Jerms
Disco
[self-released single]

by Mark Wong

It's prom night and everyone's all dressed up makeovered and looking like the three hundred bucks they paid to look like the three hundred bucks that the next person paid. You're all of eighteen standing shitwrecked and somewhat stranded as you contemplate your next step in life which your parents have already chosen for you. The food isn't worth a third of the money you paid but you're here with your best buds and that's what matters. Besides, everyone's moving off to Mohd. Sultan after this anyway.

So the DJ drops the volume of the music and introduces the prom band with a name that sounds like a geeky Bio student's revenge on the world. But the band themselves look really relaxed - the only ones in the entire ballroom in tees and jeans.

The first song (introduced as 'Disco') is simple four chords rooted by a persistent bassline with the frequent flight-of-fancy lead guitar riff. You swear the singer mouthed "Electrico" somewhere in the first verse, but you reckon it's probably because you were distracted by the sight of your crush mock dirty dancing with her friends on the other side of the room. It's a fair start but the song doesn't deliver the climax it promises with its repeated "Sex on the Beach" line, partly because the singer's delivery is a dynamic plateau.

You prefer the next song, 'State of Affairs', mostly for the rhythmic tension / release of the bass; the vocals here are looser and more playful, with the indecent proposal to "let's have one more fling", standing out. So far, so-so, you think: there is some sparkle in the band and you can sense a hunger, a certain desire for greater pop-rock highs; but for all their suggestiveness, there's also this feeling of restraint or, perhaps, repression. The power of suggestion shouldn't be an excuse for an inability to score.

Third song 'Butterfly' slows down affairs to a contemplative almost melancholy mow down that is the sound of your adolescence fluttering away into some deep unknown. You imagine this song would be perfect for slowdancing to with your crush - if the both of you were acting in The OC, that is. You realise school proms will always suck because of the school admin's no booze rule.

And that's it. The reverb of the final note ends as The Jerms bow out to an appreciative applause from the third of the audience not posing with their friends in front of digital cameras. The DJ turns up the house music again as people slowly make their way to the dancefloor.

Rudra
Brahmavidya: Primordial I
[Demonzend Records]

by P2

Our local veterans are back with their new release, Brahmavidya: Primordial I. Fully loaded with their distinct Indian touches in their previous albums, this is no different. Weaving English lyrics with Sanskrit lyrics and the addition of traditional percussion is the call of the day for Brahmavidya: Primordial I.

Before listening to this 10 track album, you would definitely need a taste for an earful of thrash. Agreed, Rudra is indeed one of the most popular local thrash metal acts we've had. But this album might be a slight letdown in terms of maturity for the band.

Being able to try something different and stand up for it has never been easy. But that's what Rudra has been known for, their fusion of thrash metal with traditional Indian music. A scattering of hypnotic traditional drums, waves of incantations and thrash is the ideal formula for Rudra's path of destruction. 'Ageless Consciousness, I Am' is one of the tracks worth giving more than a second listen to. A 2-minute introduction with guitars and percussion drums is something you don't get very often.

Rudra's 'Shivoham', their second last track of the album, is an acoustic track featuring a female vocalist. But unfortunately, it doesn't quite fit in with a thrash metal band. It sounds too prayer-like to be in a thrash metal album.

The music, very tight and heavy most of the time, sometimes tends to get a little too haphazard. In tracks like 'Twilight of Duality' and 'Veil of Maya', there were times I struggled to decipher the chords that were played on the guitars. Even 'Meditations on the Mahavakya' had me quite puzzled. I felt as if I had just been run over by a few million musical notes chucked out of my speakers at one go.

On the whole, Rudra has maintained their level of heaviness that they've established their names. The traditional side of them has not left either as that is their unique point. However, they should try to evolve more as a band and break out of the thrash metal mold. I would strongly recommend this album for anyone who has been following Rudra for a while. For newbies, you might want to just try it out before deciding.

r-H
Black Asia Vol. 1
[Black Asia Recordings]

by Lounge Lizard

To call r-H or Rajesh Hardwani a cultural schizophrenic is an understatement. The man mish-mashes bhangra, hip hop, jazz and even country into a potpourri. To top it off, dialogue from Bollywood films, obscure Cantonese opera, Thai and other assorted Asian language films are sliced into the template. Unabashedy, r-H wears his love and pride for the Asian culture on his sleeve. However, the album falls under the 'chill-out album' curse. They are as good as they last at the party.

While r-H exhibits an ear for a great groove, most of the tracks seem to be cleverly calculated to invoke a response. Most tunes are exercises in geeky pop culture references and exemplary workouts in modern computer music-making technology. What he lacks in the human aspects of composing, he makes up for it with his wicked sense of humour. He brings a refreshing change to the increasingly pretentious laptop musician scene. His refusal to take himself and the genre he works under seriously is reflected by a brief glance at the song titles, 'Bollywood Lust', 'Hong Kong Terminal' and 'Tim Sum Vindaloo'.

