ZIGGY September 2014 by ZIGGY

September 2014 / Free

Perfume Genius Hello darkness

The It Issue: Yoyo Cao Max Pittion Sky Ferreira Lana Del Rey Jacques Greene and other great Its

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Contents

Noise

Style

Elsewhere

21 Profile: Jacques Greene The beatmaker with the soul to match his dance

28 Collection: Fred Perry Laurel Wreath Fall/Winter 2014 Fred sticks Depeche Mode on his playlist

66 Feature: She’s It The changing face and significance of It Girls

36 Abc: Sky Ferreira 32 Label: Max A letter by letter Pittion John Mayer chronicle of today’s on bringing Max It Girl Pittion into the future 64 Incoming: Perfume Genius “I 48 Shopping: The It don’t exactly want List Stuff to fill your to call it pride, but I feel less fragile over wardrobe with this Fall/Winter time”

Cover Photography: Min Chen Special thanks: Hostess Asia

68 Talk: Lana Del Rey “Writing was the only stable, reassuring thing in my life”

70 Talk: Yoyo Cao “Being creative is something no one can take away from you”

72 Feature: The It Parade A run-down of eight unshakably It bands and musicians

74 Feature: Boys in the Band Saint Laurent makes models out of musicians

76 Talk: Horace Panter “Art is my solo album” 91 Parties: Slowdive @ *SCAPE The legends take Singapore

Hello

#29: The It Issue “That quality possessed by some which draws all others with its magnetic force,” is how Elinor Glyn, the author who coined the concept of “It”, so describes her invention. Then again, It has always been such an intangible quality to elude even Glyn’s description and to have had its significance altered throughout the ages, eventually meaning everything or simply nothing. But It definitely means something, as evidenced by history’s many It Girls, It Bands and other It Things that have proven magnetic in some way or form. Since we find ourselves similarly drawn, we’ve dedicated an entire issue to celebrating, documenting and loving that wily yet wonderful It. We might not discover what It actually is, but hey, It’s definitely in here.

Editor in chief

General Manager

Min Chen min@ziggymag.sg

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

Writer Indran P indran@ziggymag.sg

Editorial Interns Stacy Lim

Contributors

Emma Neubronner Joyce Lui Koketsu Nakaya Lenne Chai Loo Reed Mika Furukawa Rosalind Chua Shingo Horiguchi Thierry Kok

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’s just ‘It’.” - Rudyard Kipling

Word

Buzz

Love Crusade

Karen O fights hard on Crush Songs Text: Indran P

Crushing – we’ve all been there and so has Karen O. In fact, so significant is this oft-dismissed phenomenon to the indie doyenne that she has devoted the length-andbreadth of her first solo LP to giving expressive heft to the early stirrings of the heart. Written and recorded in private when she was 27 and “crushed a lot”, the songs see her coming to terms with how she “wasn’t sure if [she’d] ever fall in love again”. Unlike the fearless, punk princess that she has come to be recognised as in her role as the firecrackerfrontwoman of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the O that inhabits Crush Songs is doubtful, conflicted and quietly meditative. Lead single, “Rapt”, functions as a great keystroke of the album, with O’s hushed, plaintive coo wafting over a scrappy but clean electric guitar line that packs a melody whose lilting sweetness only underscores her emotional turmoil. “Love is soft / Love’s a f**king bitch / Do I really need another habit like you?”, goes the chorus, giving one and all a rawer, more immediate look into her innermost heart than YYY songs like “Maps” and “Runaway” have allowed.

The Strokes’ own, Julian Casablancas, on whose label, Cult, Crush Songs will be released, has said that this is a “classic album” and that he’d “want to listen to it all day”. But for O, however, it is the “soundtrack to what was an evercontinuing LOVE CRUSADE”. Here’s to victory in love and war. Crush Songs is out 9 September on Cult Records

Buzz

Ready to Rock Maison Kitsuné Fall/Winter 2014 Text: Stacy Lim

Kitsuné’s latest collection hasn’t been idly dubbed Rock Generation, for in the French label’s Fall/Winter assembly, the free spirit and undying spark pf rock ‘n’ roll have indeed been playfully brought back to life. Music and style, after all, have made for familiar bedfellows: rock legends from Mick Jagger and David Bowie have wielded fashion to their fabulous advantage, while Kitsuné practically exists for the fusing of sound and design. This new collection, then, functions on a grand tradition and duly hits the right spot in channelling the golden heyday of everyone’s favourite sound. Though Kitsuné’s preppy and sporty signatures are still evident on this collection, its latest influences – rockabilly and the swinging ‘60s – are writ large on its sleeves. The men’s silhouettes go sleek and slim, with paisley, checks, stripes and autumnal pops of colour offering handsome textures. Pivotal roles are played by bomber jackets, graphic knitwear and cuffed trousers, which lend the range a greaser sheen that even John Lennon would be proud to wear. That same playful edge informs the ladies’ line, which takes its own retro cues from the ‘60s for cropped and tailored seperates. Feminine babydoll dresses and pleated skirts are contrasted against

boyish cuts of blazers, sweatshirts and slim-fit pants, while the whole range makes a point of frisky shades and crafty fabrics from velvet to suede. Finally, the cherry on top of this cake comes in a form of a campaign fronted by Kilo Kish and Tom Burke (frontman of Citizens!), who’ve been photographed by long-time Kitsuné collaborator, Henrik Purienne, at London’s Barbican Center. Not just appropriately dressed, they’ve been captured in various states of youth and cool, and in the process of conjoining heritage with modernity, and style with sound. Shop Kitsuné at kitsune.fr.

Buzz

The Feeling is Divine

Stuart Murdoch’s God Help the Girl brings music to life

Text: Indran P In 2003, Belle & Sebastian honcho, Stuart Murdoch, was jogging in a field when he started hearing the music of what would eventually become a separate project take shape in his head. That’s how the song and the eponymously titled entity, “God Help the Girl”, were born. Six years after this serendipitous occurrence, God Help the Girl was released as the collective form of a self-titled album, EP and several standalone singles. But as with Prince on Purple Rain, Murdoch’s ambitions weren’t just confined to the aural world. Now a fully realised musical feature film, God Help the Girl animates the songs of its musical incarnation with human lives enmeshed in a drama that like the B&S catalogue, is alternately syrupy-sweet and lovelorn. Written and directed by Murdoch, the film was shot in Glasgow over of the course of 2012 and 2013, and stars Emily Browning,

Olly Alexander, Hannah Murray and Pierre Boulanger. They play characters who, in the words of producer, Barry Mendel, of The Sixth Sense and The Royal Tenenbaums fame, explore the “brief moment after you’ve realised what you want to do with your life, before your dream settles into becoming your job, when you’re filled with enthusiasm, meeting like-minded friends and the possibilities are endless.” Already, the film has clinched the Special Jury Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and has been nominated for the coveted Crystal Bear prize at the Berlin International Film Festival. But if you like your B&S, you don’t need this much convincing to check it out yourself. God Help the Girl will be released in North America on 5 September. A global release date has yet to be issued.

Buzz

Kool Thing Sandro x Sonic Youth Fall/Winter 2014 Text: Min Chen

Sandro’s outward appearance of sleek and forward-looking elegance clearly belies the pluck and panache of a rebel. It’s not just evident in the luxury label’s leathered, bomber-jacketed and punked out Fall/Winter 2014 line-up, but also in its many collaborations with bands like Nirvana, Stone Roses and Joy Division. Indeed, behind its chic walls, Sandro’s been well-fed on a diet of alternative rock and post-punk, and this season, it ain’t turning the volume down on that. In another landmark union, the French label is now paying homage to Sonic Youth, one of the planet’s finest experimental rock outfits, upon whose shoulders lies the bulk of the ‘80s and ‘90s alt culture. While the NYC band’s continued existence remains in doubt, its legacy goes without saying, and this Sandro Homme capsule collection makes no bones of its hero worship. A total of 10 pieces are arrayed here, consisting of sport-inspired beanies and sweaters fronting the band’s name, as well as a series of T-shirts

(the ultimate alt-rock fashion staple) that any respectable Sonic Youth fan will recognise. Crafted from quality cotton, they come bearing the group’s most iconic of logos and artwork, including the stuffed orange creature found on the cover of 1992’s Dirty, Raymond Pettibon’s legendary illustration for 1990’s Goo and the, um, washing machine off 1995’s Washing Machine. No longer just a major player on the alt scene that no doubt, figures extensively in any upstanding record collection, Sonic Youth can now lay claim to its very own spot in style and in your wardrobe. Fashion statements, after all, rarely come looking this kool. Shop the collection at Sandro, ION Orchard, #03-18, and sandro-paris.com.

Runway

Let’s Art Burberry Prorsum Fall/Winter 2014 Text: Stacy Lim A Painterly Journey is what Christopher Bailey’s named his latest menswear collection for Burberry Prorsum, and sure enough, while the many roads on this excursion are indeed artistically formed and informed, they also lead directly to and from the world of artist itself.

Inspiration has been culled from four artists, namely Ben Nicholson, Lucian Freud, Duncan Grant and Christopher Wood, the worlds of whom lend Bailey’s latest designs their light romanticism and masterly strokes. Anchoring the collection are Burberry’s signature tailored

pieces – trench coats, jackets and drainpipe trousers – that have been newly and chicly cut with relaxed fits and painterly prints. The arty aesthetic also comes further held together by artist smocks and shirts, rib vests and cardigans, and horse blankets and hand-painted silk scarves

which elegantly frame every look. It’s as much a tribute to art’s many hues and brush strokes, as it is a celebration of its creators’ wild style, life and imagination. Here, the artist is most definitely present.

Runway

Pop Tart Moschino Fall/Winter 2014 Text: Stacy Lim No one recruits Jeremy Scott for fashion of a sedate or tepid nature; hell no, for his are creations that arrive loudly, boldly and vividly, with a knowing wink and tongue planted firmly in cheek. Observe: the man’s debut collection at the house of Moschino, which, walking in the

footsteps of Warhol himself, rams pop culture and high fashion onto the very same runway. Scott has rendered chic such fast food icons like McDonald’s and Hershey’s, spreading their hallmarks all over Moschino’s signature suits, dresses and a series of ballgowns, just as he’s

brought SpongeBob SquarePants to life on a suitably wacky and sporty line of sweat dresses, pants and furry outerwear. Also in evidence was an edgy reimagining of ‘90s street styles in the form of bleached denim pieces and very well-placed bling. An instant It ever

since it hit the runway at Milan Fashion Week, Jeremy Scott’s first Moschino collection can already lay claim to its very own standing on the post-pop landscape and powered with this much fun, wit and irreverence, has officially sent subtlety back into yesterday.

Fresh

Text: Indran P

Death From Above 1979: The Physical World If upon listening, you think the upcoming, longawaited follow-up to the Canadian duo’s 2004 release, You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine, blows, then drummersinger, Sebastien Grainger, has this to say to you: “Well, you’ve been

f**king asking for it”. So iconic and distinct was the literal drums and bass onslaught of Machine that it endured the vagaries of the dance-punk fad that started it, leading its makers to pair up once again 10 years later. One of the new songs here has been described by the band as “Springsteen meets Sonic Youth” but it’s clearly not “Trainwreck 1979”, an absolute trasher about “blood and guts” and “I can’t get enough!” Out 9 September

Blonde Redhead: Barragán

Shellac: Dude Incredible

BANKS: Goddess

Ninth time’s the charm with Blonde Redhead as the esteemed trio gears up for the release of another shape-shifting collection of songs. With first listen, “No More Honey”, blitzing off on grandiose, guitar-centric indie pop and subsequent drop, “Dripping”, pulsing with house-y verve, the band looks like it’ll outdo itself yet again. Out 2 September

As indie rock’s irate high priest, Steve Albini has been responsible for some of its best music across all its sub-genres. And like its name avers, his noise-rock outfit’s fifth long-player won’t be skimping on any bit of the band’s bludgeoningly serrated stylings. Peep the title track for some non-metaphorical ear bleeding. Out 16 September

With indie-r&b now the sound of the hour, Jillian Banks is set to claim the top spot of the zeitgeist with her knowingly-titled debut full-length. By now, her modus operandi, outlined in singles like “Brain”, “Drowning”, and the title track are well known. Expect a full serving of angel-voiced dark pop that’s so dashingly trending. Out 8 September

Julian Casablancas + The Voidz: Tyranny

King Tuff: Black Moon Spell

Tricky: Adrian Thaws

Through being cool, The Strokes’ snarly mouthpiece is now exploring his political side on his first album with his new band, The Voidz. Fleshing out the home truth that “Tyranny has come in many forms throughout history”, the record was announced via a trailer that previewed psych-rock instrumentals, and disjointed threads of dialogue on “politics” and “slavery”. Out 23 September

Kyle Thomas made his name as King Tuff by threading blues, punk and rock into a lethally catchy admixture that resulted in his self-titled breakout album displacing Jack White’s Blunderbuss from the summit of the charts. Black Moon Spell’s shaping to do just fine too as first reveal, “Eyes of The Muse”, evolves from a twang-y jangle to a roof-raising riffbarrage. Out 22 September

Following up on last year’s False Idols with an album named after himself, the trip hop auteur promises to serve up a “club / hip hop” offering. Who knows what that’ll sound like in the hands of one such as himself, especially if it features the chops of Nneka and Mykki Blanco? But teaser, “Nicotine Love”, is already bringing the beats and the dance. Out 8 September

Profile

Electric Feel

Jacques Greene’s dance is all soul Text: Indran P

As the bubble expands, its seams slowly but surely start to show. New York-viaMontreal producer, beat-maker and all-around tinkerer, Jacques Greene, certainly proved this when he admitted that he was “so embarrassed to be a DJ” late last year. Coming from one such as he, this sentiment isn’t a backhanded claim for alternative appeal or a stamp of fashionable, quote-worthy dissent. In a time when dance music is undergoing the most uncommonly populist treatment, Greene stands apart from the

lame-stream of bass-jackers and E-popping revivalists by striving on a sound and sentiment that, as he tells us, aims “to make you FEEL something”. And this emotional authenticity has seen him blitz a trail for himself through Brooklyn’s legendary warehouse blowouts and feted Art Basel shows, so that when we checked in with him recently, he told us that “over the last few months there was seldom a stretch of more than four days where [he] didn’t have to make [his] way to an airport”. And that’s great news for all of dance music.

Greene’s high-speed trajectory through an overcrowded scene is due to his savvy ear for exquisitely soulful sounds. Operating in the pop&b realm, Greene has been amassing a growing body of work that informs mainstream sensibilities with a leftfield ethos. One only needs to plug into his remix of Ciara’s immortal hit, “Body Party”, to get clued into his mesmeric touch. According to Greene, it’s the hit-making touch of king/queen-making producer and Jay, Bey and Ye associate, The-Dream, that he aims to repurpose in his own sound. From the man who gave the world “Umbrella” and “Single Ladies”, Greene learnt to hone a “genuinely strange and honest” imprint that is “idiosyncratic” but “so compelling and interesting”.

As for the trembling burst-and-bloom soul that is his own signature, Greene says he tends to “gravitate towards culture in general that would feel that way”, citing “movies with a real earnest sentimentality at their core”, like Tom Ford’s A Single Man, as stylistic beacons. His fantastic 2013 single, “On Your Side”, featuring like-minded kindred spirit, Tom Krell aka How To Dress Well, is a great banner for his cause. Beautifully lush and filigreed, the song marries Greene’s tastes and intentions with statement-making aptness. “I’ve never really believed or enjoyed vocal tracks from producers that feel like a mash-up of two relevant names that seem engineered in some Internet taste laboratory”, he says, adding that “whole experience was really organic” and that it really was an ideal scenario for a collaboration, given Krell’s own, “incredible and boundary-pushing” work. And even a cursory listen of the track will affirm this.

Staking a greater claim on his game-reinventing sounds, Greene recently dropped his latest EP, Phantom Vibrate, a house-y, bass-drenched, bleeding-heart affair where he realised his goal of wanting “the tracks to feel as if they were ALMOST too much”. With gospel vocals surging along with an unrelenting low-end thrust as lushly overwrought textures pan the distance, this offering is proof that Greene has done it again, as he will in time come. Phantom Vibrate is out now on LuckyMe Records

Listomania

Hit It!

10 songs that were, are and will always be IT Ariana Grande: “Problem” Feat. Iggy Azalea

The New York Dolls: “Personality Crisis” Besides being cross-dressing deviants, the Dolls were also seminal rock ‘n’ rollers when they weren’t spontaneously combusting. Going from a “prima ballerina on a spring afternoon” to a “wolfman howling at the moon”, singer David Johansen gives you a glimpse of the debauched allure the band so effortlessly commanded.

Nirvana: “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

“I was trying to write the ultimate pop song”, Kurt Cobain said of his immortal hit. And not only did it turn out to be just that, it also evolved into a cross-generational anthem that outlived both him and the grunge scene. A turning-point and veritable watershed in rock, the song was initially slept on by mainstream radio stations because of Cobain’s supposedly meaningless lyrics and guttural delivery until college radio weighed in, eventually making it an everlasting hymn.

With two of pop’s current It girls offering their respective talents – Ariana’s honey-glazed soul chops and Iggy’s mean, street-spitter flow – “Problem” is the trend-setting one-two knock-out that it is.

Grace Jones: “Pull Up to The Bumper”

If Grace Jones’ sartorial choices lit the torch for androgyny, her megahit is a resoundingly feminine sexual come-on. “Pull up to my bumper baby / In your long black limousine / Pull up to my bumper baby / Drive it in between”, doesn’t exactly cloak its intentions, does it?

The Beastie Boys: “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)”

Let the record show that Licenced To Ill was the first rap album to top the Billboard charts. “Party”, one of its best-known songs, established the Beasties as tongue-incheek poets with major cross-over swag.

JUSTICE: “D.A.N.C.E.” “Do the D.A.N.C.E / one, two, three, four, fight” – with this nursery rhymelike refrain, the French duo launched itself and the indie dance craze into a global fad for the world to crush on. Played to death in every club, its funky bassline, house-y melody and endearing chorus were responsible for many a good time on the dancefloor.

Grimes: “Genesis”

The Smiths: “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle” “Cradle” drew notoriety and instant hype not only because it was one of Johnny Marr’s most luxuriant jangles. With lines like, “There’ll be blood on the cleaver tonight”, the song also got the villagers up in arms about Moz’s allegedly murderous perversions.

The Ramones: “Blitzkrieg Bop”

Ariel Pink: “Loverboy” We know Ariel Pink as weirdo-incarnate because his free-wheeling pastiches shone a multi-hued light on the freak folk movement. “Loverboy” is one of those and if ever you need to play an indie Romeo, here’s your song.

The poster child of the Internet age, Grimes’ It-ness cannot be overstated. And in that spirit, “Genesis” sounds like the Soundcloud page you’re on while you Google “Grimes”. How It is that?

Amongst the bands that made New York the musical temple that it is, The Ramones will always stand tall. “Blitzkrieg Bop” blitzed through pop culture and got even Johnny Rotten himself jelly. RIP Tommy Ramone.

