Digital Bytes

Rage against the machine!

Originally uploaded by gr3gtan

Shot and uploaded to the blog via email on my new toy in just a few clicks. Woot!

(Pic stolen from Lennat’s FB – Don’t sue me!)

Just saw Midnight Marvel play a set on Friday night at the home club. I must say its an entertaining set and i was pleasantly surprised to find out that most of the songs were originals. Seems they are really cranking out the stuff for the Baybeats gig! Also cool were the nifty merchandise including guitar picks, stickers and tees. V also said they “sound alot more rock now”. All-in-all, a good showing.

Rock on \m/

Just got back from the Tristan Prettyman gig at the Mosaic Music Festival. Acoustically sublime is how I’d describe it! Its the loudest acoustic guitar, bass and drum set i’ve seen and sonically its really balanced. Most times acoustic sets sound quite empty which is why people start filling it with string ensembles ala MTV unplugged. But Tristan’s fingerstyle with the guitar makes the instrument sing out pretty richly. She’s not the typical strum strum mute strum type guitarist.

She’s also really got a great voice and the thing about good singer/songwriter types is they usually sound just like the CD if the setup is good. Just that the instruments are lively. Lots of in-between banter and funny anecdotes about how her luggage got lost on route here and the solution was – shopping.

She also did a ditty about Lindsay Lohan and rehab. Quite hilarious!

Opening act was Jack and Rai from club act EIC. Was pleasantly surprised that they are coming up with an album in a month or so and they did a set of originals. Very nice.

Overall a great musical evening.

More gigs are coming soon. The Observatory and Concave Scream are playing at the Esplanade in the comng two weeks. Let’s see if i can catch them…

Yep, nothing major is happening now so its kinda quiet here.

Have gone for my third lesson already, I seriously wonder why couldn’t they just have one hour lessons instead of this half hour bullshit.. Its almost like just having a conversation and before you know it its over. I could swear my piano lessons as a kid felt like forever… Defintely not half an hour! Asked the guy about combining 2 lessons in one but becos he’s booked solid i can’t shift the timings around. Yeesh.

In fact the bloody building is so packed on Sundays I take half an hour just to park the car !!

On the house-front, its also kinda firm that we’ll move out once we find a buyer for this castle… am kinda sad to leave this place having been here almost 20 years. But the morning traffic and the heat does make u wanna just go right now…

On the downside, I’ll probably not have a dedicated study/music room anymore. Defintely miss the space…

Managed to catch The Unxpected two weeks ago at Wala. Boy were they in their element! Guess they really do rock big time when they are on home turf. I must say its been a long while since i saw an entertaining pub act and they really blew the crowd away doing non-conventional 70s rock amidst the occasional radio hit. Shirlyn’s showmanship is indeed something other bands should strive for. After all its not called a “show” for nothing

After many years of struggling to justify to myself why i need a portable mp3 player, I’ve decided to finally bite the bullet and get the iPOD which i have been eye-ing ever since it was launched. Many thanks to V! I guess the only good thing about getting it this late in the game is that now, it comes with video and 60GB of storage! That’s bloody 2x my hard disk’s capacity…

Its amazing how u can bring your music everywhere u go…office/driving/jogging. Almost makes me feel like a kid again with headphones plugged in. I now also have more time to explore those CDs which i’ve only spun a couple of times.

Woot!

What a weekend it has been!
Baybeats was back. Lennat made her debut on SG’s largest music festival. I thought etc played a good set. The crowd was generally supportive and some of their fan/friends got up to dance. What more can u ask for in Singapore
More etc pics here

Loved some of the other sets:

Concave Scream played the larger stage and they managed to sound really BIG and LOUD. The system was so powerful you can feel all the hair on your body move whenever the bass thumps.

Overheard a funny conversation:

“Wah, what sort of music is this? So heavy… but quite slow leh…Is it rock?”
“Yah its rock wat…must be dream rock lah!”

Noticed all the guitars are new too. Must be bonus time of the year! Kudos to the tight musicianship, and the crowd was generally wowed by the double-kicking bass drums of the last song. Hooray Dean!

The Poises closed off the festival with an excellent and tight set. Never really knew their music, but i do remember seeing reviews of them a long way back. Regardless, you can tell these guys do this for a living man. All the jumps and energy throughout the set and the singer ended the whole thing by ripping out his strings. Guess that’s one way to make sure you can’t do an encore over the encore!

An old army buddy gave me a call at like 5pm to tell me he had extra tickets to Coldplay. I was like WOOOOHOOO! We met for dinner with a couple of his other friends whom he brought along and then the journey began.

It was THE BEST concert I have ever seen on our shores! Most of the bands that drop by SG just use minimal stage props or effects, its always the same old black cloth backdrop and the band. But this was worldclass entertainment! Widescreen videowall as backdrop, lasers that shoot across the stadium and even 3 lighting crew that had to climb up the suspended rig to just point the spots at the band members. I must say they spared no expense for the show. This is what a concert should be. Not just some lame excuse for the promoter and band to make $$, we are after all being charged world class prices.

Video effects were superb, filtered close-ups of the band on the big screen were great for those upstairs who could hardly make out the members on stage. Kudos to the visual designers, they really told stories with the effects and imagery. The swirling hand-written text in the background when Chris was singing “swallowed in the sea” really set the mood for that one.

Lennat and I agree. Its like what you get when u buy a concert DVD

Apart from the visuals, the music was of course excellent! Must dig out their albums to replay and remind me why I liked them in the first place. I’ve always liked the band, not “fanatical-like” but now after watching them live, is a good reason to start being one.

Picture ripped off the net, but Chris was wearing the same outfit and using the same guitar on their hit single – Yellow. Its amazing how 10,000 Singaporeans know the words to that one!

It’s not supposed to rain in July. That’s what Ah Boy the sound guy said. Well, I guess it did, and there goes the only gig we lined up for the year!

But anyhow even if it went on as scheduled, the turn-out would probably be quite bad as its quite an isolated location and there’s almost no chance of random traffic stopping to listen.

C’est la vie. The OKs end up having coffee in the Esplanade library and dinner in Marina Square instead. That probably sounds like a typical Singaporean weekend.

After yakking about cars and their maintenance towards the end of the night, it somehow jinxed my own ride as i discovered a much stronger left pull on the steering wheel on the drive home. When we got home, we saw that the front left tyre is flat. V thinks she’s been putting on too much weight … I can’t comment

The madness is the office is mostly over. Now its time to get some semblance of a life back

First up The OKs will rock the stage at the Esplanade Park Sunday 9 July 5 pm. We’ll be playing after I-can-never-remember-the-other-band’s-name cos its too long, so if you’re reading this, do come down for a rocking good time! Its for an event organised by Music For Good and NParks. My guess is its a low-key event in a big open park space so bring your kids, your dog, your grandma, watever

Set-list includes the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol and of cos the Detroit Cobras! ROCK!