Music: the (first) Festival

So I attended my first ever proper music festival last weekend. St Jerome's Laneway Festival 2013 was held at Gardens by the Bay, from noon to midnight of 26 January. I arrived at four, having missed Kings of Convenience, which was on at noon. As much as I hate to have missed them, I'm glad I missed the noonday sun. Singapore in an open-air venue with no shade in the afternoon, is burning hot and twice as sweaty as any other place on earth. On the one hand, it's good because people around you are unlikely to press as close to you at the mosh pit. On the other, intermittent visions of air-conditioning and shade do interrupt your appreciation of the music.

I guess we all had the Band We Came For. Mine was Of Monsters and Men. The set was a little predictable after watching other recordings of live performances by them, so I wasn't too surprised when they asked the girls to sing Hold your horses now/Through the woods we ran and the guys to sing Sleep until the sun goes down/Deep into the mountain sound in Mountain Sound. But that didn't spoil my enjoyment of the amazing singing and music, particularly seeing Nanna so comfortable with an audience, as well as on-stage. Little Talks was a particular hit, with everyone singing along to the lyrics. The music just went on and on, and you could feel the whole venue didn't want that moment to end. The bimbo in me also appreciated the excellent colour coordination of the outfits worn by all of the band.

Details like that can be enhancers, or detractors, from performance. Take Kimbra's blue hair. It wasn't on her head though, but on her sleeves. My friends and I couldn't stop staring at them. But blue hair aside, she has an magnetic voice that just pulled me towards the stage. Although I don't personally love her sound, what she could do with her voice was incredible, and she was unafraid to experiment with unconventional vocal techniques that melded, or perhaps moulded, her eclectic sound. I loved how she could abandon herself to the moment, dancing and singing like no one was watching. These two aspects of her performance distinguished her 'live' from her music videos, and made her worth watching.



In contrast, Alt J was a bit flat live. They were not flat as in out of tune, like Real Estate were (particularly on their new songs). In fact, they played well. It was just that having watched their music videos, I couldn't help but feel that much of what I appreciated about them stemmed from their creativity in terms of the video's narrative conceptualisation. By contrast, in live performance, though they dished out consistent musical quality, that element of experiential creativity was somehow lacking live.

New finds that evening included Bat for Lashes and Tame Impala.  Natasha of Bat for Lashes had a voice and style was evocative of a certain kind of music during the 1980s - a Kate Bush for the contemporary generation. It was an unexpected discovery, but not as unexpected for me as Tame Imapala. I didn't expect myself to like psychedelic rock. I ended up loving it, particularly live. They scored the holographic sound of guitar strumming, pedaling and feedback brilliantly, and the drummer was backbone of the team, holding the band together through rhythmically challenging tempo changes and even technical gaffs.



Gotye was the finale for the night, and lived up to the anticipation of the final set with stunning video backdrops that mirrored his music video concepts quite closely. It was probably a bit of a challenge for the poor bloke as the audience was pretty tired and more than half the people at the mosh pit left once he sang Somebody that I Used To Know. I particularly liked Thanks for Your Time for its sociopolitical satire. Very Gorillaz.



Before the concert, I had the misguided, vain hope that Gardens By The Bay would use some of the interesting garden spaces that they had, like the Flower Dome or Cloud Forest or Supertree Grove (yes, those are their actual names). Instead, there were two stages, and both were set up side-by-side, at a single location - The Meadow, which was essentially just a valley of grass. In terms of raw acoustical space, I think it was an appropriate venue as sound could travel reasonably well through the space, while being isolated from noise by the mounds (they don't qualify as hills) that surrounded The Meadow. Having the two stages side-by-side, seemed to fulfill no other purpose than being logistically sound: it was good for us lazy members of the audience so we wouldn't have to move, and also saved on time, since setting up between acts could be done while a performance was going on on the other stage. From a performance experience perspective, the stages seemed virtually identical, and I could see no real reason for the one stage to be used over the other, given the lack of thematic distinction. There was a lot of potential in terms of making use of the spaces available at Gardens by the Bay, in terms of enhancing the musician's performances and creating a unique experience for the audience. There are fans who follow bands around the world to watch them perform. Why would a dedicated fan come to Singapore, to Gardens by the Bay, to watch the musician? What would make them remember the experience?

The verdict: generally predictable, but consistent and enjoyable performances by musical artists, in what should have been an exciting venue for a music concert. 

You like me, you like me not

Raphaël Poulain doesn't like peeing next to somebody else. He doesn't like noticing people laughing at his sandals, coming out of the water with his swimming suit sticking to his body. Raphaël Poulain likes to tear big pieces of wallpaper off the walls, to line up his shoes and polish them with great care, to empty his toolbox, clean it thoroughly, and, finally, put everything away carefully.

Amélie's mother, Amandine Fouet, was a Primary School teacher from Gueugnon, she had always been unstable and nervy. She doesn't like to have her fingers all wrinkled by hot water. She doesn't like it when somebody she doesn't like touches her, to have the marks of the sheets on her cheek in the morning. She likes the outfits of the ice-skaters on TV, to shine the flooring, to empty her handbag, clean it thoroughly, and, finally, put everything away carefully.

In the opening scenes of Amelie, the characters are introduced by their likes and dislikes. In Miss Universe, contestants introduce themselves by saying what they like. What is it about our preferences that defines who we are, sometimes with even more precision than a string of adjectives might?

It is almost as if the book, or song, were in a strange way, an extension of who we are, defining us. We identify with something when it says what we want to convey, when we ourselves are unable to adequately convey our sentiments - a cathartic release for our half-formed sentences, our inexpressible sentiments. Or they might be the things we wish we could aspire to, the things we think are true. They materialise a reality, albeit a transient one, which we can identify with. Particularly when it comes to exchanging taste in books, or music, or movies, we are connected by our preferences. When we share in an experience like that, these works of art augment our connections to each other, and our understanding of ourselves. When we share in them, or understand them, we are in momentary accord with what is real, what is true - we share in something concrete, and relatively less relativistic than the relativistic world we purportedly experience.

Part of me wonders, is this a taste of what it was like before Babel? Before our world was fragmented by an inability to understand fully what the other person was saying.