Young, Wild and Free The Districts are so rock ‘n’ roll Text: Indran P

These days, elemental rock ‘n’ roll, in its truest, guitar-heavy, bluesinflected, world-searching sense, is a tricky proposition. No longer in pole position in the race for cultural validity, its makers, especially its newer ones, face the unenviable task of carving a niche within what looks to be an increasingly smaller and more esoteric field. But that suits Pennsylvania quartet, The Districts, just fine. After all, if your guiding lights are Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, and if your band started after a question like this one day in math class: “Yo, Connor, I heard you play bass”, to which you replied, “Yo, you heard correctly”, why do you need to bum yourself out over the mores of the day?

After that fortuitous conversation between frontman-guitarist, Robby Grote, and bassist, Connor Jacobus, guitarist, Mark Larson and drummer, Braden Lawrence, joined up and The Districts was complete. All between the ages of 19 and 20 and without much to look up to musically in the quaint, small-town scene of Lilitz, the guys turned to the past to explore further their longstanding fascination for, as Grote tells it, “classic rock and blues”. In the dusty canons of Television, My Morning Jacket, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin and Tom Waits, the band found the inspiration it needed to get on the coversand-house-party circuit before making its own

mark its own way. And that way was mapped out by red-blooded, fromthe-gut rock ‘n’ roll. In 2012, the foursome released its self-recorded and self-produced LP, Telephone. The 13-song collection of sweatily urgent blues-rock was mostly slept on until mid-album song, “Funeral Beds”, began to gather buzz beyond the neighbouring indie scenes, eventually front-paging REDDIT and getting esteemed by The Huffington Post as “crazy impressive”. It’s hard not to concur with that appraisal since, like the “Savannah stretching so far” that Grote sings about in a bleeding-heart drawl, the song gradually gathers momentum from its opening folk melody

and explodes later into a first-rate, arena-shaking anthem. Soon, its sweeping reverberations piqued the interest of record labels, putting the band in the corsairs of a bidding war. Eventually, the band signed with indie powerhouse, Fat Possum, and is poised to release its first proper album at an unspecified date later this year to a wider, more expectant audience. “It’s always been a hope to be able to do this”, says Grote. And in that hope, rock ‘n’ roll lives ever on. Stream Telephone at thedistricts.bandcamp. com.

Collection

You Go, Girl Miss Selfridge Fall/Winter 2014 Text: Min Chen It’s no coincidence that ultra-feminine chic arrives alongside any Miss Selfridge collection, and as is tradition, grrrl fever continues to run the show on the brand’s latest season. In it is another delectable host of girly looks, now running the gamut from the boho to the luxe, grunge to glam. The dichotomy doesn’t just stand out in a colour spectrum that takes in equal parts

pastels and jewel tones, but in fabrics, textures and prints that’ll cover you from the street to the disco. All is pretty and dainty on the brand’s serving of shift dresses, micro minis and coats that recall ‘60s mod-styled silhouettes, while girly jacquard co-ords come bearing sumptuous floral motifs. Rock ‘n’ roll also edges in with wet look skirts and

crop tops, augmented by the season’s statement highlight, faux fur, which has made for plush stoles and coats. The vibe is also club-worthy on a series of ‘70s-inclined satin pussy bow dresses and jumpsuits, which, when paired with knee-high velvet boots, will surely pass muster at Studio 54. Finally, night falls with all manner of lacquered surfaces and rich hues coming into play on

Bardot jumpsuit Grease is the word

Gold two-way sequin crop top and pencil skirt Glittery enough to catch your own reflection in

structured jackets and playsuits. No one will lack for a metallic shine, as studs and sequins are shrewdly employed, just as the accessories department gleams with gems, pearls and silver marcasite. Are you grrrl enough for this? Shop Miss Selfridge at orchardgateway, #01-13; Paragon, #03-48A; VivoCity, #01-66; and Wisma Atria, #01-25.

Miss Selfridge F/W 2014 Greatest Hits

Cropped faux fur coat Your new favourite plush toy

Checked shift dress A cute reminder of how the ‘60s swung

Pink coat A neat femininity that the mods might approve of

Metal work mini skirt Heavy metal made sexy

Collection

Text: Stacy Lim

Vans x Star Wars

As you may have noticed, Vans has taken to a galaxy far, far away for one of its latest and greatest capsule collections. Tying up with the mighty Star Wars franchise, the brand has produced a range of shoes, accessories and apparel that has been coated with all-new motifs featuring your friendly neighbours, Boba Fett, Yoda and some Stormtroopers. Its Vans Vault premium line has also gotten in on the action by resurrecting two rare prints from the ‘80s – Miami, which stars the Imperial AT-AT Walkers, and Pirate, where Darth Vader

reigns supreme – and applying them to silhouettes like the OG Sk8-Hi LX and the OG SlipOn LX. There are even all-white and all-black versions of the OG Half Cab LX, just so you can switch between your light and dark sides. Strong, this force is. Available at Vans and Limited Edt stores

Max.Tan Fall/Winter 2014

Palladium x Alpha Industries

agnès b. FEMME Fall/ Winter 2014

Following up on the Biblical theme of Spring/ Summer’s Genesis collection, Max.Tan now offers a darker narrative from the book of Revelation. An apocalyptic tale it may be, but it also delivers a glimmer of hope through rebirth and renewal. Hence the local label’s fresh wielding of structured silhouettes crafted with crisp tailoring and precise proportions. Textures like distressed leather, oversized knits and quilted nylon come into play, while translucent yokes are juxtaposed against bold and opaque bodices, updating staples like shirts, dresses and outerwear, and proposing a confident reconstruction after destruction. Available at egg3 and Threadbare & Squirrel

When the going gets tough, the tough stick together. Thus, Palladium and Alpha Industries have lately joined forces via a shared heritage in military and aviation, resulting in a collaborative outing that digs deep into their industrial-strength qualities. Six unisex boots emerge in Palladium’s standard Pampa Hi and Baggy Zip silhouettes, which, inspired by the nylon fabrication and design highlights of Alpha Industries’ iconic flight jacket, carry details like a vibrant orange lining and full-length lateral zippers. With these, you’re more than ready to play rough. Available at Palladium at ION Orchard, #B3-12

It’s back to its roots that agnès b. goes for its Fall/ Winter selection, which celebrates Paris in all its colours, elegance and offbeat chic. In its newest individual ranges, there are touches of France’s national colours of blue, white and red in a myriad of casually chic silhouettes, while the Parisian woman’s effortless and unconventional attitude to style is unveiled, first in muted, masculineinspired looks and then with a monochromatic line-up of leathered and mohaired pieces. Finally, as the sun sets, dusk gives way to an agnès b. FEMME elegance, which sees fourreau dresses and printed silk dresses layered with lush coats and luxe details. Available at all agnès b. boutiques

Going The Distance

There’s no one sound for Mapei Text: Indran P Imagine a pop so diversely crafted and inspired that its three-minute missives hold the echoes of sounds from a vast array of sensibilities, cultures and continents. Yes, we’re all so thoroughly connected these days and can traverse incredible distances with the ease afforded by the superhighway of the Internet, but for Jacqueline Mapei Cummings, better known as Mapei, going the distance to thread the rhythms of different worlds together has never been about “ease” or “comfort”. From Europe to North America and to the glorious pan-cultural beating heart of South America, Mapei’s very foot prints here have led to a musical imprint that boasts a truly panoramic outlook.

Exposed to rupture and change at an early age, Mapei was born in Providence, Rhode Island to a Liberian mother and American father, and transplanted to Stockholm. Every summer though, she’d return to the “ghettoes” of her birthplace. This biographical fact was a crucial ingredient in the music that she’d later make as, in her own words, “I used to go back to the States every summer and play around the fire hydrants listening to hip hop and going to barbecues. Then in the winter, I would be chilling with all these different cultures that exist in Sweden now.” It’s this double-barrelled exposure to two wildly divergent worlds that enabled her to inform the musical reverberations

of each with those of the other. Wise to this, Downtown Records, home to Santigold and Gnarls Barkley, sought her out in 2008 and released her debut EP, The Cocoa Butter Diaries. But wholly rap-centric, because she was “just too scared to sing” at the time, the record forced her to re-examine her artistry, compelling her to up sticks yet again. This time, in territories as disparate as Tunisia, Portugal and Brazil, Mapei found it in herself to show her “feminine side and make pop songs about love” and to “bring back the feeling of early Michael Jackson”. Artistically revivified, she returned to Stockholm and with the King in mind, dropped the single, “Don’t Wait”, a few

months later. Transfixing the blogosphere with its melange of house, gospel, r&b and even tribal sounds, the song also unveiled Mapei as a bona fide torch-song singer. When quizzed about this fantastic transformation, all she had to say was, “My mission is to make epic pop songs”. And with this promise, we await her forthcoming full-length and second coming, aptly christened, Hey Hey. Hey Hey will be released on 22 September on Downtown/Columbia Records.

Mix

In Lush Company with

Rozz Lee and Elias Soh Lush 99.5FM’s morning and evening presenters talk work and play Text: Indran P

The Indie Flag

Rozz: Indie, to me, is basically anybody with full creative control over what they put out. They’re independent, regardless of whether what they’re doing is mainstream or not. But I know that people have very different perceptions of what “indie” is. Elias: I don’t even use the term “indie” anymore because it’s so divisive. Music should be a great equaliser and the less confrontational you get with it, the more you allow people to get involved with it.

Paying Props

Rozz: I just met up with Gentle Bones; he’s so talented. He’s only 20 but he’s so driven. Whenever I meet people like him, or when they pop into my show, it really reaffirms that what I do is awesome. Elias: I really enjoy music by Fauxe and Gema. They’re both friends of mine and I watched them grow. I’d also like to shoutout The Good Life Project. Amazing soul stuff. They’re one of the few bands in Singapore that comes close to The Roots.

Presentation Styles

Rozz: I had eight years of 98.7FM’s very rah-rah presentation style behind me and Lush is, of course, different. “How do I be myself and not change?” was something I had to consider. Right now, I present based on how I feel towards the music. It’s about the emotion and it’s important that we’re genuine. Elias: I grew up listening to 98.7FM but I just don’t have the energy! I’m more sombre, very John Peel-like. It’s just my natural fallback.

Lush Matters

Rozz: Lush is the comingtogether of people who really believe in what they do. We have really good people on board as well as great programs like Lush List, where we get people from the industry to curate one hour of songs, and Lush Mix, where 13 of the best DJs in Singapore spin live every Saturday. It’s great to be part of this station. Elias: Lush represents the independence to just be yourself and talk about the things that you love and play the music that you like.

Tune in to Lush from 7am to 9am for The Morning Lush with Rozz, and 5pm to 9pm for The Evening Lush with Elias

Collection

Synth City

Fred Perry Laurel Wreath Men’s Fall/Winter 2014 Text: Min Chen While post-punk may have followed punk with darker, greyer and more industrial shadows, in this new wave lay a good amount of cutting edge experimentation and artistry that’s formed the bedrock for today’s avant sounds. It’s this same progressive ethos that Fred Perry Laurel Wreath now taps for its Fall/ Winter men’s line-up. The label and the sonic milieu, after all, have never been too far apart, and here, Fred Perry confidently hones in on post-punk’s electronic and synth-pop figureheads – your Depeche Modes, Gary Numans and Soft Cells – for a new wave all of its own.

This season’s hues may come in post-punk’s signature muted tones, save for electric pops of yellows and greens, but the collection is also woven with a bunch of checks, ginghams and prints for a compelling textural narrative. Two key prints are broached: the industrial print, which has been inspired by speaker grills, and a DPM (Disruptive Pattern Material) print, which cleverly deconstructs the traditional camouflage motif. On top of that, ginghams have been blown up bright, while polka dots and macro squares have been employed to reflect the shape and shine of

stage lights. Applied to knits, woven shirts and the classic Fred Perry shirt, they stand out in a sea of navy, black and aubergine. And not lacking in staple silhouettes, the range also heads out with strong outerwear in the form of the classic Parka, Peacoat and Corby Mac. All together, it’s another handsome Laurel Wreath outing that while mirroring the forward-thinking tenor of post-punk, manages to forge ahead with its own dangerous rhythm. Now that’s the spirit. Shop the Fred Perry Laurel Wreath collection at the Mandarin Gallery, #03-08.

Hit play on Fred Perry’s synthspirations Soft Cell: “Tainted Love” In so brilliantly reworking a northern soul staple, Soft Cell proved themselves equal masters of the synth and the dancefloor

The Human League: “Don’t You Want Me” The Human League hides what Phil Oakey called “sexual power politics” under a synth sheen that’s irresistible to this day

Tubeway Army: “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” Gary Numan asks a key question to an equally electric backbeat, to which all responses have only been in kind

Depeche Mode: “Just Can’t Get Enough” Before DM got to brooding, it got buoyant on this hook and riffready number that yes, no one could get enough of

Ultravox: “Vienna” Midge Ure uncovers the achy-breaky heart in the synth machine – with bonus viola solo – to gloomy yet lustrous effect

Lookbook

Live Forever Live in Levi’s® chronicles denim-clad lives and loves

Text: Stacy Lim

Levi’s® were made to be lived in. Its 140 years spent on the backs of miners, movie stars, farmers, hippies, presidents and street kids are testament to that, and now, so’s the Live in Levi’s® campaign. Running on Levi’s® own authenticity, energy and heritage, the campaign is a document and celebration of real-life denim-clad moments – first dates, road trips, skate sessions, jam sessions, rodeos and every other day – where Levi’s® has made

individual style and expression possible. All of it comes captured in a campaign that encompasses a video spot that’s fun right down to its core, and images shot by Jason Nocito, which capture the unfailing spirit and raw euphoria that come with life and living with Levi’s®. Launching alongside the campaign is Levi’s® Fall line-up of true-blue Icons. Its 501® jeans and shorts, Trucker Jacket and Western Shirt, still exuding an effortless

American cool, return to the racks this season in new washes, rinses and fabrics. Their classic workwear silhouettes and tailoring remain as sturdy as the day they were born, but infused with contemporary technology and finishes, achieve timeless yet timely statements. Better yet, they’ll be making for more lives led in Levi’s®.

Rewind

No B.S. music

Take It or Leave It

How The Strokes became It with Is This It Text: Indran P

Faster than anyone could say “hype”, The Strokes became one of the most feted bands in all of indie rock. In fact, so rapid was its rise that it very quickly lost any “indie” claim it might’ve once had as Julian Casablancas and co. strode to the eye of the mainstream media hurricane. The band’s first full-length showing, Is This It, was responsible for its richesto-richer-still story and in every one of its chapters, rock ‘n’ roll was reborn anew. Here’s how The Strokes became your favourite band on one album alone.

Enter the saviours Like all seismic, paradigm-shifting phenomena, Is This It’s evolution from demo-to-LP first stride to zeitgeist-laden rock milestone didn’t occur in a vacuum. Astutely feeling their way around the tenor of the times, Julian and co. responded to the prevailing mores of pop with a reactionary, sea-parting flourish that ushered them in as messiahs. James Oldham, former editor of NME, the single most important force behind The Strokes’ veneration, said it best, “It was very hard to fill the paper each week. The two dominant trends were nu-metal – Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park – and British sensitive singersongwriter-y groups like Travis, Embrace, and Starsailor. Even on an optimistic day, you were saying, ‘Okay, they’ve got a couple of good tunes, but they’re boring, have no personality, and they look bad.’ There was a real yearning for a saviour”. With 2001’s Is This It, The Strokes defined themselves as a dashing and musically interesting corrective to the banalities of manufactured angst and shopworn sentimentalism, so that when they were unveiled as the “most exciting young rock group on Earth” in their very

first press interview just a month before the album dropped – by NME, of course – it was a sign they were ready to “g-gg-g-g-g-go!” “We all like it a little different” When Zane Lowe declared that Is This It swayed popular attention to “skinny jeans and guitars”, which became “the template for rock ‘n’ roll in the modern day”, he succinctly furnished the reasons for The Strokes’ oft-mythologised and hype-saturated nature. Sartorially and musically, the band was a metaperformative recall of ‘70s greats like The Velvet Underground, The Stooges, Television, Mud and The Ramones, of whom guitarist, Albert Hammond Jr. was particularly fond. The record exuded a trashy, glamorous power with breakneck pacing, chiseled, garage-y melodies delivered by raw, hook-seeking instrumentation and Julian’s distorted emoting of his raw lust for living, tempered with debonair indifference that allowed for songs like “The Modern Age”, “Someday” and “Last Nite” to become the unimpeachable youth manifestoes that they are. Not quite

Neanderthal jock-rock nor the moral antipode of homemade, meat-andpotatoes indie rock, Is This It established the band as its own alone, not part of a scene and with no serious imitators. “We all like it a little different”, sang Julian as he closed “Alone, Together”. And that little difference went a long way. Hype, glorious hype The sweeping tidings of the hype cycle are always over and above any band or artist’s actual control or doings. This much was true when just one week into Is This It’s release, The Strokes were heralded as “the forefathers of a bold new era in rock,” and “the greatest rock band since The Rolling Stones”, amongst many other reverential estimations of praise. In 1998, when the band was finding its sound, all it had wanted to do was, as Julian said, “find out if anything cool could still come out”. Yet, an It-band is still an Itband and Julian, despite his initially noble aims recognised this: “How many groups are there where you know the drummer’s name; where you even care who’s in the group? We’re on this equally. That’s why people liked The Beatles and that’s why people like us.” Lennon and co. didn’t have to pass the torch, The Strokes just took it.

Cult

Lights, Camera, Parody! “Weird Al” Yankovich lines up his shots Text: Indran P Illustration: Thierry Kok

“First things first, I’m a craftsman / Remodelling is my only passion / And I’m the greatest in the business”. As a certifiedplatinum troll, he’s most certainly right.

Hypebeats, It-girls and their role models in the high altitudes of the pop/rock zenith are not known to be camera-shy. But what happens when a distorted mirror is held up to them? What happens when their aesthetically certified doings are re-presented as lolworthy free-for-alls by a troll who is just as much an icon as they are? “Weird Al” Yankovich is that icon, and with his newly released 14th album, Mandatory Fun, scoring him his first chart-topper, we thought we’d celebrate a true tide-turner and pop music’s own reality check. Mandatory fun It’s spelt out succinctly right in its very title: Mandatory Fun. Al’s approach has always been one of unabashed feelgoodness. As Al himself lets on, he’s just a “decent guy” who has always been “passionate about music and comedy”. The legitimately wonderful thing about Al’s endeavour is that in a 38year career that has seen him release 14 full-length albums, he has retained a vital and unshakable relevance while most of the artists he riffed off on have faded away to

the realm of historybook conversation. Longevity like this in an age obsessed with the hyperreality of the image, with the connotations emanating from a pop star’s cosmetic fronting, is truly the mark of a pop culture connoisseur. Image, after all, can only take you that far. “If Madonna’s allowed to reinvent herself every 15 minutes, I figure I should be good for a change at least once every 20 years”, Al knowingly says.

