Music

This page serves as a central repository of things related to me as a musician. Hopefully someone will look here and say “hey we should get this guy to jam/session/gig”. Failing which this page will serve as a reminder that I should’ve been out there rocking instead of playing with websites.

Instruments

I play the keyboard, guitar, drums, bass, triangle, and iPod.

Influences

I enjoy:

• Radiohead (2007-), Radiohead (OK Computer to Hail to the Thief), Radiohead (everything else), in that order;
• Dream Theater (generally 1997-2005, plus A Change of Seasons);
• new prog à la Muse (Absolution, Black Holes);
• post-rock à la Amateur Takes Control, Furniture, Mogwai, Maybeshewill, Saxon Shore, The Samuel Jackson Five, 65daysofstatic;
• indie/alt/power/electro/emo/art/progressive pop/rock/punk/everything, including Death Cab for Cutie, Stars, Broken Social Scene, Sufjan Stevens, Jens Lekman, The Postal Service, Electric Winter, Miracle Fortress, OK Go, Motion City Soundtrack, Something Corporate, Taking Back Sunday (2002-2006), Dashboard Confessional, Anberlin, (early) Coldplay, John Mayer, Damien Rice, Rachael Yamagata, Elsa Kidspy, Marchtwelve, Caracal, West Grand Boulevard, Plainsunset, The Observatory, B-Quartet.

Sample sounds

Solo (guitar, synths, GarageBand)

Finally switching to a MacBook full-time, discovering post-rock and electropop and shoegaze, waking up one day and realising school meant nothing, and being frustrated by various bands — all in one year — inevitably led to some terrible decisions and 9 minutes of what may or may not be music. Had a lot of fun though — the two gated synths on ‘citizens’ are some of my favourite patches, and the outtro of ‘when I open…’ is the best thing to ever happen to me that I can attribute to a lack of RAM.

Demo (2007)
01 – ab ovo
02 – when I open my eyes this is all I see
03 – riff 4
04 – citizens start your engines

Uncollected (2008-present)
fight shy — apparently the “fan favourite”, insofar as I have any “fans”.
I dreamt of the truth

Retrospective introspective: some of the ideas I really liked (when I open…, ab ovo) were marred by poor synths. On the other hand I was too eager to use some nice sounds (citizens, I dreamt of the truth) and didn’t actually write complete songs around them. Whoops.

My solo tracks can also be found on alonetone.

Laramie (bass)

An alt rock / new prog outfit from 2007 that lasted, what, 8 months? I officially picked up the bass here and started my love/hate relationship with Muse. We contributed this original track to a compilation CD for charity.

Flutter

CCIS (guitar)

Our church youth worship band got together for CCIS (Celebrate Christmas in Singapore) 2007 and an outreach gig. I played rhythm and lead respectively on the following:

Joy to the World [YouTube video]
Not Alone (Lukas)

Jade (keyboard)

Met some nice and talented people in the morning; in the afternoon we played some NTU Sports CCA thing. We didn’t have a name. I played keys on a sweet Roland Juno-G (which I hope to own one day).

Blackest Eyes (Porcupine Tree) [mp4 video]
Overture 1928 (Dream Theater) [mp4 video]

Miscellaneous

Some short loops with synth horns/trumpets
Cute without the ‘E’ (Taking Back Sunday) – I can’t sing. Please don’t listen to this.