With the reinvigorated trendiness of dance music coming into full bloom, it now seems like everyone wants a slice of the EDM pie to call their own. The difference is, Postiljonen gives back much more than it takes and in a way that is as mesmerising as it is kinetically immediate. For over three years now, the Norwegian trio of singer, Mia Bøe, and multi-instrumentalists, Daniel Sjörs and Joel Holm, has been merging ultra-modern dance sounds with seemingly antithetical elements like indie pop, folk, and even dusty strains of ’80s pop to alluringly rousing effect. And

in bringing to life the sonics from its fantastic 2013 debut full-length, Skyer, the band beamed us all to a shindig of mythically dance-y proportions on gig day.

and hell yes, danceable. This explains why the clubbers, the emphatically indie pockets and the eagle-eyed hipsters dropped their inhibitions and got their dance on, together.

Who: Dancers, folksters and the hip-to-it-all Postiljonen’s greatest feat is not that it has burned a path so brightly for itself despite its unpronounceable name. Rather, it’s for its fulfilment of the most crucial metric of pop: universality. Lyrically and sonically, the trio has arrived at a something-for-everyone aesthetic that renders its sound instantly likeable, hummable

How: Dance, drama and action In serving up its delectable ear candy live, Postiljonen appealed to the ethereality of dance and the emotional intensity of folk for an experience that was as euphoric as it was edgy. Not in the least bothered by that paradox, the band let rip with it’s deep-dive approach that saw spectral trance textures overlaid with driving EDM rhythms and digital skitters furnishing an incredibly animated channel for Bøe’s

honeyed, sensual coos to course over. “Rivers” was undoubtedly a spectacular showing of this modus, with its shoegaze sprawl unfurling in cascading waves of sound as the mantra, “The truth shall set you free”, echoed in an emphatic cadence. And elevating its future-leaning pop higher, the band also reworked Whitney Houston’s immortal “How Will I Know” on “All that We Had is Lost”, where synthesised sax notes added a touch of soul to the epic digital swirl. Post-gig, the giddy grins around us sealed the verdict on the night’s banquet of sounds.

Parties

Russian Red @ TAB Text: Indran P

What: Russian Red returns, bigger and sweeter Lourdes Hernández has been to our shores before twice before and with each show, the Spanish songbird has shown an admirable growth as a performer that has also been mirrored in her bracingly lovely shape-shifting songs. But this time, the stakes were much higher. Coming at the heels of a major period of transition in her life that saw her up sticks from her native Madrid and relocate to the hyperactive city of Los Angeles and her third record, the rock-leaning, Agent Cooper, released earlier this year, easily her boldest and most uninhibited offering yet, this particular showing by her gave us a glimpse of an indie mainstay in the midst of a beautiful reinvention. There was that much more to take in. Who: Teenyboppers and diehards Those who’ve been touched by Hernández’s wounded, romantic missives know that her music is simultaneously “young” and ageless. Both groups of this dichotomy were present as fresh school-going faces stood shoulder-toshoulder with older fans most likely to issue kids-these-days laments at the drop of a hat. Speaking of which, judging the by the wide-brim ones dotting the crowd, it looked like the hip cliques too had showed up to bask in the evening’s sonic lustre. How: Shimmering folk On her last stop here in 2012, Hernández ushered us into her hushed but rich aural universe with the ethereal folk-meshed songs from her prior two albums, I Love Your Glasses and Futureventura. And picking up from where she left off but giving her effervescent acoustic numbers electric wings and an unrelenting

rhythm, Hernandez opened with the anthemic, pealing arena-rock of “Neruda”, one of Agent Cooper’s best. While she supplied thick, supple chords on her guitar, her backing band variously propelled the lushly swelling sounds skyward with twinkling lead guitar manoeuvres and tactile grooves. And while this more expansive style resounded throughout the venue, her patently sultry and smouldering soul vocals were just as inescapable. Switching from melodic and strident registers to gorgeously defeated near-whispers on hairpin turns of mood, Hernández reminded us all of why she was such a compelling performer. Revisiting old favourites like “The Sun The Trees” and “No Past Land” with those chops, the applause she got more than confirmed it all.

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Muse

The Sacred and The Profane The Sex Pistols’ blue streak Text: Min Chen

Shock tactics may now be shorthand for any pop or rock act thirsty for headlines or viral content, but long before Miley and Gaga, notoriety was earned the hard way. When The Sex Pistols arrived as guests on Bill Grundy’s ultra-sensible Today show on one fateful day in 1976, they certainly hadn’t planned to land themselves in this much infamy. But the Pistols being what they are, they did anyway. Frank and coarse words were exchanged in a slanging match between the group and the less-thansober Grundy, who further goaded Steve Jones into his now-iconic reading of, “You dirty bastard… you dirty f**ker… what a f**king

rotter”. It’s too fitting, then, that the band was on air in the first place to promote its debut single, “Anarchy In The UK”. In a world that had yet to come to terms with punk, The Sex Pistols’ two-minute outburst on national TV was naturally met with moral outrage and public uproar, none of which served any bloggable good. “The FILTH and the FURY!” declared one newspaper headline, and oddly, “TV Fury Over Rock Cult Filth”, observed another. Deemed “the antithesis of humankind” by the Conservatives, the band was immediately dropped by its record label, its scheduled concerts were cancelled,

and its manager, Malcolm MacLaren, for all his latterday bluster, was apparently “sh*tting himself”. Retrospect, though, provides redemption for the Pistols: pop music’s rising shockhorror standards have dulled none of their filth and fury, but has instead lent their whole Grundy episode sheer cool and credibility. Back then, Vivienne Westwood, MacLaren’s then-partner, actually offered the best perspective, “There is nothing wrong with being nasty and rude. It provokes reactions from other people; it leads to release. It ends confinement by inhibition and hypocrisy.” And with that end, so punk began.