From “Bologna” to “Handy” Schadenfreude – the Germans describe this phenomenon as the pleasure derived from witnessing the misfortunes of others. And as mere mortals being privy to the pricks of ill luck that befall the pop and rock haveit-all demigods, we’ve definitely, whether secretly or openly, felt some joy at seeing some mud slung at a pictureperfect star. Through his

body of more than 150 parodic songs, Al has been the reliable delivery system of this joy, not so much putting the icons in their place but humansing them with a jocularity that stays in your head. It all started with The Knack’s pop masterpiece, “My Sharona”, which Al repurposed into, “My Bologna”, a hymn to “such a tasty snack” in 1979. Subsequently, the hits of every of-themoment star became zanily deconstructed

and reformed as the world clutched its sides in laughter. Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” became “I Love Rocky Road”; Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” was born anew as “Eat It”; Lady Gaga’s antics got sent up masterfully when her “Born This Way” was reimagined as “Perform This Way”, and most recently, Iggy Azalea’s radio-killing “Fancy” saw new light as “Handy”, where Al smirkingly chest-thumps:

And they (mostly) love it Pop/rock-star egos being what they are, it’s hard to imagine how the industry juggernauts felt when they first heard their studio hours unraveling in Al’s DIY renderings. Surprisingly though, our pop deities have been fantastic sports, for the most part. The Knack’s Doug Fieger, for instance, went to his A&R rep at Capitol Records and said, “You gotta sign this guy!” Chamillionaire credited Al’s reinterpretation of his hit song, “Ridin’” for his Grammy win, saying that the “parody made the record so big, it was undeniable”. Michael Jackson, ever-guarded about his music, was so impressed with Al’s treatment of “Beat It” that he let Al use the set from his “Badder” video to film his spoof of “Bad”, “Fat”. Madonna herself literally insisted that Al rework “Like a Virgin” into “Like a Surgeon”. However, Prince, Jimmy Page, U2 and oddly enough, fellow troll, Eminem, have continually resisted Al’s redecorative powers. No matter, for as Al recently assured, “it’s a lot of fun for me still, and as long as people don’t mind, I’ll keep doing it”. Keep it coming, Al. Mandatory Fun is out now on RCA records.

Label

Young Again The birth and rebirth of Max Pittion Text: Min Chen

Last year, Max Pittion arrived on the eyewear market, bearing a triumvirate of frames that were classically cut and aesthetically singular. The Shelby, Newell and Politician sported thickset frames, burnished finishes and sturdy celluloid construction – qualities which offered superb impact when worn or otherwise, and which would form the foundation of Max Pittion’s visual appeal. These timeless silhouettes, though, aren’t just any ol’ vintage spectacle, but products of a truly rich heritage.

Max Pittion, after all, can lay claim to a history that stretches back to the 1940s and even with the folding of the label in 1981, its recent revival and relaunch, courtesy of one John Mayer, is proof that its post-war style can still make for postmillennial luxe.

Made in Celluloid Before frames came combs. In the 1920s, the small town of Oyonnax, located in the Jura department in France, was best known for its manufacture of combs. Emile Pittion’s family owned one such factory, where combs were crafted out of a plastic known as celluloid. The material had recently been introduced as the world’s first thermoplastic, and being easy to mold and shape, replaced wood and cow horn as the primary element in Pittion’s combs. Soon after, that same material would also find its way onto the eyeglasses being manufactured in limited quantities at the Pittion factory in the 1940s. In the economic boom that followed World War II, Emile’s son, Max, took over the family business and wasted no time in expanding the celluloid eyewear production

Max Pittion at the Silmo trade fair

at Pittion Lunetterie. Besides pioneering the use of new techniques (laminar molding) and innovations (cridalon, a special compound of nylon for making thin sunglasses), Max Pittion would also make waves with his ever-changing line of designs such as the Looker, Goggle and Playgirl. His eyeglasses were sold under license to brands like Azzaro and Lanvin, and by the ‘60s, were widely beloved for their excellent look and construction. In 1975, the Pittion factory was producing more than three million pairs of frames a year, while Max was safely installed as one of the founding members of the Salon International de la Lunetterie. Max Pittion’s golden heyday doesn’t just boil down to the man’s

Max Pittion

Pittion Lunetterie

business acumen, but also, in his passion for eyewear and his belief in his product. Understanding that a good product pretty much sells itself, Pittion actively sought to perfect his frames, injecting them with timeless silhouettes to match their well-built celluloid bodies so that they’ll outlast the temporality of a season. And it’s an attitude that definitely won’t be going away, even with his passing in 2009. Born Again Fast forward to the 21st century, and John Mayer (he of “Your Body is a Wonderland” and Continuum fame) stumbles upon Max Pittion’s frames whilst hunting down vintage sunglasses. The discovery would eventually lead to Mayer acquiring the rights to the brand, and relaunching it with its quality and spirit intact. Now manning the creative direction

of Max Pittion, alongside designer, Tommy Ogara, John’s overseen the re-entry of the abovementioned Politician, Shelby and Newell, the evergreen designs of which have re-established the label as a maker of unique and luxury eyewear. In particular, the Politician has been enough of a bestseller to emerge as Max Pittion’s new flag-bearing and namemaking icon. Since then, the label has produced other great and elegant styles in the form of the Gitane and Vega, which again, have been based on traditional designs and infused with modern accents. They also bear Max Pittion’s signatures of gold plating, well-fitted temple shapes and bevels on the lower curves of the lenses. Existing models also arrive in new coats of rocket blue, ruby and nude, offering a light and vibrant touch to Max Pittion’s aesthetic. While Max Pittion has only just started on its second coming, it’s already got a lot of heritage to live up to. But going by the caliber of its contemporary frame work so far, its good start is also a fine championing of the Pittion pedigree. Max would be proud. Shop Max Pittion at Surrender, Raffles Hotel Arcade, #02-31, and Eye Place Singapore, 223 South Bridge Road

Label

A Family Affair: Max Pittion's latest frames and hues

Politician in Calio Tortoise

Shelby in Rocket Blue

Gitane in Nude

Vega in Ruby

Talk Shop: John Mayer, Max Pittion's Creative Director, on the label's make and models What was it that drew you to Max Pittion? I discovered Max Pittion frames while searching for vintage sunglasses, which I’ve been collecting for many years. When I saw the Politician frames, I was instantly drawn to them. I knew I had to have them. I had that very special connection you have when you see an item that inspires your vision for who you want to be. Little did I know that I’d be relaunching the brand. And upon taking over the brand, what were your ambitions for it? My hope was, and still is, that the brand can stay very organic, very outside of the confines of the “industry standard”. I want it to reflect a very refined sensibility, one that can sidestep as many style clichés as possible. I want Max Pittion frames to live in their own place and time, aesthetically. What is the design process that goes into a pair of Max Pittion frames? Tommy Ogara, who I work with, is really instrumental in the design of the frames. We work together, but only after a great deal of the

designs are already dialed in. So we’ll collaborate on what sort of frames we’re both thinking continue to expand the line in a meaningful way, then he does the intense design work, and then at the end we’ll both tweak. Would you say Max Pittion today has its own signature style or look? What’s great about Max Pittion is that the brand is “young again”, as in I’m still feeling it out as I go. I have this belief that if you stay as close as possible to the original concept and each expansion is true, then you maintain the purity of the concept and can keep listening to your instincts and making a great product that is in the same language, the same design culture. I want the frames to all live in the same universe, so to speak. Also tell us more about your star player, the Politician. It’s definitely the DNA

provider for the line. The frame as it exists now is a very nuanced and super-smart update of the original frames. Tommy did an unreal job of taking something classic yet a bit dated and making it completely timeless. And what’s the backstory of your latest frame, the Gitane? The Gitane is French for “Gypsy” and I wanted to capture the idea of a high-fashion, restless spirit. It’s something that I’ve always been intrigued by for men, but wanted to do something that really felt that way for women. The idea is that it’s a companion piece, from brunch to beach to airport lounge to… wherever the next adventure is. What’s the future look like for Max Pittion? The story is just starting and the direction is really taking shape. This is starting to look like I dreamed it would.

Collection

Blue Steel

Billabong Indigo Collection Text: Min Chen Rich and organic to the core, indigo isn’t just a shade that’s reflected in flora and fauna, but has also come a long way as a fashion statement. It is, after all, the tint and tone of denim, as well as a colour swatch representing all manner of casual cool, so much so that you can’t make your way through authentic and contemporary style without encountering a snatch of indigo. Likewise on Billabong’s latest serving of casual and sporty goods, indigo gets its due, not just as a second skin, but in a starring role. The brand’s Indigo Collection, then, arrives with a line-up of T-shirts, boardshorts and woven pieces that have their very fashionable way with that hallowed hue. Street

cool is all over the series of tees, which present indigo as a colour block, in yard-dyed stripes, in polka dots, as a distressed detail or as part of a cerulean patchwork. All you surfer dudes will also get suitably clad in the newest range of boardshorts, which pride themselves on striped and tie-dyed variations of the indigo theme. Not just functional to a fault, these new pieces have also made enough of a fashionable fuss with indigo that you’ll be looking equally sporty and snazzy. Get on board. Shop Billabong’s Indigo Collection at all Billabong stores.

Billabong’s Indigo Stripes

Zenith tie-dye slub tee A comfy, lightweight staple given the tie-dye treatment

New Order PX walkshorts Tie-dyed textures to make for optimal casual chic

Simons SS shirt A classic shirt with a subtle case of polka dots

Weekends boardshorts A striped and dapper way to hit the waves

Shop

The Brotherhood of The Rose

The blossoming of White Rose Parlour Text: Chris Ujine Ong Image: Min Chen

“To us, positions are not vital. We look out for one another. That’s what kept us business partners for seven years”. In the fast-changing landscape of retail, such a sentiment is antiquarian and rare, and yet Jackson Leong and Jebson Tan have kept at it for this long exactly because they believe they aren’t just running a business. Having set up the popular Zha Huo Dian (The Corner Shop) at Far East Plaza years ago, they have moved on from the simple act of selling clothes, accessories and all manner of interesting curiosities to proselytising a lifestyle for the boys-to-become-

stylish-men. Hence, the opening of their five-year-ingestation labour of love, White Rose Parlour. Located at Orchard Gateway, its shop deisgn is a throwback to old 1940s Shanghai, with its name derived from an old classic, “Rose, Rose, I Love You” by singer Yao Lee. Contrary to its name, instead of flowers and women’s beauty products, the “flora” on offer are street-cool tees from local brand, The Cult Of Nine, bags from Korean label, Brownbreath, and Hypergrand watches. Here, Jackson relates how all of this came into bloom.

How did you come up with the store’s concept and name? One day, while generating rough ideas of how the shop should look like, I started drafting on paper and computer, and once again we got irritated over choosing a name. It ended up with me streaming the song “Rose, Rose, I Love You” from YouTube and Jebson just ended the brainstorming-singing session by naming the shop, White Rose Parlour. We also got inspired by the movie, The Grandmaster. The concept emerged because I’ve found that every man turns into a gentleman whenever they visit and return from a barber shop. It’s an activity that felt like a quick solution for style, as seen in the way that they dress, and in the way that they carry themselves.

Given the different labels and styles of clothes being sold at your multi-label store, how would you outfit yourselves with what you’re selling? Personally, I feel that we shouldn’t be carried away by labels and styles. They don’t exist to cover our personalities. They are there to help your character grow and to embrace it. Of course, not every style would suit someone. But one can always try; you need to try out a style before you can even start to say that it doesn’t suit you when in the first place, you might not even know what suits you! And if you don’t like it, just change. You need to enjoy the process of change. The business of selling is tough, what with the rent, lack of manpower, even the rapidity of fashion trends. How do you guys stay alive and stay ahead in the retail landscape?

Well, success depends on how hungry you are. In any case, for us, these shops are not set up just for business. And isn’t the issue of survival the same in any field? I love the rapid changing of trends. Everything has a lifespan, and it’s the unpredictability that makes the business of selling unique, isn’t it? If you are willing to plunge into an area that you are not familiar with, well then, that’s where the opportunities for success lie. So, is there a chance we will see actual roses being sold at your store? Maybe on certain occasions we might consider giving out white roses in our shop. Roses are full of thorns though, so I think I might have problems handling them! White Rose Parlour is located at Orchard Gateway, #04-06.

Abc

as in Bangerz Tour. On Valentine’s Day, this year, Miley Cyrus kicked off her plans for world domination with her 80-date Bangerz Tour, an extravaganza of hyperfemme pop chops, served up also by the likes of Icona Pop, Lily Allen and Sky herself. Unfortunately, barely a week into the tour, Sky was forced to pull out due to a leg injury that needed 60 stitches.

as in Calvin Klein. Radiating that effortless, edgy smoulder, Sky was a surefire fashion darling from the get-go. At 19, she was the youngest face of the American fashion giant’s CK One line and in ads with for its jeans, underwear and fragrance lines, she looked like she was made for the camera.

Girl of the A Year Undressing indie pop’s It girl letter by letter Text: Indran P

as in As If! After a Daft Punk gig that “changed [her] life”, Sky developed a keen interest in all things dancerelated. From going to clubs, to listening to and making her own dance music on Garage Band, she was in deep. This debut EP was a product of this phase and its electro-leaning pop has been straddling the poles of “rock solid” and “juvenile vanity trash”, depending on who you ask.

as in “Everything is Embarrassing”. The biggest hit of her career, “Everything is Embarrassing” is a dance-pop smash that established her as the princess of pop’s darker, sugar-free flipside. It’s a lovelorn plea of desperation but like all great pop songs, hummable and danceable to the hilt.

as in Ghost. In the wake of the repeated delays that beset her full-length, Sky released Ghost, her second EP. It marked a watershed moment that saw her work with megastar personalities like Jon Brion, Greg Kurstin and Ariel Rechtshaid.

as in Dev Hynes. Sky’s biggest musical moment to date has been the blog hit “Everything is Embarrassing”, a track brought into the world by indie-everywhere auteur, Dev Hynes. They later fell out over claims of authorial ownership but it’s safe to say that without him, Sky wouldn’t quite be It.

as in Fiona Apple. Sky has been vocal about her how the alt and baroque pop doyenne has continually awed her. Tidal, Apple’s debut album was the first record that Sky ever bought. It’s worth noting that she was six at this point. Recently, Sky referred to her as, her “number one musician”.

as in Hedi Slimane. Like most of his brethren in the fashion world, the legendary Dior Homme and Yves Saint Laurent designer and photographer jumped on the Sky bandwagon and shot the coolerthan-thou, rock-tinged cover of Ghost. If she wasn’t already an It girl, Slimane’s stamp now made Sky’s hipness undeniable.

as in “I Blame Myself”. The second single off Sky’s debut full-length, Night Time, My Time, the song was buzzed about not only because of its inescapable electropop hooks but also for its selfreflexive lyrics. Its first lines were, “Is it because you know my name / Or is it because you saw my face on the cover?”, showing that this whole It business bothered her quite a bit.

Abc

as in “Kristine”. At just over two-and-ahalf minutes, “Kristine” is the shortest of Night Time’s songs and it’s most lyrically oblique. Sky always pitched herself as a “dark” artist but here, she gets downright surreal as she coos about hanging out with “young millionaires” and “stabbin’ pens in my hands, but I’m never workin’, just spending”.

as in “Love in Stereo”. Unrequited love – we’ve all been there. And this song sees Sky on her knees with desperation: “Every time, I tell myself again that he just wants to be my friend / I can’t keep up / He’s locked inside my head / But he just wants to be my friend”.

as in Night Time, My Time. Long in the making, Night Time, finally came into the world in October last year, establishing Sky as “serious” artist with a full-length to her name. Commanding a wider payload of sounds, like rock, alt and grunge as opposed to her electroheavy EPs, the record was also a chart success as well as a common AOTY mention and sported the most upfront cover in all of modern pop.

as in Justin Louis Raisen. Some extremely talented people have helped Sky’s rise along invaluably in no small part. As he has done for Charli XCX, Sarah Quin (of Tegan and Sara) and Theophilus London, the songwriter, producer and multiinstrumentalist, Justin Raisen, co-wrote and co-produced the entirety of Night Time.

as in Redken. With her infallible personal style fast heading down the “iconic” lane and her rockstar locks that’ve seen blonde, black and auburn iterations, it came as no surprise when the renowned New York hair care brand announced that Sky was to be its muse for 2014. And from tousled locks to legitimately Monroereferencing waves, she styled splendidly.

as in Maison Kitsuné. The perpetually on-trend French fashion label was quick to unveil Sky as the face of its Spring/ Summer 2014 collection. And no less than It photographer, Henrik Purienne, was enlisted to seal the deal on Sky’s lovely looks.

as in “Obsession”. Another big-ticket Sky hit, “Obsession” was co-written and co-produced by OneRepublic members, Ryan Tedder and Jerrod Bettis, and is also one of Sky’s more unapologetically It girl moments, especially with the line: “I want to be your obsession”.

as in Putty Hill. In this indie drama, Sky flexes her acting chops in her first leading role as Jenny, one of the characters who is affected by the sudden death of a young man named Cory. Beautifully shot and featuring interesting documentary techniques, the film became an indie hit. Sky herself described her involvement with it as “pretty insane”.

as in Transcendental Meditation. As part of her philanthropic work with the David Lynch Foundation, Sky donated the funds raised from her performances to TM programs for the socially disenfranchised, admitting that at one point, “TM sort of saved [her] life”.

as in “You’re Not The One”. This indie rock, pop and electro hit was widely hailed as Night Time’s indisputable standout. Initially conceptualised by Sky as a “supper pop-py” version of David Bowie’s Low, the song ushered her into the late-night TV circuit, calcifying her It-ness for good.

W S

as in “Sex Rules”. Earning her comparisons to Madonna with its dance-y thrust and its sex-praising lyrics like, “Sex rules / Use your God-given tools”, the first song off her first EP was ultimately a commercial flop. It girls shouldn’t have to try too hard.

as in The Wrong Ferrari. An iPhone-filmed, Dadaist, sex-drugs-and-rock ‘n’ roll romp, The Wrong Ferrari marked Sky’s third outing in a feted indie production. And by this time, she was famous enough to turn in a cameo.

as in Zachary Cole Smith. Unlike other limelightburnished starlets, Sky’s stuck by one guy the whole time her career’s been burgeoning and he’s Zachary Cole Smith, frontman of the critically acclaimed indie rock outfit, Diiv. Recently though, he got himself and Sky on the news for speeding and heroin possession, since a couple that loves together, gets busted together.

Time

Golden Moment

Tudorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s modern renditions of its gold-plated heritage

Text: Rosalind Chua

In 1952, the Tudor Oyster Prince was born, not just as any ordinary timepiece, but a symbol of modern timekeeping. At that time, Tudor was already a reliable and credible name for watches, but with the Oyster Prince, it would launch a potent advertising campaign – featuring men working physically demanding jobs, whilst donning the watch – that highlighted the timepiece’s precision and strength, even under the most extreme of conditions. The result was a framing of the Oyster Prince, with its Rolex-indebted waterproof case and self-winding rotor mechanism – as a tough yet stylish animal, one that would accompany a British scientific expedition to Greenland, be powerful enough to weather changing tides and trends, and that would come to represent Tudor’s golden moment in time.

