Experimental/improvised Music of Singapore

The two Singapore rock ensembles of the 70s and 80s are known as Heritage and Zircon Lounge, presented propensities to form music beyond conventional rock idioms. In the late 80s, Corporate Toil enticed spectators with noisy electronic performances affected by industrial/ modern wave ensembles like Suicide or Einsturzende Neubauten. In the 90s also Kelvin tan produced literally dozens of ablums of avant traditional and improvised guitar, as well as gathering the short-lived Stigmata featuring bassists lan Woo and saxophonist Kelvin Guoh. Zai Kuning mainly known as a visual musician and dancer lived for a year in Japan and joined musically with Tetsu Saitoh, a well-known Japanese cellist. Zai also formed his own type of Malay traditional and gypsy blues music, singing incantations in his deep tone while playing a loose type of open tuning guitar.

source of picture: sporeartsalon.blogspot.com

In the 1990s and during the 2000s, a group of experimental; laptop musicians emerged: Yuen Chee Wai, George Chua, Ang Song Ming, Evan Tan, and Chong Li-Chuan, the last having gained the bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music at the Goldsmiths College, University of London. Mounting the world of digital influences and audio instruments was the duo aspidistrafly, who finally attained an enormous following in Japan, releasing their own music and running their kitchen label. The Observatory and a supergroup established from the ashes of Lesile Low’s traditional rock Humpback Oak trio have been extensively considered as one of the best ensembles in Singapore. In every album, they have pushed at the restriction of the song from, joining prog rock, jazz, avant gar guitar, drones, black metal and more. Musical outsiders engineered beautiful Blood blazed a burning trail of no trend improvised rock, which then banned playing in the year 2009. Though, their members finally established a larger improvised rock band, l/D, which gives more fragment off into the smaller groups and shapes. In the middle 2000s, another grouping named their self Under the Velvet Sky wowed spectators with their performances that evoked prog rock, free jazz, folk Malay and Chinese music and others. And also, the loose nature of the collective allowed them to form other projects like Gulayu Arkestra, Five Leaves left.

The Flux_Us shop at Peninsular Plaza opened and it is run by the Singapore Sonic Arts Community, it was an important room for a good two to three years circa that is from 2006-2007. Apart from stocking indigenous experimental music releases, they also import CDs and record from foreign labels such as Fonal, Rune Grammonfon, Paw Tracks, Kranky, Sublime Frequencies and many more others. They also organized in-shop shows featuring indigenous and foreign musicians such as Lucas Abela. In all the shop provided a physical room for like-minded artists and supporters to meet and share views.

The effect of an expatriate community cannot be ignored. Lindsay Vickery who is from Australia, Tim O’Dwyer who is from Australia, Brian O’Reilley who is United States and Darren Moore from Australia, all at this point related with the music programs at LASELLE College of Arts, were involved in establishing concert and festivities of experimental and improvised music. Their interaction and cooperation with indigenous players motivated the indigenous experimental music community.