Cheesy? Overwrought? Just plain bad? Or, unequivocally honest and visceral? Read Indran Paramasivam’s review of Editors’ latest album.

sub:shaman passed the “trying” auditions to be accepted onto the Baybeats lineup.

Mogwai created the soundtrack to ‘Les Revenants’ – “the ones who came back” – a French TV series. Album review by Indran Paramasivam.

A review by Indran Paramasivam.

A review by Indran Paramasivam.

A review by Indran Paramasivam.

Total absorption. That is the effect the latest L/P, Native Narrative from the Jogjakarta shoegaze foursome Lazy Room, has on Indran Paramasivam – find out why here.

Review: New Order Live in Singapore, 22 August 2012, Fort Canning Park I said “let’s go out and have some fun”,I know, you know, you believe in a land of love,I know, you know, we believe in a land of love                                                                                    — New Order, Perfect Kiss Ever had that sweeping feeling? That swelling onrush of emotion burnished by the twinned […]

Café Culture & the Appreciation of Music Sitting down to a hot cup of coffee in a relaxed setting is an experience that can best be described as complete. That is the inviolate mandate that we have allowed cafes to exercise over our lives. Not so much plush but intimate environs and that ambrosial beverage that commands and regulates sensory excitation […]

Myself, Revisited: Music and Memory, Astreal Live @ The Court The italics suggest that whatever follows the title will be grounded in the insidious subject of biography. No one can be blamed for thinking so. Yet, the immediacy and impact of the experience I had at Astreal’s performance overrides any self-indulgence that one might want to read into it. Maybe […]

The Jesus and Mary Chain Live in Singapore, 26 May 2012, Esplanade Concert Hall “It was perfect timing because there weren’t any guitar bands. Everybody was making this electronic pop music,” That was how William Reid, guitarist and one half of the songwriting partnership of the Jesus and Mary Chain (JMAC), described the character of the music scene in the […]

Whether as a calculated nod to self-reflexivity or as a result of plain coincidence, MUON have titled a song “Apophenia” on their latest LP. The term denotes the experience of forging meaning from random and disparate streams of data. There are a great many things to be said about the towering edifice of aural wonders that the band has erected […]

The Observatory, “Catacombs” Album Launch, The Substation, 21 April 2012 “FOLLOW THE HEADWORM HOLE TO THE HEAD / FIXATIONS / OBSESSIONS / BLOOD/ PHLEGM / YELLOW BILE / BLACK BILE / IMMOBILE / HEADWORM” (“Headworm”) Heavy metal tries to be this good: to transport listeners to the murky, cavernous depths of their psyche by sound. Sometimes the genre delivers, sometimes […]

The Sound of Love and Vengeance: A Glimpse into the Heart of Ho Tzu Nyen’s “The Song of the Brokenhearted Tiger” “Once upon a time, a Tiger and a Forest lay entwined in a coil of love” Midnight black dominates and forces itself into the field of vision. Ever so slowly, but at gathering speed, tendrils of smoke emerge from […]

 “Music is the shorthand of emotion.” —Leo Tolstoy We live in booming times. The watchwords of our era are “growth,” “speed,” and “connectivity”. The Internet has taught us that we can want everything and have everything. And that wanting and having are not moral transgressions but merely facts of existence in this age of maximalism. This phenomenon is evident in […]

Keyboards, sound boards, laptops, synthesizers and CDJs have long played second fiddle to conventional instruments—guitars, drums and bass—in the popular imagination. Confined to the underground, the “boards” were wielded by a different species of musicians; those unconcerned with playing to and for the gallery, those unconcerned with scoring a Top 40 spot for their material. Then there were listeners. Not […]