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But of course, the Oyster Prince is not the only crowning moment in Tudor’s history. In its 88 years, the brand has also produced such hallmarks as the Tudor Advisor (its first alarm watch), the Tudor Prince Submariner (a professional underwater watch) and the Tudor Aeronaut (as part of its Sport Collection). All of these timepieces, though, uphold Tudor’s reputation for robust design and time-telling that was first set by the Oyster Prince. And it’s a fine standing that Tudor has maintained until today, where its many forms and functions now come augmented by a dependable coat of heritage. Its nine decades, after all, aren’t for nothing. This year, even as Tudor falls back on its solid history and pedigree, it’s still very much looking and forging forward. Unveiled at the recent Baselworld was a triumvirate of timepieces that accentuated the brand’s most adventurous and muscular qualities, while introducing contemporary style and elegance into the equation. Here’s a documentation of the all-new Tudor Heritage Ranger, the Tudor Heritage Black Bay and the aptly named Style, all of which equally inherit and live up to the legacy left behind by the Oyster Prince.

Tudor Heritage Ranger The Tudor Heritage Ranger harks back to the brand’s original Ranger, introduced in the late ‘60s, but in no way is this a mere re-edition. Besides summoning the pioneering spirit of the far and frozen Northern frontier, this model’s heroics also extend into its modern aesthetic that furthers the creative narrative of its predecessor. The Heritage Ranger arrives in a contemporary size of 41mm, comes powered by automatic Caliber 2824 and is handsome from its retro-chic look – hallmarked by the iconic Tudor Rose logo on its black dial and painted hour markers – right down to its cool satin-finished body. Four bracelets, namely a bund strap, an adjustable fabric strap, a tobacco-toned leather strap and a folding clasp, have also been crafted especially for this timepiece, each adding strong and distinctive touches to this classy model.

Tudor Heritage Black Bay

In the Tudor Heritage Black Bay lies Tudor’s many past adventures into deep waters. Building on its alreadystrong tradition of iconic divers’ watches, including 1954’s Submariner and 2012’s first Heritage Black Bay, this new number references its ancestors in its domed dial, large winding crown and angular hands, whilst offering modern touches in the form of a coloured aluminum crown tube, strong steel case and interchangeable bracelets (a highlight of Tudor’s Heritage line). Underneath its cool aquatic shades, polished steel skin and striking workmanship, the second iteration of the Tudor Heritage Black Bay also sports the precision and reliable technicality that you’d expect of any professional diver’s watch. For a nautical tool that matches the sea’s mysterious allure, you’ve arrived at the right timepiece.

Tudor Style Tudor, of course, doesn’t just have strength on its side, but unfailing style and elegance too. Hence, Tudor Style, so named for its enchanting and refined qualities that preserves the brand’s hallowed aesthetic codes. A host of its watchmaking signatures are present, such as its slender and waterproof casing and its satin-finished sheens, just as it borrows ‘50s-inspired touches for its three-dimensional, double-hour markers, beveled dauphine hands and all together understated yet distinct dial. The Tudor Style’s mechanical self-winding movement also means that these timepieces boast the performance to equal their fluid and elegant designs, which arrive in the colours of glossy black, champagne sunray and silver-toned sunray. Bolstered by Tudor’s rich heritage, innate sensuality and exceptional workmanship, the Tudor Style more than proves worthy its moniker.

Time

Revolution in Time The Swatch SISTEM51’s magic number

Text: Stacy Lim 51 parts – that’s all it took to craft Swatch’s first-ever plastic Swissmade quartz wristwatch. Introduced in 1984, this pioneering timepiece wasn’t just a marvel of innovative design and simplified construction – it being easily manufactured on a fully automated assembly line – but would pave the way to making quality Swiss watches widely accessible to the rest of the world. A good 30 years on, Swatch is bringing it all back with SISTEM51, a range of timepieces that wields that same groundbreaking technology, which, bunched with advanced engineering and plain creativity, cleverly repurposes those 51 parts for post-millennial timekeeping. Where other mechanical watch movements may require twice the parts and double the assembly, Swatch’s SISTEM51 continues to run smoothly on its 51 components and a 90hour power reserve. Its self-winding mechanical movement is the product of those parts forming five separate modules, which have been welded

into a single unit with a sole screw. All of it is then hermetically sealed, ensuring no moisture, dust or foreign particles may come between you and the SISTEM51’s longlasting performance and sustained accuracy. And it’s an engineering wonder that you can see for yourself on the back of any SISTEM51 timepiece. Transparency has long been a signature of Swatch’s and this watch does bare its mechanical soul, offering a cool view of its oscillating weight and five movement modules. Otherwise, a sleek minimalism can be expected on the rest of the SISTEM51’s design, with the range arriving in four colourways and accents unique to each. Not simply a marriage of heritage and innovation, and a testament to Swatch’s dedication to research and development, the SISTEM51 is also a true triumph of Swiss-made design, mechanics and precision. Shop for SISTEM51 at Swatch, Orchard Gateway, #01-01

SISTEM51’s colour codes

SISTEM Red A glowing and electric variation in fun silicone

SISTEM Black A dangerous shade with a leather strap to match

SISTEM White A blank canvas spiced up with dots of rainbow hues

Time

Text: Stacy Lim

Buddha to Buddha Time

debut models, the Aquatic Explorer and Accelerator. Already beloved Designed with the for its clothing great outdoors and sterling silver in mind, they’ve jewellery lines been forged with that champion the highest-grade top-notch design stainless steel, and and craftsmanship, can be relied upon alongside a world- for precision and a embracing vision, polished aesthetic. Buddha to Buddha Also key on the is furthering Aquatic Explorer its natural and is a Mindstate spiritual philosophy Ring, which offers on its first venture emotive quotes into timekeeping. and words to Echoing the encourage the Amsterdam total enjoyment label’s ethos of and embracing of living consciously the time of your in the moment, life. these Swiss Made Available at Ante at watches embrace TANGS Orchard, nature and L3, and Robinson progression in its Orchard, L4

DKNY Chambers

Fossil Modern Calvin Klein Machine Amaze

DKNY’s Fall line-up of watches continues to keep time with the pulse of the city, with urban touches, classy finishes and simplified colours cutting an utterly chic and energetic figure. Behold its Chambers model, on which DKNY confidently reimagines the classic chronograph with ceramic or embellished bezels, polished bracelets and silver-tone hands. Available at all WSI stores

Retaining its vintage roots, while inviting new and industrial touches, Fossil arrives this season bearing its limited edition Modern Machine. With accents that hark back to the aeronautical era of the 1940s, this timepiece is as strong and hardy as it looks, with interchanging machine parts that can be disassembled and reassembled into 32 unique combinations. Available at all Fossil boutiques

Sophistication is all over Calvin Klein’s latest drop of Amaze timepieces. Blending watch and jewellery into a single accessory, these pieces bear polished stainless steel cases, elegant chain links and clean dials, all of which have been designed with a pure elegance in mind. Available at TANGS Orchard, L2 and L3, Takashimaya, L1, VivoCity, #01-K30, ION Orchard, #B1-14, and Bugis Junction, #01-15

Shopping

Go Electro

Loud, futuristic and acid washes to usher in the rave Text & Styling: Stacy Lim

Marc by Marc Jacobs Fall/Winter 2014

Shopping

Linda Farrow x Phillip Lim Sunglasses

Bernhard Willhelm New knitted sweater

Givenchy Columbian-fit printed T-shirt

Topshop Sequined mini skirt

DKNY x Opening Ceremony Silver bomber jacket

Charlotte Olympia Mani Pedi yellow heels

Bernhard Willhelm Zebra print jacket

Walter van Beirendonck Fall/Winter 2014

Roger Vivier Virgule pumps

Kate Spade New York Hello Tokyo clutch

Pull & Bear Bleached denim jeans

SPORT b. Homme Geometric print shirt

House of Holland True Romance midi dress

Bao Bao Issey Miyake Lucent Pro Shogun tote bag

Alexander Wang Rocco Poseidon bag

Rick Owens Drop crotch leather shorts

Melissa Ultragirl + Gareth Pugh II flats in blue and white

Kate Spade New York Cyber Cheetah Avery pants

Topman Neon oil slick beanie

Nike Air Max Lunar1

Alexander Wang Espresso heels

M.I.A Maya

Maison Scotch Leather biker jacket with perforated details

Shopping

Craft Work Touches of the artisanal and the crafty Text & Styling: Stacy Lim

Missoni Fall/Winter 2014

Shopping

Topshop Leather clutch with fringe

H&M Sequined dress

Saint Laurent Studded cross jean jacket

Suno Embroidered cotton shirt

Reclaimed Vintage Paisley pocket square H&M Painted sweatshirt Alexander McQueen Embellished structured top

Chloé Fall/Winter 2014

Zucca T-shirt with zipped pocket

Icona Pop Iconic EP

ASOS Patchwork shirt

Alexander McQueen Silk-panelled cotton-blend cargo pants

Haider Ackermann Striped wool waistcoat

DKNY Jeans Snake print sweatshirt

Bimba Y Lola Striped skirt with woollen fringe

Emporio Armani Dégradé crocodile skin slip-on

Roksanda Ilincic Herringbone Devan top

Emporio Armani Dégradé woollen hoodie

ASOS Black Crop top with glass collar

Tsumori Chisato Necklace

Ling Wu Bubble clutch in pink and brown

Shopping

The It List 10 of Fall’s hottest topics and greatest Its Text: Min Chen

Art School

The worlds of fashion and art continue to make for friendly neighbours this season, as paint splatters, graphics and assorted abstractions stake out further claims to chic. Collaborations between designers and artists also abound, ensuring visual art a jolly good spot on fashion’s sleeve.

Levi’s® x Rick Griffin The San Franciscan psychedelic movement of the ‘60s would be less without Rick Griffin, whose luminous and illustrative play on posters and sleeves for bands like The Grateful Dead are now entirely iconic. Here, Levi’s taps four of his prints for tees, patches and badges that capture the late Griffin’s countercultural heart.

Stella McCartney x Gary Hume Stella McCartney and Gary Hume’s partnership goes way back to 2002 and returns for Fall 2014, with the Young British Artist’s graphic drawings being rendered in embroidery and jacquard on McCartney’s newly structured and sporty silhouettes.

Marni x Magnus Plessen Magnus Plessen’s intrepid explorations into material density and surreality wind their way into Marni’s Fall/Winter collection, where two prints from the German artist’s Zwei Figuren artwork have been reproduced onto canvases of satin viscose, jersey and leather.

COS x Serpentine In support of the Serpentine Galleries’ Park Night Series, a rich programme of art, poetry, music and film, the very cool COS has produced two pairs of limited edition Oxfordbased shoes that have been cut from a smooth, leathered and minimalist cloth.

Shopping

Fur Real

Sling Shot

Fall does call for fur, though this time round, these soft fleeces and pelts have been resurrected with a delicious new luxury. Whether blanketing coats or accenting handbags, fur – faux or otherwise – is ensuring this season stays real fuzzy around the edges.

Already a key hit in Spring/ Summer, the cross-body and shoulder bags stay gold even with the setting of the sun. Now emerging in new shapes and skins, these elegant carryalls continue to bear femininity, snazzy chic and of course, all your daily essentials.

From right Dolce & Gabbana, DKNY and Fendi, Fall/Winter 2014

Coach Fall/Winter 2014

Jimmy Choo Cleo handbag with striped rabbit fur Coach Shearling Rhyder crossbody bag Coach’s Rhyder is already an exquisite union of utility and luxury, and this season, returns with a tactile shearling hide that recalls classic American workwear detailing.

Saint Laurent Emmanuelle bucket bag On the heels of its sexy Université shoulder bag, Saint Laurent presents its Emmanuelle bucket bag that still harbours the brand’s signature cool-girl stylings.

Proenza Schouler PS11 Mini shoulder bag Armed with visual cues culled from West Coast interior design, Proenza Schouler’s classic PS11 Mini enters Fall with a new rich hue and geometric embellishments.

Shrimps Wilma striped faux fur coat

New Look Faux fur circle scarf

Topshop Vest with faux fur panel

Givenchy Obsedia rucksack with brown beaver fur

Shopping

50 Sacai Fall/Winter 2014

All Wrapped Up

Street Fighters As Coco Chanel will have it, “A fashion that does not reach the streets is not a fashion.” So here’s fashion that, however much crafted in a lofty atelier, looks set to lay claim to its very own spot on the pavement.

While Fall/ Winter has never lacked for outerwear, this season presents a new alternative to your standard-issue coats in the form of the blanket. Folk in origin and boho in style, the blanket has been newly reinterpreted into capes and ponchos, painted in myriad motifs and colours, and is all ready to be hung and draped ever-so casually over your shoulders.

Burberry Prorsum Patterned blanket

Chloé Alpaca-blend blanket cape

Miss Selfridge Blanket scarf

Etro Fall/Winter 2014

Y-3 Fall/Winter 2014

Givenchy Lambskin skate loafer with Bambi print Riccardo Tisci’s urban fixation still looms large on Givenchy’s latest luxe skate loafers, fronted by the brand's now-iconic Bambi and Rottweiler prints.

Chanel Tweed, leather and rubber sneaker Chanel ventures its own fashionable take on the sneaker with a range that boasts 20 different combinations of materials, as well as high energy and expert construction.

Converse CONS Weapon Patchwork sneaker Converse’s new CONS Weapon collection comes headlined by the bold Patchwork. Rooted in athletic heritage, this First String sneaker is an authentic animal collaged with bright and unique pieces of mesh.

Shopping

The Union Forever

Soldier On With military precision and a khaki-toned uniformity resuming their hold on Fall/ Winter, you’d definitely want to step in line. When not championing the season’s choice army green hue, the likes of Isabel Marant and Balmain have also soldiered on with structured cuts, tough fabrics and strict silhouettes that go trench-deep.

Because not everyone enjoys working by their lonesome, designers and brands continue standing united for capsule collections that deliver parallel visions, twinned passions and the best of both worlds. From right Balmain, Isabel Marant and Calvin Klein, Fall/Winter 2014

H&M Khaki knit sweater COS Khaki wool skirt

Pull & Bear Camouflage-print parka

H&M x Liberty Liberty’s latest link-up with H&M has made for a capsule menswear collection – consisting of shirts and matching accessories – that bursts with the British house’s classic and subtle floral prints.

Topshop Military tank top

Dr. Martens Women's 8-eyelet 1460 boot in green

Fred Perry Authentic Bradley Wiggins Collection Fall/Winter 2014 Sir Bradley Wiggins brings equal sport and design know-how to his sixth Fred Perry Authentic collection. His retro stylings aside, he applies regal shades and checkerboard motifs to pieces like the Cycling Shirt, Merino Cardigan and Finish Line Cuff Track Jacket.

Puma x McQ Fall/Winter 2014 Once more, Puma and McQ share the stage on a range of athletic and edgy kicks. Behold silhouettes like the McQ Run Mid, McQ Move Lo and McQ Leap, which meld traditional shoe design with inspirations from human anatomy for visually and architecturally sound constructions.

Shopping

Hello Dolly The â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;60s remain swinging on the latest runways of Saint Laurent, Valentino and Gucci, which came duly lined with all things mod and a-gogo. Baby doll dresses, kneehigh boots, mini skirts and pop colours have been called upon, and still look as new and fresh as they did on Twiggy.

Gucci Fall/Winter 2014

Miu Miu Leather mini skirt Marni Handbag House of Holland Embellished velvet mini dress

Kenzo Jacquard dress

Dolce & Gabbana Embellished wool skirt

Topshop Over-knee leather boots

From right Valentino, Louis Vuitton, Saint Laurent and Carven, Fall/Winter 2014

Shopping

High Voltage

Fancy Pants Idiosyncrasy and whimsy rule fashion’s seas this season, as designers yield to the snap and crackle of pop culture. Collections’ worth of zany silhouettes and accessories will have you know that fashion is certainly no somber business.

Just because it’s autumn, that don’t mean you’ll be drowning in browns and blacks. Thanks to the work of Alexander Wang and Christian Dior, this season’s runways are flush with neon pigments and electric paints to keep you looking on the bright side.

From right Alexander Wang and Christian Dior, Fall/ Winter 2014

Saint Laurent Blue and black babycatprinted kitten pump

Chanel Fall/Winter 2014

REDValentino Fall/Winter 2014 This Fall, the REDValentino heroine is a mercurial creature – equally tough and delicate, sensual and innocent – that’s straight out of a fairy tale. She inspires a collection that’s snazzy and sassy enough to challenge the fairest of them all.

Charlotte Olympia Faster Collection Ain’t no easy task catching up to speed with Formula 1, but Charlotte Olympia does a swell enough job with its GP-inspired Faster range of shoes and accessories that boast tyre tracks and speedometer details.

Kate Spade New York Shanghai Collection Kate Spade’s year of adventures takes it now to Shanghai, where the label finds inspiration for its new ornate touches, art deco embellishments, delicately embroidered pieces and downright cheeky accessories.

