Sounds & Sights of Silva - Singapore
The Nature of Things
Visiting the home towns of the bands I love has shed new light on their music.
You can see first-hand the inspiration for their art, whether it’s in the enveloping music scene, the traditional culture, or simply the natural landscape.
Singapore has been the truest representation of this in all my travels, perhaps with the recent release of All Around You by Subsonic Eye as the companion to my first ever visit. In the press release for the record, the band writes about “celebrating the spirits of a natural world fast disappearing” – Singapore’s intensely developing cityscape drowning out the formerly omnipresent natural beauty. Case and point: the massive Marina Bay Sands Casino and Hotel superseding the ocean view.
I attended the album launch for Subsonic Eye’s newest album at Esplanade, a beautiful complex of performance spaces on the bay. The band was literally surrounded on stage by greenery, with a backdrop of constantly changing video footage of forests and parks and roads to nowhere. Their message and music intensely connected with the audience – the song with one of the biggest responses of the night was actually their single in the native Malay language – representing the fact that amongst their peers in Singapore they are not alone in this malaise.
But the songs are not lamentations, rather affirmations that nature is still all around us and deserves our precise care and attention and reverence. Art still survives in thriving enclaves throughout the city, at recording studios or record shops, catching an experimental music show held by students at the local university or grabbing a drink at BK Eating House, at the Chinatown hawker center right in the thick of it or at a vegan hawker center far away from the city centre.
It’s a beautiful community with vision for not only their own futures but also the future of their city.
Subsonic Eye - “J-O-B”
At the core of All Around You is a brilliant reflection on grueling work culture, with an accompanying video that comments on low birth rates and the lengths to which corporations will go to ensure their pursuit of money is uninhibited. In the case of this video, it involves exploiting our natural resource of animals, particularly gorillas, to achieve these ends. This is an instant indie rock classic.
Blush - “Crush”
One of the best and brightest new groups is Blush. Their debut Supercrush is a swirl of melting guitars and saccharine melodies. It’s a fresh take on shoegaze-y indie rock while paying homage in all the right ways to their Singaporean peers and otherwise legends of the genre.
Pleasantry - “Swan Song”
A recommendation from a member of Subsonic Eye, Pleasantry released their only album in 2014 and pleases the Synapses in a way similar to early ‘10s indie from the West. The melodies and atmosphere on the record are gorgeous – it’s easy to see the production influences on the Singapore indie scene to come.
The Great Spy Experiment - “Late Night Request”
A classic Singaporean indie rock group, The Great Spy Experiment reunited this year at the annual Baybeats concert series after a hiatus of nearly a decade.
Follow the full playlist of Sounds of Silva featured tracks.
Listen to Zach’s radio show archive for Friend From A Big City on Deadbeat Radio.
[Zach 2023 Travel Log #6]