'Bollywood Lust' kicks off with a mandatory woman moaning away over the mid-tempo breakbeat groove and swirling sitars. Nothing impressive, to be honest. Talvin Singh is still milking this cash cow. r-H brings things up a notch with the impressive drum'n'bass-tinted 'Liquid'. His selection of tables and a soothing saxophone on 'Salvation Man' reflects his avowed eclecticism, being one of the more standout tracks. The award-winning single 'Sushi' starts off with a Cantonese opera-like chant before all hell breaks loose with a seductive beat. This track is incredibly cute and will either irritate the shit outta you or convert you to a fan and supporter. Another standout 'Indian Blues' masquerades as a country blues tune with yet again, Indian classical percussion instruments.

Though Indian, r-H loves to take the piss outta of his own fellowmen. He still pays homage to the rich historical Indian culture as evident by the copious amounts of sitars and tablas sampling. Check out Interlude: Indians & Gays'. The cheek of this guy.

The Analog Girl
The What! EP
[self-released]

by Mark Wong

The Analog Girl is a remarkable oddity in local music today: for one, she's really the only female electronica musician with any real presence on the scene, and two, her gigography reads like an indie artist's wet dream - sometimes it seems easier to catch her performing in any other major city than Singapore. In terms of recorded output, though, what we've seen so far has either been insubstantial or disappointing.

Since first listening to The Analog Girl in early 2003, my attitude towards her has gone from allurement to ambivalence. I was mesmerised by her eponymous sampler/demo: five tracks that were fresh and exciting, teasing with enchantment and delight. By no means perfect - she lacked the maturity to transcend her influences (her vocals alternated between Björk and Miss Kitten/Chicks on Speed, depending on which effects she ran them through) - still she showed enormous promise with a sparse set bursting with pregnant possibilities, showing a mastery over beats and samples. The Analog Girl EP remains my favourite experience of her music, which says as much about the quality of that release as the inadequacies of her subsequent output.

I next managed to catch her live twice. First was at Kinemat's 5th Anniversary at Zouk which was, frankly, disastrous, but more through the fault of the terrible sound in Zouk. Then again at Baybeats 2004, which, although didn't leave much of an impression, did leave in my hands The Pink Bento Boutique (the Baybeats Limited Edition 14 track). That album really summed up The Analog Girl thus far: 14 tracks mashed together and cycled through in half an hour, it displayed a distinct fear of fours (minutes, that is), like the remote-control restlessness of a child with attention-deficit hyperactivity channel surfing; electrojunk for a generation raised on MTV.

A dear shame, I thought, because her material was still very promising, only lacking sufficient development. She seemed to be rushing and shuffling through tracks when she could have fared better by taking her time to fully flesh out the material; as a listener, one feels a bit led on when the track changes before one even has enough time to properly appreciate it. Also, the album just didn't flow well, symptomatic of an album that was a slapdash collection of songs rather than a coherent whole.

The What! EP , then, I am happy to report, is an immense improvement over that release. The Analog Girl has managed to channel her fitfulness into a creative restiveness. Vocal-wise, she is still equal parts lusty and luscious, but now this extends to her songs as well - full-bodiced and bursting with a trippy physicality.

The more characteristically trip-hop numbers like 'Falling', 'Disco | Graphic' and 'Sensor' are paced with a deliberation which allow beats or riffs to linger with impactful resonance. Another song like 'Caffeine' has exactly the sort of metabolic kick of its stimulant namesake, while 'Liquorice' sounds like digital hardcore put through the sludgepit.

The highpoint is the closer 'When Did I' (incidentally, the longest track on the EP at 3:42), a magnificently emotive serenade of gorgeous yearning, best expressed in its pithy refrain: "Damn, it's so beautiful".

The What! EP still doesn't manage to avoid sounding like patchwork, but the patches are as pretty as ever while the seamwork is getting more intricate. This is the sound of The Analog Girl coming into her own.

Circadian
Radial EP
[self-released]

by K. Vicious

Musical cannibalism - I don't know how fair such a description would serve the songs from the exciting one-man experimental outfit Circadian, or at least serve my unabashed enthusiasm for this music's willingness to chop and shred every discernable melody into a pale signature of alien sounds, of which its producer has taken to describe as distinct music where 'opposition is true Friendship'. Wonderful.

But what I do know is that this sound artist really drives some of my friends up the wall even before the stuttering beats of the first track 'Ashley' is through. Which is good, you know, and perhaps also why I first fell in love with the Radial EP in the first place of course - nothing like music that pisses your friends off (a lost art that I think is getting harder by the day, as music audiences get more, urgh, sophisticated). Circadian's music is not exactly difficult or challenging, but it sure offers a very different flavour to distinguish itself from most post-rock traditions I suppose, which is important.

For one, this music definitely doesn't sound local, and Circadian succeeds by dint of sticking out with his raw vision through the execution of radical sound tactics. The Radial EP is all about textures, textures, and more textures, and the influences I hear on this EP - and I might be wrong - are stuff like Autechre, the Books, Diamond James O'Rourke or even Brian Eno.

Circadian cites William Blake as a great inspiration though - by the way, he is not the only local musician I know who is influenced by Blake's poetry and paintings - but to untrained ears (i.e. mine), the confluence between art and sampled noise in these four tracks is not explicit. I do know that Circadian is a big fan of Animal Collective - or at least, he used to be - some I hope to hear him picking up the acoustic guitar and strum like John Fahey soon. No, just kidding. 'Wintering', with its bruised piano beauty and thoughtful reflection, is probably my favourite thing on this EP. Let's wait and hear what this intriguing musician can come up with on his debut full-length.