COS Neon yellow men’s shirt

Valentino Embellished leather shoulder bag

DKNY Neon lace dress

Paint

True Neutral Have yourself a clean slate with a nude and all-natural glow Text & styling: Min Chen

Laneige Watery Cushion Concealer Laneige’s latest invention is set to deliver enough coverage, moisture and brightening powers to allow you to say bye to blemishes

RMK Fall/Winter 2014

La Mer Intensive Revitalizing Mask Eight minutes is all it takes for this rejuvenating mask to plump, protect and energise your skin, restoring its natural radiance with an arsenal of sensorial ingredients and La Mer’s Miracle Broth of antioxidants

Tarte Timeless Smoothing Primer Land yourself the ultimate blank canvas with help from Tarte’s moisturising and enhancing primer

RMK Glow Stick EX-01 Champagne Gold RMK’s limited edition Glow Stick wields pearly highlights and Royal Jelly extract to help finish off your look with natural definition and luminosity

Sephora Pore & Fine Line Filler Designed to optically smooth and correct imperfections, Sephora’s must-have primer is your ticket to a smooth, nomakeup finish

Bat For Lashes The Haunted Man

Nails Inc Crème Color in Porchester Square Nail the best understatement in Nails Inc’s muted and quietly chic greige tone

Urban Decay Naked Skin Illuminating Beauty Balm While minimising lines and brightening your mien, Urban Decay’s hard worker also provides hydrating benefits to improve your skin’s look and elasticity

Dior Rouge Dior in 135 Carré d’Or Put a little shine in your stark nakedness with Dior’s latest and alluring golden beige lip colour

Fresh Fresh Life Eau de Parfum A reviving experience is promised with Fresh’s new EDP, which is topped by warm earthy and airy notes

SK-II Cellumination Deep Surge Ex SK-II’s legendary Cellumination Deep Surge formula is just the thing to land that soft and hydrated skin, and bright and healthy glow

The Body Shop All-in-One Instablur The Body Shop’s Instablur perfector controls shine, smooths pores, moisturises and evens your complexion, without even breaking a sweat

Paint

The Mane Line The many tools and tricks to nail your choice coiffure Text & styling: Min Chen Kate Nash

Cat Power

Straight Edge

Asience Intensive Treatment Hair Mask Here’s your one-stop solution to moisturising your hair, and ensuring it stays smooth and soft for up to 96 hours

Maximum Volume L’Oreal Total Repair 5 Split End Sealer A key player in L’Oreal’s Total Repair 5 range, this rinse-off treatment is powered with LAK 1000 to strengthen your locks

John Frieda Frizz Ease Flawlessly Straight Shampoo Even the most unruly of crowns will stay straight with this miracle cure of shampoo, which repairs, restores and de-frizzes

Tsubaki Hair Oil This little wonder is highly concentrated in camellia oil, and instantly penetrates your hair to protect and shine it to lustrous perfection

Moist Diane Smooth Hair Oil Just as it says on the bottle, this lightweight oil imparts brilliant shine to your locks, whilst reducing breakage and splitting

John Frieda Dream Curls Daily Styling Spray Those dream curls will indeed be perfected with just a spritz of this, which is designed to boost your natural curl pattern

Percy & Reed Dry Instant Volumising Spray Non-sticky and lightweight, this power-packed spray will lend your hair bounce, structure and movement

Kérastase Densifique Absolue Mousse Kérastase’s track record in innovative haircare means you can count on its latest mousse to volumise, texturise and care for your every strand

Moist Diane Volume & Scalp Oil Shampoo The density and nourishment your hair deserves is just a wash of Moist Diane’s Volume & Scalp Shampoo away

Redken Shape Factor 22 Sculpting Cream-Paste This one’s made for hardcore sculpting and control, with a a nonsticky feel and flexible finish

Spread

In The Land of Gods and Monsters Photographer: Lenne Chai Stylist: Joyce Lui Makeup: Mika Furukawa (MASH Management) Hair: Shingo Horiguchi Coordinator in Tokyo: Koketsu Nakaya Model: Sabina Plestilova @ Surge

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Faux fur coat and socks by H&M, pink dress by Miss Selfridge, and shoes (worn throughout), stylistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own

Blue jumpsuit and socks by Topshop, and pink cardigan (worn around waist) by Warehouse

Lavender dress by Topshop, and orange wool sweater and socks by H&M

Orange turtleneck sweater and pink shirt (worn over shoulders) by H&M, cream skirt by Warehouse, and socks by Topshop

Blue jumpsuit and socks by Topshop, and pink cardigan (worn around waist) by Warehouse

Cream crop top and trousers by Topshop, and blue coat and pullover (worn around waist) by Warehouse

Talk

Glow & Into the heart of darkness with Perfume Genius Text: Indran P Photography: Min Chen Special thanks: Hostess Asia

Getting to the point is something we’ve all wished of others. Yet, when that beyond-simple expectation is followed through with an unapologetically crushing honesty, we’re often lost for words. This was the exact reaction that Michael Hadreas met with when he announced himself to the world as Perfume Genius. His 2010 debut, Learning, saw him juxtapose orchestral beauty against devastating and sometimes violent vignettes from his personal life with a force of rupture not since felt since Diamanda Gallas’ own singularly reverberating

missives. In 2012, Hadreas took his strained pop to even more gorgeous but harrowing heights on his sophomore, Put Your Back N 2 It, a tour de force of discomfort that bled and pulsed with the intensity of its maker’s vision. Long taken in by Hadreas’ scorched-earth treatment of pop, we sought him out for a closer glimpse of the genius shrouded in all that darkness.

Behold You’ve been touring intensely these past two years. What was the best part of that? This is going to sound corny but the best part of that time was the people we met along the way, like airport handlers and just complete strangers. Random encounters like those were great. There were times when we didn’t even speak the same language but it didn’t matter. They were cool people. Your first album, Learning, very quickly became hailed as a masterpiece of heartbreak and loss. Was putting it together a painful experience for you? I don’t know for sure. That one, especially, was very strange. I had never made music before and I had never in my whole life planned to be a musician. But a lot has happened in my life and I guess I saw it as healing process. That’s why the songs came out in a manic spree. “Lookout, Lookout”, in particular, mentions “murders” throughout. We hope you didn’t come into any kind of physical harm. Sometimes, I find it

hard to explain the songs because they’re so personal to me, so specific to me. But that one in particular wasn’t about me. It was about Mary Bell, a British child murderer. I became obsessed with the case and I read all the court documents.

other people. I guess that had to happen because I wanted to make something personal but relatable and I didn’t want to do it by going back to my diary.

so much of what I do now. I also listen to a lot of cinematic stuff. The way I play the piano also comes from looking at classical music through a cinematic lens.

Given the extremely personal nature of your music then, are you ever afraid of revealing too much? I think that the more my music is shared, the less scary the entire process becomes. Learning was therapeutic for me because I played it so often. I don’t exactly want to call it pride, but I feel less fragile over time. I think I’m more afraid in interviews! In person, I babble and I’m not as thoughtful. But in my songs, I have total control.

Yes, your music combines the orchestral tropes of classical music with perhaps the starkest sensibilities in modern pop. How did you find and develop your sound? I guess it all started with the piano. I grew up playing piano and getting exposed to classical music that way. I wasn’t a great student or very advanced but I just picked the basics up as I went along. Now, it’s a weird patchwork of the things that I listen to and my limited capabilities. I noticed that the more I tour, the better I get at it. I think time and persistence have played a huge part in this was well.

How different was making Put Your Back N 2 It from Learning? There was definitely more pressure on the second one. I had just gotten signed to a label and people had expectations. It was paralysing at first especially since I was used to recording in my bedroom before and now I was in a studio recording in front of

Beyond just technique, there’s also a consciously filmic quality to your sound. Yes, for sure. I’ve always thought of songs as videos, as mini movies with soundtracks. The orchestral feel is something I inherited from watching a lot of films. It started out as an unconscious thing that grew to become

It’s known that your mother has played a crucial role in your life and in your music. What does she think of your work so far? She really likes it! Until I started making music, I really wasn’t doing very much of anything with my life. So, when I started to get interested in music, she thought it was just another thing, like a hobby that wouldn’t pan out. Even after the first album came out and I was touring, she didn’t believe that I was any good. But now, both my parents are really supportive and they really like the music. My dad’s also really into it. He’s very dad-like about it and always gives me harsh opinions like, “I don’t really like that. I think you should do this instead”. He’s really obsessive about having mandolins on every song. Making music as Perfume Genius, you definitely belong to the auteurs of contemporary indie rock, like Panda Bear, Blood Orange

and Twin Shadow, whose strong sonic identity runs throughout everything that they do. It’s weird because those artists too seem like they’re in their own world and beyond what’s going on around them, they have their own way of doing things. And I think that without the Internet, we would never see any of these people. It’s the same for me. The way I thought was so singular, weird and spread out, that without the web, it wouldn’t have worked out. These are the kind of outsider-y type artists that are becoming more a part of the mainstream. There are different ways for people to watch and take in music now. You also released a controversial and widely acclaimed video for the single, “Hood”, starring famed gay porn star, Arpad Miklos. How did that happen? I came up with a concept that needed a big, bodybuilder-type guy at first. I sent the treatment to the director, Winston H., who arranged my crazy ideas into a storyline. But we couldn’t find any bodybuilders who were willing to do the video. And so, someone contacted Arpad, and he said yes.

Talk

It was the first proper music video I made. I was making videos with found footage before but this was different. I was very nervous! But he had been before the camera before so he was very comfortable. You’ve been hard at work on your new album, Too Bright. How different will this record be from the rest? Yes, I recorded it with the producer, Adrian Utley from Portishead, and engineer, Ali Chant, who both co-produced my second album, in Bristol. I really love that city a lot. It’s a cool music city; PJ Harvey lives there! This album is a lot wilder, angrier and even a little more fun, in a way. It’s very dark. I play a lot less piano and even live, there are a lot more songs where I’m just singing. And it’s weird because I’m going to have to dance since I can’t just stand there and sing! The songs are also a lot more guttural. I felt like I had to really sell it. I couldn’t do my light pianos on this. Too Bright will be released on 23 September on Matador Records

Feature

She’s It The changing make and meaning of the It Girl Text: Min Chen

It Figures

For as long as there have been It Girls (It Bands, It Bags) in this world, there’ been no one to properly illuminate and define what “It” actually is. It may entail a singular talent, an exceptional beauty, a distinctive style or some other uncommon quirk, though it might also be the sum of all that… or none of that. Rudyard Kipling, in his 1904 short story, “Mrs Barthurst”, claimed, “It isn’t beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It’s just ‘It’”, before British author, Elinor Glyn turned “It” into a buzzword in 1927 with her book and screenplay, both titled It. In those, she didn’t just invent the term “It Girl” – a phrase she first employed on Clara Bow, the star of It – but also proposed that It “can be a quality of the mind as well as a physical attraction”. What we can actually divine is that It Girls

possess a certain remarkable if nebulous trait – the intellectual, artistic, stylistic and unaffected It – one that’s effortless and fearless in its finesse, wins adoration, draws attention and that’s so stubbornly elusive that it eludes definition itself. While the right time and the right place do play vital parts too, the idea of It has stood sturdily enough throughout the ages, so that while yesterday’s It Girls may not be today’s, they still make for shining examples of what it means to have It. After all, there can be no better illustration of It than its earthly representatives, the It Girls, and their unearthly state of grace.

Girl on fire

In her lifetime, she’s been dubbed “Youthquaker”, “Girl of the Year” and latterly, “Girl on Fire”. She’s Bob Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman”, her in the “Leopard-skin Pill-box Hat”; she’s Andy

Warhol’s penultimate Superstar and the Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale”; and essentially, Edie Sedgwick is It. A socialite, model, actress and muse with youth, money, time and beauty to spare, Edie nailed It on the head just by showing up. There’s a reason why, whilst watching Warhol’s Vinyl, one’s attention is not drawn by Gerard Malanga’s theatric attempts, but to Edie dancing to “Nowhere To Run” in the corner. Sure, she “did nothing” (heiresses are like that), but she made up for it with a supernatural ability to dazzle with spontaneity and energy, while living out a ‘60s utopian ideal of freedom, adventure and style. As David Weisman, who directed her in Ciao! Manhattan, puts it, “Edie was a lifeartist whose masterwork was her life itself.” And with Edie, the first postmodern It Girl was born. She may have been

difficult to pin down – having been described as everything from funny to childlike to glamorous – but ultimately, as photographer, Jerry Schatzberg, duly sums up, “She didn’t have to try. She was just there.” And it’s that effortless presence, that being there, that’s also defined the It-ness of the likes of Nico, Jane Birkin and Eve Babitz. Just as Nico owned a well-cultivated air of Teutonic otherness that figured largely in The Velvet Underground & Nico, so Babitz brandished a pointed wit, once leaning in on her ex-boyfriend, Jim Morrison’s choice of band name as such: “I mean, The Doors of Perception. What an Ojai-geekytoo-L.A.-pottery-glazer kind of uncool idea.” And on an entirely separate continent, Jane Birkin worked the same magic on Serge Gainsbourg, and in a liberal existence that wasn’t afraid to bare skin and love freely.

So while not all It Girls have the hard graft and product to show for their It-ness, their freewheeling existence and presence in the age of the ‘60s engendered a reassessment of the era’s boundaries and personal values. Or in Edie Sedgwick’s words, “You live alone, creating your life as you go.” And the fact that It Girls since can dance, laugh, live, inspire, love and self-actualise with this much abandon is because she, that eternal youthquaker, did just that.

Wild style

And there was no way that the world of fashion would sit out on the changing attitudes of the ‘60s. Androgyny and flirty bohemia informed the decade’s designs, marking a shift away from the staid ‘50s, and a move toward a style that was wildly and sensually individualised. These were the fashions that made London swing and

more vitally, were made swinging by the era’s It muses and models. History has already made the It likes of Jean Shrimpton and Peggy Moffitt totemic within London’s burgeoning and swinging style, but it took a mere 5’6” waif to trump them all. Twiggy arrived in 1966, with the Daily Express proclaiming her “the Cockney kid with a face to launch a thousand shapes” and Vogue naming her the “extravaganza that makes the look of the sixties”. And never mind that Twiggy didn’t actually have the sensational personality to match the sensation she caused, that face (those eyelashes!) and that frame (childlike and androgynous to a fault) did come to hallmark the ‘60s, and were instantly applied across dolls, dresses, makeup kits and stuff. It was an early instance of the commodification of It-ness, which failed to

69 realise that It is nothing you can buy off a shelf or acquire with a set of false lashes. Instead, It is Loulou de la Falaise. Also a child of Swinging London, Loulou was transplanted to Paris in 1968, where she partied and giggled her way into the heart and house of Yves Saint Laurent. Not just a radiant and insouciant burst of light and laughter, Loulou owned the kind of wild style that pit couture against flea market finds, that mixed ethnic prints with rainbows of colour, and that extended the belief that fashion should be equally self-made fantasy and fantastic. Her equally bohemian mother, Maxime, remembers, “All we had were rags and Loulou could turn them into riches and create a new look. She was the best-dressed woman with a safety pin.” It’s no wonder that Saint Laurent was sufficiently bewitched to hire Loulou as a co-designer, co-conspirator and full-time muse at his couture house. There, her ebullience and her harlequin hues worked their potent spell against Yves’ black introversion, pushing his designs into electric and brazen territory (his 1971 ‘40s-inspired couture

Feature collection is just one example). In the employ of Saint Laurent for more than three decades, Loulou’s instinctive It never once lost its snap, crackle or pop, and she’s remembered for the energy and style she lent Saint Laurent, as much as her own luminous nonchalance that made her, in her own words, “a dancing, fun-time person”. And as her husband, Thadée Klossowski, once declared, “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if her name suddenly appeared in lights on the Eiffel Tower.”

on the streets of New York, is written up as “a little fashion dynamo”, one who sports corduroy overalls, makes her own hats and digs skater boys. It was a good enough introduction to the 1990s’ own It Girl and The New Yorker’s “coolest girl in the world”, but barely scratched the surface of what is and would be Chloë Sevigny. Her offbeat and subversive style, after all, is merely expression of the person underneath, which means that even without the sheen of fashion, Chloë is still very much It.

Unfortunately or fortunately, a spirit like Loulou’s doesn’t fly by that often, and the weight and fantasy of fashion has fallen upon the collective shoulders of today’s It Girls like Agyness Deyn, Alexa Chung and Cara Delevingne. Then again, whilst these ladies are no doubt in possession of a distinctive sense of style, their Twiggy-style omnipresence is still a pale substitute for sheer presence.

By the end of the decade, she’d have amassed a sizable filmography, including lauded indiesized features like Kids and Boys Don’t Cry (for which she acquired an Academy Award nomination), where her talent matched her unique quality of being, and left no doubt as to her fearless ambitions and impulses. “I never wanted to be a celebrity,” she’s said, “and I think that’s why I’ve chosen to do the work that I do… work that means something to me.” And after all, the Chloë who makes patchwork hats and shops at thrift stores still exists beneath that accomplished actress, and it is she who continues to collaborate with designers and who stands out in all

That sassy girl

A 1992 issue of Sassy Magazine contains a profile of the magazine’s own intern, one Chloë Sevigny. In it, the girl, who fashion editor, Andrea Linett, spotted

her unconventionality as a contemporary style icon. It is also she who Marc Jacobs describes thusly: “Not only is she talented, young and attractive, she stands out in a sea of often clichéd-looking actresses.” Indeed, the 1990s It Girl, descended from her sassy forebears like Debbie Harry and Madonna, was newly rooted in creativity and savvy, possessing of a fierce strain of talent and just the right amount of eccentricity. Like the decade that housed these creatures, they were, in a word, “alternative”. Chloë aside, the rest of the ‘90s did not lack for similarly weird-cool Gen-X girls, like Winona Ryder, Fiona Apple and the unfortunately fictional Daria Morgendorffer, all of whom tempered their charisma with dark wit and healthy cynicism. That meant any It Girl worth her salt was bound to question her very own It-ness. Ryder, in particular, captured the moment with: “I’m strange, crazy, intelligent, wild, soft, coy, thrifty, boring, romantic, selfish, full of pride, mean, dark, sweet, and most of all, I’m through with this interview.”

This is our youth

Now, in a post-Internet age, It is easily conflated and swiftly deflated with

the click of a mouse. Today’s It Girls are unfortunately only It for as long as they can draw and maintain the world’s already-short attention spans, and following that, for only a very viral moment. Jennifer Lawrence had hers when she stumbled up the steps of the Kodak Theatre to collect her Oscar, Sky Ferreira is having hers with her every magazine cover, Rihanna practically owns hers all of the time, while Cara Delevingne continues to be knee-deep in hers each time she updates her Instagram with a picture of Karl Lagerfeld or something. Turns out hardly any It Girl can be It just by being there anymore. Then again, not everyone gets to be Tavi Gevinson, who at age 18, already commands the smarts, creativity, drive, pop culture savvy and digital know-how (and as it happens, perfect timing) to transform a fashion blog into a media empire. Thanks to her blog, Style Rookie, launched when she was but 13, she’s had a singular adolescence – rubbing shoulders with the likes of Anna Wintour, Zadie Smith and Kathleen Hanna, and gracing magazine covers – which has paved the way to Rookie, Tavi’s Sassy-minded online

magazine, and her first few steps toward an acting career in film and on Broadway. But even with the acclaim and attention that’s deemed her the “Voice of a Generation” and “Girl Power’s Last Chance”, Gevinson remains and remembers the gawky pre-teen dressed as “a grandmother on ecstasy” at New York Fashion Week (“I was trying to combat what I saw at school: girls feeling this pressure to look a certain way and sexualise themselves”), and raised on an intense diet of pop culture and poetry, so that her It-ness is one that’s authentic and always challenging. And though brought up as part of an admittedly narcissistic digital generation, Tavi also arrives with an awareness of its power and pitfalls, as well as the understanding that It is something you can create for yourself – on or offline. “I think it’s time for cultural gatekeepers to give up these illusions of who ‘deserves’ to be famous, be heard or have influence, based on old-fashioned ideas about success,” she’s said, “Beyoncé said, ‘I have no desire for anyone else’s throne’, and I feel the same. I like building my own throne.” And that, is how It’s done.

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Of Glamour and Gloom Lana Del Rey is alive and ultraviolent Text: Indran P Special thanks: Universal Music

unrepentantly and insistently remained her own in the scorchedearth age of the Internet. If Her name invokes her 2012 album, a thousand Born to Die, was different opinions the bestselling and it’s not even breakthrough that her real one. As it was because she lives, breathes it presented and sings, Lana its maker as Del Rey is a melancholic arguably the most cavorting through polarising star in a haze of illicit the post-Gaga pleasures with pop firmament. a sad-eyed, Against all claims languid grace, of inauthenticity, then her redthe singerlipped follow-up, songwriter has Ultraviolence, is

an even grander, lusher and luxe-r blow-out of the sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll and sadness that swirl around the world of the character that is Lana Del Rey. Even The Black Keys had to retrace their steps because of it. In an exclusive heart-to-heart, the “Sad Girl” tells us how she brought the chaos, drama and ultimately, triumph, of Ultraviolence to life.

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from one house to another in my old Mercedes. I felt like I was back in high school! Has your own family been supportive of your music then? I’ll never forget my father’s visit during the recording of Born To Die. He was amazed to see me so sure, so in charge, so fulfilled, asking the producer to give me a beat or a symphony. He had no idea what I’d done for the last six years, that I had patiently built my little world. My parents didn’t even know I sang. But when he saw me in the studio, my father told me it was one of the happiest days of his life. My parents had always insisted that I didn’t leave school for music. I told them early on that I wanted to become a singer, but they didn’t get how passionate and how serious I was. My mother asked what I was doing every day in New York. But suddenly when my father saw me, he understood. It validated six years of work.

