The Observatory has been around for several years. Can you provide some background on the band?
Leslie: The band was formed by Vivian Wang and myself in 2001. In 2003, Dharma, Evan Tan and Victor Low joined us. We’ve had some line-up changes over the years, but essentially as a 4, 5 or 6 piece unit, released 5 albums to date. Currently, we are a 4-piece, Vivian, Dharma and myself, with our youngest member Bani Haykal joining us last year. The Observatory was formed out of the ashes of older bands we were involved in the early nineties. We met each other from the local gig circuit. It was a really small scene then. Perhaps it still is even though it has grown. We saw The Observatory as more of a space than a band, where like-minded musicians would come and go, exchange ideas and influences, hang and make music. Our sound changes from album to album, quite drastically. On hindsight, it could have been unconsciously mirroring the constant change in the landscape of our environment. It’s the price of living in a sped-up circus of constant construction. Our memories decimated with each new skyscraper, expressway or mall. We hated it. But it’s been a part of what makes us. With every change, every demolished school or library, our mental environment changes as well. It’s like we had to devise a new code for our music to exist. Everything felt old quickly.
Vivian: We ditched the normal songwriting process after our first two albums. We’ve always relied on change as our fuel, every one of our five full length releases a departure from the previous one. In the last 7 years or so, we’ve submerged ourselves increasingly more and more in improv. This has pushed us to tap into a more visceral side of our creative energies. No script, no score, no formula, just being on the edge.
In 2012 you released Catacombs as a 2xLP/CD. You’ve always taken great care with concept and presentation of your releases. Talk a little about the music and art for Catacombs.
Vivian: When we experiment and muck around, improvising obviously affects how we generate ideas and sounds, which we later incorporate into our songs. The freedom and intensity during improvisational sets gives a real sense of immediacy aside from creating a ruckus most times. It’s also deeply cathartic. Our diet of improv everyday for two months is what fed the themes of insanity and civilised madness in the making of Catacombs, not without casualty I’m afraid.
It’s hard for us to make the same album again, every time. It might seem sadistic but we do thrive on the experience of getting out of our comfort zone. We like to explore shades of grey instead of doing what’s safely black or white. If we try to do a bluesy song, it will still come off strange. If we do anything metal, it’ll probably not sit well with the traditional metalhead. In music, we like aggression but we also like beauty and fragility, and there’s both in Catacombs. In temperament, we often come off melancholic but even that complexion has become darker. We’re venturing to more sinister territory which very likely alienates fans of older albums. But that’s what discovery entails, the willingness to explore anything, especially the stuff outside of what we’re accustomed to, not to mention that it’s fun as well. In terms of rhythm, we hardly utilised drums on the album before, Dark Folke. On Catacombs though, both Victor and Les are playing drums and exploring more industrial rhythms. Dharma also adds to the forceful rhythmic element. I chip in a little percussion on a few tracks and play keyboard bass on most. A bit of our Southeast Asian heritage has begun to creep in as well. You’ll hear some interlocking Indonesian rhythms and the use of the Laotian khaen which opens the album. There’s definitely a stronger, more defined pulse on this new album. You might be able to dance to it, well, at the very least, nod to it. In arrangement, the songs are more singular and focused than anything we’ve put out before. Leslie’s vocals have also finally found their alter timbre. To me, it definitely is our most interesting sounding album to date.
Catacombs’ more calculated heaviness, propelling rhythms and Leslie’s darker vocal delivery demanded an album art direction conveying the same cold, dark wave influenced sound. We didn’t want to shroud the cover in black, as we’ve generally done with previous albums. We went for a more clinical, cleaner but still gritty look. Our album designer Keith Utech, who also runs the much respected Utech Records label, led us to Brit artist Thomas Hooper, now based in Brooklyn NY. He had a fascinating pictorial series on skulls called Skull Studies, both human and animal which he’s photographed a vast collection of. For Catacombs, using the acetone transfer method to treat selected photo prints from this series, he manipulated the images to look textured and more abstract. If you look closely at the art of Catacombs, it gives one the sense of a landscape that’s strange and cavernous, but upon closer scrutiny, it’s possible to see the outlines of skulls. We thought this was an interesting way to present skulls, away from the usual metal/rock connotations associated with skull art.
The skull is a significant metaphor which could lend itself to multiple readings. It is the seat of the mind, the human psyche and also a symbol of death. Since Catacombs is a study of insanity and delusion, the skull also represents a kind of universal consciousness. On the album, the songs provide different entry points into the subject of the breaking down of the human mind. Ends to No Means provides an early century viewpoint of Melancholy. Accidentagram is about mad individuals that roam our streets. “Catacombs” (the title track) takes it from a first person’s point of view. Insomnia speaks for the mind that refuses to shut down and Headworm addresses the madness itself.
The Observatory has toured quite a bit outside of Singapore. Describe your recent visit to Norway and how that came about.
Leslie: We’ll always be inextricably linked to Norway, Bergen specifically because of Jorgen Traeen. We have been an admirer of his work and our working relationship began since our second album, Blank Walls. Our recent tour of Norway was kindly organized by our friends at MOE, a classic 3-piece lineup from Oslo. It was really generous of them to include us on their tour. It was great fun, seeing Norway by van in winter. We played small shows in Kristiansand, Stavanger, Hamar, Oslo and of course, Bergen. We got to catch up with old friends along the journey, made new ones, drank lots of tea, good food and plenty of good conversations.