How did Ultraviolence come about? I can’t start an album if I have no idea of the narrative, the concept. If the songs aren’t perfect for me, what’s the point of forcing myself? But everything opened up after a chance meeting at a party with Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. Some kind of chemistry happened. When we recorded “Brooklyn Baby”, we looked at each other and we felt something was happening. This was very surprising to me because I had always worked with my inner circle, people that I know and love. Here, I found myself with a total stranger! What did he bring to the table? It was very natural; we had a lot of fun. He’s

really passionate, with very strong dogmas. That brought us closer. Initially, my album and The Black Keys’ album were due out the same day, 1 May. But after four weeks of recording mine, he was so involved that he somehow imagined it was his album. It even began to influence his work with The Black Keys. He loved my album so much he called me late at night after a studio session and said, “I don’t know if I’m crazy, but I feel like we’re making a great album.” He just wanted to make sure that I shared his enthusiasm. Your music has always balanced contemporary pop sensibilities with a nostalgia for older sounds, but Ultraviolence is devoted exclusively to recreating the latter.

What influenced this? Nobody makes slow dance music anymore, I’d really like to try again. Nobody knows this, but I love dancing. During the Nashville sessions, at the end of the day, we’d re-listen to what we did and dance like crazy. The first song of the album, “Cruel World”, decided everything. It places the album geographically: Dan’s guitar tells about entering California. In the beginning of the song there’s something minimalist, a simplicity that repeats over and over, very low profile. And then the chorus comes with its big drums, its electric mess. This mixture, this cohabitation between normality and chaos is very symbolic of what I’d just been through in my life.

You mentioned California. Another unexpected feature of Ultraviolence is that it heavily mythologises the West Coast, despite your New York roots. What mystique does it hold for you? Yes, I’m totally into this mythology. When I lived in New York, that’s what I was looking for, this spirit of community; a bit like what Jeff Buckley had managed to build around him in the ‘90s, or Dylan in the ‘60s. But I never found my gang. As soon as I arrived in Los Angeles, I finally met people to talk with, play with and musicians like Father John Misty and Jonathan Wilson, whom I started making the album with. Everything I was looking for in New York, I suddenly found on the West Coast. I would drive

And since then, you’ve developed an incredibly distinct image and aesthetic. Yes, in the studio, I know exactly what I want. I never feel doubt or confusion. I have a very clear vision of the songs. Even if it might take weeks, I always end up hearing from the speakers what I heard in my head. The same goes for the videos. Everything is already there in my storyboards. So, I can drive the executive producer crazy, like I must have done with Dan Auerbach. But in the end, there’s going be one name on the album cover, and it’s mine. Your music also reflects such a deep-seated state of fundamental sadness. Is this a fertile headspace you enter into to make the music that you do? You’re right. I feel like I’m making happy songs but

when I have people listen to them, they tell me how sad they are. I can’t run away from my life, which was pretty tumultuous. Three years after my real debut, I’m still plagued by both doubt and sadness. I just have uncertainty and emptiness in front of me. And I don’t like not knowing where I’m going. With my love life, my family life, I’m not sure of anything. Writing was the only stable, reassuring thing in my life. Much has been made about your comments on icons like Amy Winehouse, Elliott Smith and Kurt Cobain dying young. Is there anything you’d like to clarify about that point? I never liked them because they died young, but that seems to be the fate of the people I admire. Fortunately, Leonard Cohen proves otherwise. I don’t like this romanticism for dying young. Artists are more useful alive than dead. You’ve been spared no amount of scrutiny by the media. How do you prevent that from affecting you and your music? My music is good enough for me to not have to justify or defend it. More than anything else in my life, I feel I have a gift for music. But these last few years, there were long periods when I didn’t write a word that I liked. I prayed that my muse would come back. And suddenly it came back this winter. “Old Money” [off Ultraviolence] came to me in one shot, “Carmen” [on Born to Die] came to me like that, in the street and I set the rhymes to the rhythm of my footsteps! At the time, I walked a lot, it was my ritual. Today, I drive; I go swimming in the Pacific; I record myself driving in the car, singing at the top of my voice. Inspiration is reborn from these new rituals. And deep down, I prefer to remain silent.

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She’s in Fashion Yoyo Cao’s statements in style Text: Min Chen

In 2011, exhibit started life as a physical space, where one may unearth unique and exceptional fashion finds, but in the few brief years since, the multi-label boutique grown far beyond those brick-and-mortar confines. Key to exhibit’s birth and blossoming is Yoyo Cao, who, besides founding the store, has worked tirelessly to further her singular vision and sense of style. A tastemaker, style-keeper and all-round It girl, Yoyo doesn’t

just man an epic wardrobe, a unique eye for chic, and an Instagram account stacked full of her gorgeous adventures in fashion and photography (61K followers can’t be wrong), but now, has also cultivated exhibit’s very own label. Recently unveiled at the Audi Fashion Festival, exhibit’s first collection is polished and replete with Yoyo’s favourite menswear touches in leather and tailoring, offset with a girly appeal

in slim silhouettes, sassy layering and that baby touch of pink. More so, it’s another of Yoyo’s intrepid statements that’ll make for a fine injection of forward-thinking fashion into our local style-scape. As the collection hits exhibit’s racks, we got Yoyo talking on her favourite subject.

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more superficial. But as I grew older, I looked to examples set by Anna Wintour and other editors-in-chief, who are powerful enough to change people’s minds about certain products. Like, whenever Kate Moss carries a bag, the moment she touches it, the bag becomes an It bag. That’s a very powerful thing.

What was it that drew you to fashion? It’s just passion. Ever since I was young, I loved catching up on the latest trends and trying on my mummy’s clothes. I just like to see beautiful things. And it’s always been my dream to have my own shop where I could sell the stuff that I like. I always thought that the things that I like aren’t exactly the things that the mass-market will like, and that somehow, those kinds of shops were lacking. A lot of people will go for the mass because they wanna be making money and so on, but those shops end up with a lack of character. I started this shop before I even graduated; I was still studying and I was already managing the shop. Did you have any fashion heroes that inspired your own sense or concept of fashion? I do. When I was younger, it was a bit

And today, Instagram definitely comes in handy when swaying opinions. As the owner of an influential account yourself, how important is Instagram to you? At the start, Instagram was a marketing tool for my company and today, it’s still very much a marketing tool. I was just taking photos to promote the clothes and increase awarenes of the brand. And since photography has also been my hobby, I was taking photos everyday anyway. It’s never been a chore to me; it’s about having fun and being creative. Instagram is important to me because it brings the brand awareness, but it’s also a place for me to express myself. Your expression takes the form of some pretty stunning photos. What was it that got you into photography? I got into photography before I even opened the store. I was just taking photos everyday using my digital camera, before I started to play with different cameras and functions. Creativity is very important to me as a photographer. Anyone can take outfit photos, but being creative is something that people can’t take away from you. And while we’re on creativity, fill us on the exhibit label and its debut collection. Does it share the same sensibility as the store? Actually, the label would be more or less will be taking over the stock

we have at the store, so that in the future, exhibit will only be carrying its own label. It’s pretty much the same idea as the store. Simply selling girly clothes was quite boring, so we threw in a lot of menswear-inspired clothes. And likewise, the label is a mixture of these two characters: the girly and the tailored menswear-inspired pieces. What is it that you love about menswear? I’ve never really been a skirt-and-dress girl, and somehow, menswear makes me feel more powerful. How did the design process go for your first collection? We actually decided on the colour plate before we designed the clothes. Our plate is made up of pink, white, black and brown – really warm colours. So in our minds, we thought we could use the black to do more menswear-inspired pieces like blazers, and pink for a girlier touch. We also used leather to make things a bit more luxe, and played around with other textures to make it all look good on the runway. And of course, there are pieces that we were just dying to have in our wardrobe! Any challenges in the entire process? We did experience some problems on the technical side, because none of us actually studied fashion design. One of my staff members was helping us with the technical drawings, so there was a problem of communicating what we wanted in technical terms, and it took us several drafts before we got what we wanted. And because we’re not familiar with stitching or materials, we had to do a lot of research to better express our ideas. And you got to debut your collection at the

Audi Fashion Festival. How did you feel in the run-up to that? Very excited! There wasn’t so much of stress because at that point in time, nothing could be changed. We were just very excited to show people what we’d been doing in the past few months. And because we wanted to keep the collection a surprise, we didn’t tell people what we’ve been working on. I really wanted to do a good job, since this was the first time we were showing the whole collection. What are your favourite pieces from the collection? I really like the leather biker jacket that I wore and the last dress that came out on the runway. It’s the pink dress with the tiara on top; the cutting and the feel of that piece when worn looked so much better than we thought it would. We were really lucky to have good models to pull everything together. Now that you’ve had time to reflect, what do you make of the first exhibit collection? If you asked me to score myself on this collection, I would say 75. But I definitely want to improve many things like the silhouettes of the dresses and pants, and the materials. We’re now working on the second collection and it’s already starting to look interesting. Finally, give us your interpretation of style. To me, style boils down to really classic and timeless pieces that can last you really long. Style doesn’t mean that you have to be carrying designer stuff, but it’s more about the whole feel. And of course, a very important factor is confidence. Find exhibit at Far East Plaza, #04-115.

Above exhibit’s debut collection Below exhibit and Yoyo at Audi Fashion Festival 2014

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The It Parade It bands across time and trends Text: Indran P

Hipper Than Thou

When Win Butler called James Murphy the “hipster douchebag that I wanted to punch in the face and the balls at the same time”, he was on to something. In the first blush of the noughties, Murphy's LCD Soundsystem and DFA Records emerged as the authoritative signifiers of all hipsterdom. On LCD’s three albums, he merged punning, snotty songwriting, an unquenchably smirking vocal style and funky, disco-inspired grooves and elevated scenesterhood into a party-starting sensibility. As a leading indie auteur, Murphy, as journo, Jody Rossen, nicely puts it, “sent hipster wallflowers stampeding to the dancefloor, transforming the tastes and untightening the backsides of white urban bohemia” with twitchingly energetic songs like “Daft Punk is Playing at My House”, “All My Friends” and “Pow Pow”. Today, his hit/hip-making powers are still valued, as the most recent albums of indie rock’s two biggest bands, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and of course, Arcade Fire, show.

Cool Agent Provocateur Britannia

Tyler, The Creator is a force of culture. At only 23, the California rapper and producer has a record label, clothing line and cult TV show to his name, not to mention a musical aesthetic that stands as singular and polarising. Proving that you can love, hate but never be indifferent to him, Tyler, together with his Odd Future collective, has been stretching the limits of free speech and freedom of expression with lyrics that condone murder, sexual assault, misandry, homophobia and nihilism. As tongue-in-cheek songs like “Bitch Suck D**k” might be, they’re sure getting him noticed and in a recent talk with Larry King (see?), Tyler reminded us of why he’s special: “I want people to mention my name next to Wes Anderson or Quentin Tarantino. I don't want my name to be mentioned next to other rappers at all”.

Hype is a fickle master/ mistress. Draped in the Union Jack-ed colours of national idiosyncrasy and buoyed by the demise of grunge, it seemed like Britpop's time in the sun would be indefinite. This definitely prompted its loudest mouthpiece, Noel Gallagher, to make such grand claims like, “We're not arrogant, we just believe we're the best band in the world”, as Oasis, Blur, Suede and Pulp strode to the forefront of pop culture with glam-my, guitar-heavy hookiness. This contextually specific brand of pop was informed by a resurgence in national and cultural pride that led one over-enthusiastic NME scribe to pronounce that, “as with baggies and shoegazers, loud, long-haired Americans have just found themselves condemned to the ignominious corner labeled ‘yesterday's thing’”.

Little Miss Sassy

Azealia Banks is at a level where it’d be lazy to call her “enigmatic”. A pop cultural anomaly if there was one, the 23-yearold Harlem rapper has gotten the rap, pop and indie worlds fixated on her every move. Female rappers rarely command crossover appeal, but for Azealia, all it took was for her ambrosial 2012 single, “212”, and its $30 music video to usher her into blog-o-sphereordained ubiquity. Since then, she’s become an It-magnet, drawing Paul Epworth, Kanye West, and brands such as Topshop, H&M and Alexander Wang into her sway. A crucial accessory to her fame has been her beef-starting streak that has seen her embroiled in some nasty and thoroughly needless social media battles with artists as disparate as T.I. and The Stone Roses. Now, label-less and album-less, but with a whole lot of feisty fight in her, the time is hers to prove the hype right.

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When We Were Fab

Do The D.A.N.C.E

The New Pop

The Material Girl

Such is the omniscience of its legacy that any mention of The Beatles involves recapitulation and obviousness. The Greatest-Band-In-TheWorld-status of The Beatles has long been an irrefutable fact of nature but as history has shown, the world can’t help celebrating the enduring myth of the Fab Four. They were the first global phenomenon; they still are the best-selling band in the history of recorded music; their New York stop during their 1965 North America tour attracted 56,000 people, redefining the live experience; they were the first act to dabble with the concept of the music video. Elvis Costello will tell you the same thing too: “My experience – seizing on every picture, saving money for singles and EPs, catching them on a local news show – was repeated over and over again around the world.” The bottom line is, they were the first. And that’s why Beatlemania will never end.

Back in the late aughts, dance styles like house, electro and electroclash suddenly forced themselves into the vernacular of indie rock. The main instigators of this digital coup were the European duos, France’s JUSTICE and Germany’s Digitalism, which, in varying, Daft Punkindebted ways, fused dancefloor euphoria with pop sensibilities and brought to insistent vogue a whole new club sound. The tastemakers christened it “indietronica” or “indie-dance” while the purists dismissed it as something for the kids. Still, as muso, Jess Harvell, remembers, it felt like a “much-needed adrenalised alternative” to the slowly evaporating strains of “inessential minimal techno”. Uniformed in skinny jeans and skinny tees, both bands looked every bit like the rockstars they were hailed as, until the buzz shifted to the next source of noise. The clock’s ticking, Aviici and co.

Pharrell may be the gatekeeper of mainstream pop today, but in indie rock and pop, Dev Hynes’ star is burning just as bright. Under various sonic guises, as the discohardcore fusionist, Test Icicles, the baroque pop visionary, Lightspeed Champion, and the r&b impresario, Blood Orange, Hynes has blitzed a trail for himself with a musical dexterity that sees him dazzlingly flesh out any and every sound he chooses to interpret. Renowned scribe, Sasha FrereJones described Hynes as “making increasingly elegant music, designed for imaginary yachts and VIP rooms or for an r&b club that no longer exists”. As Carrie Batan concurs, it’s this vision that has ensured that “pop has emerged from its dirty-word cocoon, morphing into a fashionable butterfly flitting around the room”. And it helps that he looks hip as hell too.

She may have gotten her “take-charge attitude” from Nancy Sinatra’s immortal bootsreferencing song and her rock ‘n’ roll impulses may have been ignited by David Bowie, but all that she’s since become is hers alone. Besides being the highest-selling female recording artist of all time, Madonna has simultaneously seduced, outraged and delighted the world with equal measures of artistry and antics that have only enriched and emboldened pop. Collapsing the barriers between the sacred and profane, Madonna showed the world that the harlot and the virgin were two sides of the same coin, one that possessed and still does, an extremely powerful currency. It’s no wonder that one Britney Spears, a phenomenon that wouldn’t have existed if not for Madonna, once famously said: “I'd rather meet Madonna than the president of the United States.”

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Musical and model behaviour on Saint Laurent's Fall/Winter runway Text: Min Chen

Hedi Slimane’s style pursuits have never been idle nor frivolous ones. As much as his output for Saint Laurent so far has been rock-inspired and grunge-lined right down to the last leather cuff, there’s no doubting each collection’s credible mood, ethos and smell of teen spirit. Slimane, after all, is a fanboy like the rest of us. So even as the house’s latest Fall/Winter presentation has seen a parade of ‘50s rockers and teddy boys in stovepipe jeans, tweed, animal prints, leather and oversized outerwear, none of them are mere fashion statements. They’re evidence of Slimane’s longheld sonic fixation

Boys in

and cultural immersion – allowing him to master not just the look, but the sound and stance – and come further authenticated by his choice of models. Handpicked to model this newest collection are true-blue musicians, culled from up-andcoming bands across New York City, London, California and Huw Webb Brighton, who Astral Pattern don’t just wear the clothes, but lend them a bona fide sheen of rock ‘n’ roll cool. Threads maketh the man, Previously of S.C.U.M, Huw Webb now and vice versa mans Astral Pattern too. Here, we alongside Melissa get acquainted Rigby and Bradley with just some of Baker. Galvanised by a Kraftwerk gig these musicians in Dusseldorf, the who turned threesome trades on a lush, cosmic, dream-pop models and sound, personified by muses for Saint “Sitting in The Sun”. Laurent’s F/W soundcloud.com/ astral-pattern collection.

Joey Vittetoe Solid Brown

Angus McGuinness Rex Osterkamp Jungle Doctors Rexx

With rock ‘n’ roll on its mind and in its soul, Solid Brown has ventured raw and basic numbers that ain’t shy of being lo-fi. Just check in on the Arizona trio’s Tape, a homemade CD-R release which contains three bare-boned songs and a languorous pace to match your summer afternoons. solidbrown.bandcamp.com

The well-crafted indie-pop melodies and emotions inherent on songs like “Falling” and “Dry” belie Jungle Doctors’ beginnings on a secondary schoolyard. It’s why the band’s two EPs have travelled fast, while rhythm guitarist, Angus’ repeated showings on the Saint Laurent runway can’t hurt either. jungledoctors.com

An indie-pop extension of Rex Osterkamp, Rexx is replete with sweet harmonies, jangly idiosyncrasies and a lo-fi aesthetic, summed up in its latest long-player, Death, And Other Ways to be Artsy, and in Osterkamp’s own assertion: “I just want to make music and dance around.” rexxagain.bandcamp.com

Feature

the Band Jaime Carpena Blurry Boys

Joo Joo Ashworth Froth

Jake Smallwood White Room

Jake Williams Dr. Skinnybones

Drew Minnoch Nonchalants

Jonathan Powell The Din

Blurry Boys is the intersection where hip hop, punk, indie, ambient and garage collide, and an exploration into new domains of musical identity. Dig into “Make Me Feel” for just a sample of the duo’s new kind of rave, where a single genre and a single style is surely not enough. soundcloud.com/ blurryboys

It’s a long way from El Segundo to soundtracking the Saint Laurent F/W ’14 presentation, but Froth has gone that distance with an ease that’s borne from its DIY roots. Get with the band’s LP, Patterns, for a taste of its heady West Coast-esque wash of lo-fi garage, surf-pop and shoegaze. froth.bandcamp.com

Not for nothing has Paul Weller tipped his hat to White Room, a Brighton quintet with a brilliant knack for psych and alt-pop. And the band would definitely be less without Jake Smallwood’s impassioned vocals, which lend songs like “Delay” a poignant and potent sway. facebook.com/ whiteroomhq

Dr. Skinnybones’ discography ("Aww F**k It!", "Back to the Start") may be a catalogue of broken hearts, rejection, drinking alone and all the women Jake Williams has lost, but set to the NYC band’s blissed-out garage-punk, can’t help but be a celebration of young life and love. skinnybones. bandcamp.com

A loose hip hop collective from California, Nonchalants duly inform us, via its Tumblr page, that they're "not a group", but "a motherf**kin’ lifestyle.” And sure enough, it begins with “N.I.L.S”, a raunchy slab of white-boy hip hop that’s got a light in its heart, groove in its step and tongue in its cheek. nonchalants.tumblr.com

Standing apart from the horde of guitar bands cramming Camden Town, The Din wields an uplifting and charming blend of gypsy jazz, flamenco, indie-folk and punk. Jonathan Powell plays the trumpets, alongside a guitar-bassdrums setup, adding a raucous power to the band’s joyous live sets. thedin.co.uk

Talk

We Can’t Stop

Bombay Bicycle Club are on another level Text: Indran P

Pop music is the perennially beloved force that it is because its power makes an immediate connection with whomever it touches. Lately, indie and electronic sounds have been informing a modern widescreen approach to pop and in the sweet spot of a multiplicity of

sounds, London quartet, Bombay Bicycle Club, reside. Everunclassifiable, the band has been making thorougly enjoyable music since its 2009 debut, I Had the Blues But I Shook Them Loose, that has at its essence, the aim of delivering a pleasure-centredestined payload of sounds in a winkingly unconventional way. Guided by genre but driven by expression, the band has consistently reinvented its sound over the course of its four

albums, with its most recent and first chart-topper, So Long, See You Tomorrow, taking another unexpected turn into eminently hook-y pop territory, now with Bollywood in tow. And in our chat with frontman, Jack Steadman, and bassist, Ed Nash, following their fantastic showing at *SCAPE, we not only got some great recommendations on Indian food but also a first-hand account of how to make truly groundbreaking pop.

How was the show last night? Ed: Very good, actually. It’s the best show we’ve done on this run. We’ve played Fuji Rock, some festivals in the UK and some dates in Manila but this audience was by far the most appreciative. They were singing along bits that I don’t know myself! Besides the show, what else have you been up to in Singapore? Jack: Eating, mostly! We’re staying here in Little India and me and Ed, especially, are very passionate about Indian food. Breakfast, lunch, dinner – it’s all South Indian and pretty much nothing else. All I’ve had the last three days is curry. We love this place called Anandha Bhavan. The Mysore Thosai is amazing and so’s the chai. Actually, that’s the best chai I’ve ever had. It’s not very healthy so I’ll probably go on a health kick next month!

It seems like Indian food is big part of your band especially since you named yourselves after an Indian restaurant chain in the UK. Ed: Oh, yes we did. But back then, we didn’t have this kind of interest in the food at all so there wasn’t really a connection. What happened was, when we were 15, we were driving to our first gig as a band and we didn’t have a name yet. And we really needed one if we were going to tell people to check us out on MySpace and all that when we were on stage. So we were panicking and we drove past this restaurant in London called “Bombay Bicycle Club” and we said, “Oh well, we don’t have much time. Let’s just take that. This’ll be over in a year, maximum”. We never expected to be here nine years later. It’s lucky we didn’t drive past another restaurant! And it’s been almost 10 years, and album after album of sonic revinvention.

Jack: I think it’s just us and our personalities, really. No matter how much we change the music, it’s always going to be us. I think this really comes across in our music. But in terms of how we just went through so many different sounds, I think it’s what happens when you grow up. You’re very restless, you’re always wanting to try new things. It can only work if the songs are good enough to be any genre that they like. I always think that the style of music is like someone’s clothes but the real person behind that is the song. So, you can dress up the song however you like as long as it’s good songwriting. Ed: We should be able to play Flaws [all-acoustic second album] in an electronic way and it should work just as well if we tried to play this new album in an acoustic way. It should still stand up. Our philosophy is that if you can’t play a song acoustically, it’s a bad song.

Talk

You scored your first UK #1 with So Long, See You Tomorrow. How do you feel about the success of the record? Jack: We’re very blown away by it. It’s really propelled us out of the UK. We were at Fuji Rock last week and we’ve never really done that well in Japan, but suddenly we had this turning point and everyone knew the new songs and sang along. Ed: We’ve had a 5000% increase in album sales so I think we sold that much in Japan alone! They weren’t into it before. One of the many interesting things about this record is that the closer connects melodically with the first song. Did you mean for the album to be a constant loop? Ed: That idea came in towards the end of making the album. When we looked back at it, we started recognising all these themes, especially the theme of repetition and looping, which is what the artwork and

album title are based on. We realised that it might work well doing the whole album as loop that starts with “Overdone”. And speaking of “Overdone”, both that song and “Feel” contain Bollywood samples. What inspired this? Jack: The band got invited to play in India but only Ed and myself could go. We played this amazing festival in Pune and we found a band that had a studio. They agreed to rent it to us so I was based in Mumbai for a month, living there and writing. And when you’re there, you hear Bollywood soundtracks everywhere. So I started collecting them and one of those in particular was very interesting and hypnotic, and I immediately wanted to use it in on one of our songs. Ed: At that time, we didn’t realise how unbelievably famous that song is. None of us knew that it was one of the most famous Bollywood songs of all time. It’s like listening to a Beatles song.

And what influenced the strong neo-r&b sound that runs throughout the album, most notably on “It’s Alright Now”? Jack: That was the kind of music I was making before, on my solo project. On the new album, I just threw everything together. We had such freedom to do whatever we wanted here. We didn’t feel like when we heard a song that sounded too r&b or too electronic, we had to discard it because it wasn’t “Bombay”. We just said, “If it’s good enough, then it’ll go on the record”. As a prominent modern pop act, you’ve definitely played a part in the colliding of the pop and electronic worlds. How do you see this interbreeding of sounds? Jack: I think in the electronic world, it’s great that there are lot of people with pop

sensibilities. I love pop music and I want to have hooks. But for the pop world to get more electronic, I think it’s just getting repetitive. Ed: It’s very cynical. People are just doing it for the hell of it and everything sounds exactly the same. Jack: I think it has to start with experimentation and eventually go into pop music, to keep it interesting. But writing a pop song and thinking that you should slam some 808 drums on it isn’t the way to go. Jamie [guitarist] recently said that you “have an issue breaking past an image as a jangly indie band that sounds like The Strokes”. Is that still a problem? Jack: It might be a problem in the UK because that’s where we began and a lot of people’s first impressions from all those years ago still remain today. Ed: There was a scene then, when we first

started between 2005 and 2006, where indie music was Radio 1 and big-time pop music. As a result, there was a huge backlash against it because of bad indie bands that passed through the net. We were initially lumped in with them because we played guitars and were very young. I think it’s less of a problem now. In fact, I think it’ll be hard for people to categorise us that way since our music is so far removed from that sound. So Long, See You Tomorrow is out now on Island Records

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Review

Spoon: They Want My Soul Text: Indran P

In May 1994, Spoon released its debut foursong vinyl, the Nefarious EP. Even in those infantile stages, the band, helmed by Britt Daniel and Jim Eno, was on to something, stripping down rock ‘n’ roll to a raw and spiky compound, and distilling it through the gleefully abrasive immediacy of punk. Two decades later, besides being a marquee name in indie rock, Spoon can boast of a strutting musical sensibility that hasn’t contorted to reinvent itself with every whim of the Internet. While others instantly maxed out chasing the newest trend, Spoon refined the spare minimalism of Nefarious into a ruggedly soulful, groovy sound, with Britt’s heart-on-jacket-sleeve

lyricism reminding you that this was made by a band that’ll always be on your side. And 20 years later, on its eighth album, Spoon’s ethic of conscientious care and passion sees its best iteration yet.

They Want My Soul comes five years after the understated Transference and since then, the needle of pop culture has moved that much further off from guitar-centric music. But it’s with blustery, sabre-point guitars that the record opens. “Rent I Pay” is a defiantly trad-rock jaunt given a banging thrust by Eno’s crunching, note-precise pound and bassist, Rob Pope’s booming chords. Daniel’s charming smirkcroon is legitimately refreshing too. But

if this feeds hopes of a back-to-basics ‘do, the band confounds expectations with the hardest left turn of its career on “Inside Out”. Made with programmed beats and apparently influenced by Dr. Dre’s 2001, the song is a luxuriant synth string-led affair where a sparkling harp solo slips high in the mix, compounding the quivering impact of Spoon’s newfound ethereality. Daniel has called this song his “sentimental favourite from this record” and the most beautiful thing the band’s done. And in the filigreed instrumentation and his own earnest, straining vocals, it’s easy to agree with him. “Inside Out” also highlights the singular way in which Spoon

illumines the more complex aspects of human experience. Daniels’ oblique but almost confessional lyricism has always been one of the band’s unconventional pop gifts and lines like the refrain, “There’s intense gravity in you / I’m just your satellite”, reaffirm this. Later, on the expressionistic “Rainy Taxi”, he delivers one of the most devastating lines of the album with, “But if you leave, you better run away for good”. But Britt has never been a songwriter known for foisting hardnosed resolutions in his lyrics. So “Rainy Taxi” is an interesting anomaly in an album writ large with a preternatural awareness of how (in) voluntarily overwhelmed we can be by our

emotions and none of the album’s many surprises – not even the house-leaning (yes) “Outlier”, nor the coldeyed new wave stomp of closer, “New York Kiss” – detracts from this. After all, Daniel closes Soul with “Right now I know no other time / Right now I know no other place / I say good night”, acknowledging with weary humanity that there will be many such nights when the half-hidden corners of the heart open up. And when they do, he’s made available his band’s best record to all who need it.

Review

Text: Indran P

La Roux: Trouble in Paradise

Distinctively androgynous-on-demand looks aside, Elly Jackson was destined to be a pop fixture from the very get-go. Together with producer and multiinstrumentalist, Ben Langmaid, as La Roux, she made one of the most irresistible pop records of the aughts with her self-titled debut and became a mainstay amongst those taking pop and dance to new, interesting places. But the air being thin in the higher altitudes of pop, circumstances like performance anxiety and Langmaid’s departure resulted in a five-year album-less rut for her. So in this case, it’s more than waranted to call her sophomore a “comeback”. And Jackson, now all of La Roux, most definitely thinks so. “I know the temperature’s rising”, she coos on the pumping opener, “Uptight Downtown”, a sexier, more playful and allaround summery lead-in to her new incarnation as an ‘80s revivalist dancing proudly in the sun. This self-consciously pumped up turn continues on jaunts like “Paradise is You” and the slick-smooth grooves of “Tropical Chancer”, where the synths are warm and the mood is light. Vibes like these are a whole different kind of “Bulletproof”.

Shabazz Palaces: Lese Majesty

It’s always tempting to regard Shabazz Palaces’ gorgeously restless sounds as symptoms of a culture in the throes of digitally-induced schizophrenia. And with every shape-defying release, the duo has shown how futile it is to read such cloak-anddagger agendas into a project that exists simply to make grand, f**kedout, non-contextual music out of the most contextually-specific musical form in history. Lese Majesty, a French term that loosely denotes “treason of the highest order”, is the furthest the group’s come in its extraterrestrial treatment of rap. Nothing here bears the blush of familiarity, making this an album where all you can do is take in the spellbinding immediacy of the beyond-inaccessible events unfurling before you. There is one key though: on the psychedelic mid-album song, “Ishmael”, Palaceer Lazaro raps about “stories told in code”, hinting that every Rorschach blot of sound and lyric means what you want it to mean. So what you’re feeling when codeine-drenched loops of Mediterranean sounds burrow into juddering low-end on “They Come in Gold”, or when nocturnal acid house coddles trap rhythms on “New Black Wave”, is all good. It’s code, after all.

Morrissey: World Peace is None of Your Business Moz’s living-legend status is still a much debated issue in pop culture but the singularity of his style and its uncompromising consistency cannot be doubted. He’s an icon from whom everyone gets a different mileage and World Peace, his 10th solo album, does nothing to change that brilliant polarity. As he’s always done, this is the same grandiose pop that goes for the jugular in indulgent and boldly conceited ways. The title track kicks off this typically unapologetic outing, indicting voters and taxpayers as “fools” who “support the process” while lamenting the “people in pain” in “Brazil and Bahrain” and “Ukraine and Egypt”. It’s an absolute rocker with swooning guitars and a bloated aplomb that permeates the record in its entirety. As expected, there’s more scathing, metapolitical commentary on songs like “Earth is the Loneliest Planet” and especially in “The Bullfighter Dies”. Coming from him, songs like these are far past the point of being praise-worthy for their “conscience”, rather, like with the latter, it’s the ways in which a lilting jangle is married with a punchy groove that show that Morrissey’s still in it for the fight.

Willis Earl Beal: Experiments in Time

“What do you want? / What do you need? / You’ve gotta make a decision / How to proceed,” from “Questions” is the first line of Experiments in Time and what issues till the album’s close is an undeviating stream of pared down, dead-eyed soul, jazz and found sounds of a folk-y gene that is unabashedly self-referential. Lifted from street-curio status by his debut, Acousmatic Sorcery, and an XL-signee and blog-cool act, Beal is now once again an independent, label-less artist, returning to the roles of streetphilosopher, bard and mystic that he that feels comfortable in but which are also emotionally and musically alienating. Experiments is impressionistically beautiful from start to end but if you’ve never been taken in by Beal’s me-against-the-world artistic outlook that values “purity” as a priori ideal and where the struggle to maintain it is its only takeaway, then this disc has nothing for you. But if you like him for the fact that there’s no one like him asking bigger questions with a voice as powerful and charismatic as his, the bleeding-heart slow-burn of treatises like “Slow Bus” and the piano-laden closer, “Now is Gone”, will be welcome and necessary.

FKA Twigs: LP1

FKA Twigs has arrived. In a post-Grimes pop-scape where deconstruction is the move, LP1 is a lap-pop experiment of conventionally unconventional Internetreferencing music that doesn’t take long for it to assert itself as a case-inpoint testament to why this sound and sensibility are so inescapable right now. Every of-themoment digital signifier features here and Twigs gives all of them the humanity to be instantly impactful and affecting. “Preface” starts things off with a looped aria of layered vocal harmonies before a restless traphouse rhythm pushes it along with a clatter of hihats and strobing bursts of white noise. The album seamlessly unravels this way, hopscotching across music history, splicing and disemboweling sounds on each song, especially on the single, “Two Weeks”, where Twigs’ breathy coo is buoyed by r&b, dub, psych-rock and techno, all screwed-down breathtakingly to a headrush that doesn’t break a sweat. Balancing this stylised musicality is a bare-all lyricism foregrounding noctural exploits and post-closure comedowns throughout, like on “Lights On”: “When I trust you, we can do it with the lights on”. So yes, informed by and emanating contemporaneity, LP1 does everything right.

Review

Strand of Oaks: HEAL

Like its title and all-caps emphasis suggest, HEAL, the second album by folk rock impresario, Timothy Showalter, chronicles the slow climb out of a rough patch. But HEAL is not a lone-sufferer rehash fleshed out on cabin-tested acoustic guitar. Saturated with pain and heartbreak though it is, HEAL swells with a delirious rush of dazzling guitar-rock that juxtaposes a wholly internal approach with an externalised medium that is uninhibitedly energised. It’s like this from beginning to end and when opener, “Goshen ‘97”, sees Showalter revisiting his youth on revealing lines like, “I was lonely, but I was having fun”, the edge is taken off his shame and humiliation by a triumphant barrage of ringing guitars supplied by Dinosaur Jr. six-string shred-smith, J Mascis. The songs don’t deviate much from this dynamic of disclosure and exuberance but that’s just as well since, individually and of a whole, they’re completely riveting. It’s rare that such an inward-looking album is single-ready throughout, especially one with such a frontally obvious sound. But as Showalter remembers on the cresting epic, “JM”, sometimes, all you need are some “sweet tunes to play”.

Bear in Heaven: Time is Over One Day Old

Aging well with a distinct, fully-formed aesthetic has never been tougher than it is now. But as always, this Brooklyn outfit turns in a challenging popflavoured electro-rock offering that needs unpacking for its impact to really hit. Lead single and sure-fire standout, “Time Between”, shows the fruition of the band’s labours on this point, as a staccato drum line beats on to unravel layer upon layer of sounds, where chugging bass, airy guitars and buzzing synths gather into a panning explosion of a chorus. Elsewhere, on “Autumn”, psych-tinged rock chops are given the nimble muscularity of a sped-up house track, thanks to the same attentive and newly widescreen layering. The human relationship with temporality is the chief lyrical concern here, giving the songs a contemplatively self-assertive feel, which, yes, has been well-played already. But in the closer, “You Don’t Need the World”, with the simple alternating lines, “I don’t need the world / You don’t need the world”, bookended by expansively gurgling riffs, the band makes you feel like you need affirmation like this all over again. When you’re populist without being patronising, you can pretty damn powerful.

Slow Club: Complete Surrender

Pop-gazing, quiverwhen-touched indie is nothing new today, but Slow Club has impressively, if quietly, been making a difference in an overcrowded scene. Operating as a two-piece, multi-instrumentalists, Charles Watson and Rebecca Taylor, have worked well in their self-imposed confines, and their third showing is another win for them, this time transplanting their ethereal gifts to soul territory. Bigger than they’ve ever been, Taylor’s luscious, evocative vocals are the most striking transformation here. And though the songs may tremble with an overarching darkness, gorgeous moments like “Suffering You, Suffering Me” feature breathtaking singing that reveals an implacable power in the songs. Instrumentally, too, has there been a great change-up as horns, rock chords and striding drums, sublimate emotional abstractions into a hook-y experience. The greatest thing about this newfound aplomb, besides its gifts to the listener, is that it doesn’t feel inorganic in any way. So when Taylor goes fullon, from-the-gut diva on the majestic struggleballad that is “The Queen’s Nose”, the skyhigh feeling and flourish is sublime. Like the best of them, Complete Surrender is a record the band can’t go back from.

Review

Simply Thrilled: The Preposterous Story of Postcard Records by Simon Goddard Text: Min Chen

84 in what Simon Goddard deems a Preposterous Story of a label run from a sock drawer in a decrepit Glasgow flat.

The Postcard Records story unfolds in two years, with two wild dreamers, a few hundred pounds and a scandalous amount of audacity manning the wheel. Founded in 1980 by the twinned terrors of Alan Horne and Edwyn Collins, the label may have been more a great mark of brass and bravado than the result of a business plan, but from Postcard would spring that thing you now love so much: indie pop. It’s there in the jangly harmonies of Orange Juice, the wily wanderings of Josef K, the new romance of Aztec Camera and in everyone’s very artful poses. But more so, it’s

And Goddard has lately ventured an entire book on the subject, speaking to Postcard’s big cast of characters and detailing the label’s brief yet outrageous lifespan. In Simply Thrilled, you’ll find tales of backstabbing, feuding, loving, laughing and disenchantment, as told by the compelling (and occasionally contradictory) voices of Roddy Frame of Aztec Camera, Orange Juice’s James Kirk, and The Go-Between’s Grant McLennan and Robert Foster. Though, as always, it is Alan Horne who steals the show. This is, after all, the guy who accosted John Peel with an Orange Juice record and the words, “This is the future”, who first encountered a tartanclad Edwyn Collins with a compliment of “that f**king lanky wimp”, and he who sums up the entire Postcard story with, “Those were sort

of my normal years compared to what came after.” Then again, for a book about a label that tagged itself “The Sound of Young Scotland”, Goddard unfortunately steers clear of Postcard’s dealings and impact on Glasgow’s art and music culture at large. Instead, his strictlyPostcard policy lends itself to a short volume, which ends with Orange Juice’s signing to a major label, and the feeling that Postcard was a rather isolated incident, even as it birthed the C86 revolution and the world’s indie pop. But while in no way a definitive story of Postcard Records, Simply Thrilled still contains the comic, beautiful and yes, preposterous beats to make for an entertaining yarn about a label that was odd-beating, norm-baiting, young and Scottish to the very end.