There’s always been a saying that to make it big in music, one has to make it big internationally first before Singaporeans would take notice. We have a lot of choice here, being one of the busiest ports in the world. Music from all directions can be found here. “Local music”, like a bad word, has been demonised for decades as being substandard compared to our US and UK counterparts. Radio stations play mostly music from these two scenes because local music is generally deemed unfit for broadcast. Coming from this complex, Norway seems to have been the most unexpected choice. We took it when the opportunity arose, relishing being as far away as we could from where we were from. Not because we wanted to make it big, that was never our intention. As orphans, culturally and musically, we just wanted to be away from the chaos. We also craved nature, peace and quiet. Norway’s pace was perfect for us to develop our music and not be harassed by the usual woes of daily life. We have played shows in Southeast Asia where we have found similar enclaves of like-minded people developing their craft who are also playing second fiddle to international names. That’s the mindset of the general population over here. We’ve been hollowed-out. West is best.
Vivian: Music these days is all about making meaningful connections with other musicians and artists. I mean, it’s not pleasurable for me at all to make music in a bubble. I enjoy playing and creating in solitude but not living an entire life that way. I’m not into the misanthropic mindset when it comes to creativity. For me, it’s a lot about sharing and exploring ideas together. It’s about experiencing life, finding out other people’s perspectives and growing a mutual respect. Norway happened by chance. We were booked already to have our second album produced and mixed by John McEntire of Tortoise in Chicago, but things didn’t work out because of Tortoise’s heavy touring schedule at the time. We had been listening then to some Norwegian artists and really liked the sound on the early Jaga Jazzist albums. Jorgen was our man. Lasse Marhaug gave us Jorgen’s contact and it’s been 7 years since. Something about the stark, subdued yet intense landscape and the progressiveness of Norwegian experimental music really appeals to us. I reckon we will keep going back.
Please discuss your influences musically and artistically.
Leslie: From Talk Talk’s musical arc to Scott Walker’s vision. Jaga Jazzist, Tortoise, Dungen, Ultralyd, MOHA!, the work of Jazkamer/Golden Serenades axis, Alice Coltrane, Toy, Horseback, Barn Owl, Aluk Tudolo, Gog, Neil Young, The Beatles, Keith Rowe, Flying Lotus, MOE, Balinese music and Swans. We have always been listeners of a wide variety of music, both old and new. This scratches the surface because it always seems pretentious to name drop in this manner. But just to illustrate a point I have. Whatever we’ve been obsessing about normally influences the direction we’d take for each album. Interestingly, of late, we’ve been listening to music made by musicians whom we’ve met over the years. So there’s a lot of Norwegian/Scandinavian music that we enjoy. And of course we have a direct pipeline to the US and UK music scenes. Like the generations before us, we were raised on these two main musical diets.
Vivian: We’ve always been about making music as an independent group but a lot of what we do is also deeply rooted in our personal collective history of being Singaporean, having all had somewhat of a culturally ambivalent upbringing and a tenuous understanding of our historical heritage. We are greatly affected by change and conformist attitudes, a result of our Asian upbringing in addition to having grown up in one of the fastest growing countries in the world. This has had a profound impact on our music, in the way we attempt to break away from convention but yet, find ourselves making music that’s still a reaction to the social and political injustices in this seemingly wonderful and ‘safe’ haven. It is directly felt in the music itself, how we explore themes about memory or the loss of it, our sense of belonging and our relationship with constant change in this landscape. I think all indie musicians the world over struggle with the effects of globalisation, consumerism and the need to be financially sustainable. This depresses and angers us somewhat but paradoxically gives us greater motivation to keep at it, to challenge the status quo using what we can. Of late, we have been unearthing our own Southeast Asian cultural backyard and finding so much to draw inspiration from. We recently completed the first draft of Continuum, a 50 minute long work that sprung from our interest in Balinese gamelan, which resulted in a new tonal scale and self-designed bronze instruments, which we have been happily toying around with. It’s definitely given us a new direction to pursue in our next album.
What does the future hold for The Observatory individually and collectively?
Leslie: There is going to be more touring for Obs in 2013. We are planning for another double bill with MOE in Italy and possibly Germany. We are also working on a full scale production of our gamelan work Continuum which will involve a choreographed dance element as well.
Individually, PAN GU, a duo with Lasse Marhaug, has an album coming out on Utech Records. We are really proud of this one. Designed by Keith himself, it’ll be out on vinyl in either Feb or March. I’m hoping we get to tour this one internationally. I’ve also been involved in other projects like Piblokto, Hanging up the Moon, ARCN TEMPL, Elintseeker and MAGUS. These are mostly collaborations with fellow musicians from Singapore.
Dharma is also involved in a drone duo inspired by the Hindu philosophy of no ego called ChÖd with sound artist Shaun Sankaran. They have an album in the works.
Bani Haykal is still active with his experimental improv, sound and visual collective called OFFCUFF.
As ARCN TEMPL, Viv and myself will be self-releasing an album soon with X’ Ho (a personal music hero from our shores), called Lucifugous.
Catacombs is available now in CD from the Observatory and Utech Records, and limited quantities of the 2xLP are available from Utech Records.
Daniel
March 3, 2013 at 5:46 am
ace interview!