Review

Watching It 12 It flicks and their everlasting cinematic appeal Text: Min Chen

Breathless (1960)

Easy Rider (1969)

Quadrophenia (1979)

Heathers (1988)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Reality Bites (1994)

What’s It: Jean-Luc Godard’s penultimate and breathtaking nouvelle vague statement, which, despite its thin plot about a couple in hiding (with Jean-Paul Belmondo in all his proto-coolness), endures for its unflappable attitude and continental chic Its effect: Cinematic It-ness, the education of Quentin Tarantino

What’s It: Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda hit the countercultural tenor right on the head with a cross-country road trip on a pair of motorcycles, some peyote, some sex and a hella lot of rock ‘n’ roll Its effect: The counterculture gets its cinematic due, Two-Lane Blacktop, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, and other such trips

What’s It: A speedand-mod version of A Clockwork Orange that’s centered on a sunny day in Brighton, where mods and rockers arrive all dressed up – respectively on their scooters and in their leathers – and all ready to rumble Its effect: The perfect triumvirate of style, sound and youth, This is England, the mod movie comes of age

What’s It: A blackerthan-black and purposely self-conscious teen comedy about fitting in, standing out and off-ing your best friends, which also made Winona Ryder the figurehead for weird rebel girls Its effect: Teen comedies come in a new colour, Ghost World, Mean Girls, catchphrases (eg. “What’s your damage, Heather?”)

What’s It: Quentin Tarantino’s ultrapostmodern adventure into the LA underworld, executed with black humour, acts of homage and badass-ness, and complete with dancing and Bible passages Its effect: Indie becomes the new black, an American brand of nihilistic cool, Guy Ritchie’s career, Jason Statham’s career

What’s It: Gen-X’s own version of the romantic comedy, documenting the existential questioning, financial struggles and BGR issues of four college graduates as they come to terms with, like, reality Its effect: The legitimisation of generation marked X, reality TV, F.R.I.E.N.D.S, cynicism

Before Sunrise (1995)

Rushmore (1998)

The Big Lebowski (1998)

Fight Club (1999)

(500) Days of Summer (2009)

Drive (2011)

What’s It: The saga of Jesse and Céline begins here: two strangers meet on a train, spend an entire day experiencing Vienna, talking about philosophy and stuff, before parting under the delicious aura of possiblity Its effect: The altromance film of brief yet symbolic encounters, other cinematic journeys of self-discovery, Lost in Translation

What’s It: Wes Anderson arrives, bearing his unique aesthetic, compelling cinematography and quirky tale of a precocious adolescent out to seduce his teacher and vanquish his competition Its effect: Hipster cinema, Wes Anderson’s offbeat universe, Juno, The Squid and the Whale, Bill Murray

What’s It: Improving on the template set by Cheech, Chong and the Ridgemont High dudes, the Coen brothers tell one absurdist tale of The Dude, whose entanglement in a kidnapping plot totally harshes his mellow Its effect: The ultimate cult film, Pineapple Express, Dudeism, catchphrases (eg. “F**k it, let’s go bowling”)

What’s It: An adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s transgressive novel that culls the same energies of Rebel Without A Cause, Trainspotting and Taxi Driver for a turn-ofthe-century slice of dissolution, nihilism and macho subversion Its effect: Pre-millennial reflection, The Twist, rawedged and bare-knuckled cinema, Memento, Donnie Darko, Inception

What’s It: The standardbearer for Hipster Love after Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, this Zooey Deschanel vehicle delivers its emotional highs and lows with fresh-faced twee, zest and cool-band namedropping Its effect: Garden State, Ruby Sparks, and other such modern-day romcoms containing Smiths songs

What’s It: Ryan Gosling is some kind of a superhero, who drives a car, kills people in horrific ways, rescues a damsel and then guns off, alone, silent and bleeding, into the night Its effect: The angsty neo-noir car film with matching soundtrack, the alt-caper, Ryan Gosling, Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut

Nosh

New Radical Moosehead Kitchen and Bar serves up fringe flavours

Text: Indran P Living on the edge is a mantra that’s been peddled by hucksters and self-help gurus alike. But at Moosehead Kitchen and Bar, this doesn’t simply mean adopting a pose. A conceptuallyminded joint where what’s on the plate more than lives up to the philosophy tacked onto the sign, Moosehead has already been a hit among those looking to be surprised in deliciously new ways. Opening its doors right in the middle of the ever-bustling Telok Ayer Street, its indie-minded vintage and street-art-centric décor, discerning musical accompaniment and most of all, scrumptious wares have seen it emerge as the destination for fringe flavours of all kinds in the city. Even a cursory look at its menu will reveal that Moosehead’s kitchen can boast of creations that are inspired by the tastes, flavours and cultures of from all over the world. Indeed, owner-operator, Daniel Ballis has spent time in Phuket, Bintan, Shanghai and Australia, while Chef Manel Valero devoted years to sharing the secrets of the cuisine

of his native Barcelona with gastronomically adventurous Beijingers, informing what they call Moosehead’s “elevated streetfood” with their “investigative wanderings”. Writ large with the twinned spirits of travel and innovation Moosehead’s menu packs many surprises. One of these is the starter, the Bacon Wrapped Chargrilled Dates, which combines ingredients from Mediterranean and Spanish cuisines delectably. Just as flavourfully intercontinental is the Charred Baby Octopus, served with a lush garnish of roasted red capsicum confit and edamame. Seafood lovers will find reason to rejoice in the Grilled Avocado stuffed with Salmon Roe that comes with a side of quinoa and ajoblanco, a popular Spanish soup, where seaborne savouriness meets the melts-in-your-mouth chewiness. Moosehead’s bold streak also runs deep in its bigger plates. In its Chargrilled Secreto Iberico, that is accompanied by tomato wasabi and olive oil, you’ll

find the perfect balance of fat and flesh meeting with multiple layers of flavour that are enlivened in the smokiness of its preparation. The same goes for the Chargrilled Chicken Bulogi, where earthy flavours merge with the zest provided by horseradish miso and spring onions. Dessert, too, sees boundaries burned, especially in the take on the sweet and heady Tiramisu, made with XO Patron and served with sponge fingers and mascarpone. And with sounds from the chef’s own meticulously curated play-mix of jazz, hip hop, funk, reggae and even techno tunes filling the space around you as you tuck in, Moosehead’s hip, livewire charms become all the more obvious and palpable. Now, when you say, “Treat yourself”, you can really mean it. Moosehead Kitchen and Bar is located at 110 Telok Ayer Street, +65 6636 8055

Listings

Text: Indran P

Para//el presents Scuba

5 September @ Velvet Underground – Dance

Having quickly ascended the ranks with 2008’s “A Mutual Antipathy” and 2010’s “Triangulation”, Scuba has set the benchmark for incorporating techno influences into a bass-heavy, multi-genre sound that’s all kinds of body movin’. This mastery and versatility hasn’t just informed Paul Rose’s Hotflush Recordings and his excellents DJKiCKS installment in 2011, but has also seen him effortlessly shape London’s dubstep scene, just as he’s shaken up Berghain’s dancefloor. If you like your drums loud and your bass rumbling, do your happy dance. Entry: $28/33 (incl. two drinks)

Francois K

5 September @ kyo

Few DJ-producers today can claim “living-legend” status, but Francois Kevorkian is one of them. Besides being one of the forefathers of house and taking garage and nu disco to fantastically new dimensions, he is also responsible for Body&Soul, one of the world’s most buzzedabout parties. Come get moved and schooled. Entry: $20/25 (incl. one drink)

Heatwave

MIXMAG Asia Launch Series feat. DJ EZ

ZSS presents John Dahlback

A staple in the London’s dance underground since the ‘90s. DJ EZ has been key in driving and shaping the UK garage sound and sensibility with his world of mixes, radio shows and DJ sets. Still tirelessly plying his trade up till today, EZ will be in town for his first local ‘do to demonstrate just how he’s still very much got it. Entry: $28/35 (incl. one drink)

There’s something to be said about a musician who scored his first record deal when when he was 15. Since then, the house impresario has come to be a bona fide luminary, with artists as diverse as Lady Gaga, Sneaky Soundsystem and Benny Benassi benefitting from his golden touch. Entry: $28/33 (incl. two drinks)

7 September @ 12 September W Hotel Singapore- Chez Damier 12 September @ kyo @ Canvas Sentosa Cove

A pool party that’s proper chilled and dashing to extreme, Heatwave returns for another sunkissed turn of great tunes, vibes and times. With W Singapore’s own, Mr. Has dispensing grooves with Sydney’s party architects, DJ Seng Wei, Victoria and Jashika, you best believe that the heat will be on. Tickets: $35, available at store.sentosa.com.sg

One of the most esteemed makers of electronic music, Chez Damier has been instrumental to the development of house and techno over the years. And while his label, Prescription Records has long furnished the world’s best techno releases, it’s his own earth-moving chops that you’ll feel this night. Entry: $20/25 (incl. one drink)

13 September @ Zouk

Blue Hawaii 14 September @ Life Is Beautiful

Listings

Pops of the Top

14 September @ Loof

Who says indie kids can’t dance? Destroying streotypes and unlocking limbs, local stalwarts Ginette Chittick and Jinmart will keep the dance going at Loof’s spanking new Pops of The Top with indie tunes new and old. Reservations: Email loof@loof.com.sg or call +65 9773 9304

Defected In The House with Simon Dunmore & Dash Berlin Sonny Fodera 19 September

rom-com of the same name that Kenny Larkin starred Elvis 20 September Presley, Raphaelle 19 September @ kyo @ Zouk @ kyo Standell-Preston and Alex “Agor” Cowan got together to make bristling electronica that is as beautiful as it is devastating. It’s not a stretch to say that trance owes a lot Pitting seemly to Dash Berlin. Inked What more is there antithetical sounds to Armin van Buuren’s is to say about this against each other Armada Records, he’s Detroit luminary? dominated the scene The king of rock ‘n’ in its fanatastic For over 20 years, his with a string of global When the In The House twinning of soul and roll left an indelible debut full-length, hits including dancefloor techno has made for roll around, the mark on every Untogether, the duo parties staples like “Waiting” most acclaimed acts of some headily sensual mainstream sound mesmerised with its the seminal Britsh house and “Dragonfly”, winning nights on dancefloors label, Defected Records, pop royalty like Justin all over the world, as but who would’ve snap, crackle and Timberlake, Usher and do their good work at a keyboard riffs and jazz thought that pop. Get ready to club near you. This time, N.E.R.D. onto his side. rhythms embraced in he’d also christen get tranfixed. This is truly one night its very founder, Simon the enveloping fold one of the most Tickets: $30 Dunmore, and four-four you don’t have to think of techno’s relentless twice about. connoisseur, Sonny pound. For hard-driving exciting names in (standard) and $40 (pre-sale) good vibes, don’t look contemporary indie $40 (at-the-door), Fedora, grace our shores Tickets: and $45 (at-the-door), and souls. elsewhere. pop? Inspired by available at available from Entry: $20/25 Entry: $20/25 zoukclub.com (incl. one drink) (incl. one drink) the 1961 musical peatix.com

ZSS presents Danny Avila

27 September @ Velvet Underground – Dance

He may be 19, but Danny Avila has already become a household name in EDM. Hailed by Tiësto as a phenomenal talent, the electro house wunderkind has blitzed the stages of Coachella and the Ultra Music Festival with his euphoric but hard-hitting sounds. Head over to catch a rising star take his place on the dance firmament. Entry: $33/38 (incl. two drinks)

Parties

Travis @ The Star Theatre Text: Indran P Images: Dominic Phua What: The best of ‘90s feels come alive Travis is a band has graced our shores thrice, making its fourth showing look initially like a tricky proposition. But as it turned out, three times is never enough when you’re a band whose music has helped shape the best aspects of mainstream pop, and when you have such eternally evocative songs like “Sing” and “Re-Offender” to your name. That night, Travis proved that when millions the world over have cried, smiled and sighed to your songs, your every arrival is a cause for celebration. When frontman, Fran Healy, walked onstage and mused aloud, “Why did we take so long?”, the screams from the audience were affirmative. Fourth time’s the charm, indeed.

Who: Fans, old and new With an image and musicality that leave no room for ambivalence or indifference, Travis have a carved a specific niche for itself as well as a loving fanbase that has and will stay the course. It was truly remarkable to see people clothed in contemporary and past tour T-shirts as well as school-going kids singing along just as passionately as older fans. There was no room for the usual sizing-up here. Travis wouldn’t have allowed it.

What: Letters to you Just before the midpoint of the show, after an urgently beautiful rendering of “Warning Sign”, Healy, without any air of bluster or self-praise, addressed the audience and said, “Our songs have endured because they’re written like letters to you”. This authorial statement illumined why, over the years, for every scoff of weepy sentimentalism directed its way, the band has also had multitudes of heart-on-sleeve adherents swear by its songs every step of the way. This is also why its music has been so consistently and selfconsciously emotional. “Selfish Jean”, “Where You Stand” and of course, “Sing”, were delivered with the bleedingheart ethereality and earnestness that will never get tired or old. That the entire house was singing along to “Why Does It Always Rain On Me?” as the proceedings came to a close only confirmed this.

Parties

Slowdive @ *SCAPE Text: Indran P Images: Syazwan Kamsani and Jared Rezel for Symmetry Entertainment What: Slowdive! Misuse has blunted the impact of the term “historic” to describe an actual high-water mark in time. But when the occasion calls for it, there is no fitter epithet. And so, Slowdive’s presence before us at *SCAPE was a veritably historic affair, a watershed moment in our live music scene and a great testimony to bookend just how far gig culture here has come. Cynics will bleat about the trendiness of revivalism and the lure of reunion dollars, but this was Slowdive, a band that, for most in the full theatre that night, existed before the fact and yet continues to command a hallowed scene-defining and tasteaffirming status. And that night, we were shown just why.

Who: Lifers, indiephiles, It girls and the hip-elite Being the oftmythologised force that it is, Slowdive has ever-increasingly commanded a pangenerational appeal. Of course, with varying degrees of knowledge and experience come varying degrees of devotion and the crowd’s disparate elements only confirmed this. There were the black-clad and experimentally trousered indie sects, parental types in office garb, young dreamers newly struck by the sound that informs their modern ears and the there-to-be-seen, all standing together in the dark.

How: Old-school and proud of it Few bands still at it today can boast of having a sound that is foundational to what currently reigns as cool. Slowdive is one of those bands and without fanfare and with a whole lot of volume, Neil Halstead and co. devoted their energies to bringing to life Souvlaki, an album that continues to endure as a path-lighting sonic beacon today. Giving transcendental vent to its sublime longing through its alternately ripping and lilting guitars, the band not once sounded out of time or rusty after its almost 20-year hiatus. When co-frontwoman, Rachel Goswell, and Halstead took the mic on “Machine Gun”, it was impossible to not be taken back to the first time you heard it, only now, it was happening in front of you, infinitely louder and more beautiful. By the time the towering textural spires of “Allison” collapsed into silence, it was clear why this band mattered then and still does today.

Parties

Singapore Island Country Club @ kyo Text: Indran P

What: Celebrating our 49th with an extra slice of fun The Singapore Island Country Club (SICC) parties have always been gloriously leftfield. Conceived by homegrown creative agency and consultancy, Present Purpose, as a dashing alternative to the undifferentiated streams of uninspiring club sounds and sensibilities, SICC has since emerged as an oasis in our local partyscape. It helps that Aldrin, one of Singapore’s most esteemed DJs, serves up deep cuts of nu disco, indie dance and house here. At this particular installment, we toasted to our 49th national birthday with the party-starting tequilabeer hybrid, courtesy of the good people at Desperados, while getting all kinds of jiggy.

Who: Club kids and funmongers SICC is a new entrant into the party scene but its chilled out vibes have already amassed its share of raucously devoted followers. From familiar faces in the local scene, to expats, to the partycurious and to those who just needed an excuse to dance, kyo’s dancefloor was packed as a feel-good jives unfurled all around.

How: Irresistible grooves As one of Asia’s most internationally acclaimed DJs, Aldrin has long had his finger on the pulse of some cutting-edge and infectious sounds, and this night we were treated to a huge serving of his manifold powers. With laidback, lounge-y sounds meeting driving, pulsating rhythms a la Todd Terje and Disclosure, Aldrin moved bodies with aplomb, as shakes, shimmies and full-on moves were unleashed. Fueling all the action was of course the sweet and heady nectar flowing from bottles of Desperados. Already a favourite in Europe, the world’s first tequilaflavoured beer more than did its good work on our shores that night. And like the buzzed, happy people we trooped out with, that’s just how we’ll remember the night: buzzing and happy.

Parties

Russian Circles @ Zouk Text: Indran P Images: Aloysius Lim What: Post-everything By now, the once arcane intricacies of the “postrock” sound have been worn down to a musical commonplace that is instantly familiar. Only in the hands of a few is this hermetic sound imbued with the power to surprise and rarer still, awe. For the last decade, even as the movement dilated from indie scene event to diehard endeavour, Chicago instrumental trio, Russian Circles, have been making legitimately dazzling music out of an unfashionable, no-trend sound. Its excellent fifth album, Memorial, released in late 2013, served as a compelling testimony of the band’s blistering powers and to a form that aims to be fundamentally spellbinding. For one night, on Zouk’s storied floor, Russian Circles showed just how far it could take it.

Who: Metalheads, punks and indie-philes Russian Circles operate on a strict modus operandi that leaves very little room for wide-scale validation and those who turned up were wise to this. Adherents of the band’s brick-thick riffage, wild fits of speed and dynamic textural interplay all locked arms to receive the offerings before them. For once, heavy music’s different schools paid collective attention to one entity. The Black Flag-shirted dude standing next to the guy decked out in threads adorned by Mastodon’s “Hunter” image nicely summed this up. As for the indie scenesters, there was nothing to suggest that this wasn’t their night too.

How: No words necessary Befitting the band’s musical outlook, there wasn’t a single mic on stage, only its instruments and a battery of Marshall stacks. And in that spirit, guitarist, Mike Sullivan, bassist, Brian Cook, and drummer, Dave Turncrantz, strode onstage, picked up their respective weapons and got to wrecking. The almost nine-minute “309” from their 2012 album, Empros, was their first salvo and with its haymaker guitars that switched from driving metal tempos to creeping sludge fade-outs, frenetic drumming, and juddering bass, showed the band to be the undeniably virtuosic outfit that it is. As a three-piece, Russian Circles are matchless in its ability to evoke such surging rhythms and a grandiosity that is as transfixing as it is brutal. This was made clear as its set progressed and by its end, the band more than affirmed why it’s part of a bona fide elite.