ALMOST CRIMES: SOBS X SUBSONIC EYE SHOW
Independent music has literally come a long way, around the globe to be exact. Independent artists in 2018 would record demos of their songs in their bedrooms, and post it on music platforms like Soundcloud or Spotify. Eventually, the demo blows up, in turn forming into a studio recorded single, ready to be performed right on stage in front of hundreds and thousands of fans in events organized by their friends, for their friends and their scene/network. Independent music has always been one of the collective terms for a track that is considered by fans as “unrestrained” and doesn’t “conform to any musical fad of today”. However, the real essence behind the word “indie” is arguably more of its ethos than it being a sound. This essence has now been lost in the state of “indie” today, given that the term has now evolved into a commercial space of appropriation, wholly divorced from its origin. That essence now lives on through the term “DIY”: where a group/scene comes together with all their skills and resources, forming events that present their art and bring their collective closer, like how “indie” was supposed to be.
Sometime around the late 2010’s, there was one group I have observed for almost two years. This group consists of bands, with members that would often collaborate together with each other, forming more bands and more music. At a particular birthday party in June, a new collective stemmed from the group, forming under the name of Almost Crimes: a Manila-based music production that puts up affordable shows, featuring independent acts that belong in several genres like lo-fi, alternative rock, dream pop, garage punk, and many more. Almost Crimes have been putting up local shows sometime around the early part of 2017, where they title their own shows such as “Meet Me in The Basement”, “Do People Think of Electric Sleep”, and “Scary January” (which was a show that collaborated with five of their cousin prods), with each show having a running theme, concept, and sound. Last January of this year, the youthful, exuberant, and quirky music prod had announced their biggest show yet. They unveiled to the public that they have invited two Singaporean bands. And I honestly didn’t expect these guys to run a show like this, I mean who doesn’t want to organize a show that has a foreign band as their headliner, right? Everyone can dream, and Almost Crimes have proven themselves to be ready to achieve that dream by building communities not only on our own doorstep but also opening their doors for other scenes in neighboring countries as well. This is where Singaporean bands like Sobs and Subsonic Eye come in the picture. Both bands have released EPs and both of them are planning to release a full-length album in the middle of this year. The two up-and-coming bands are under the Singaporean-based record label Middle Class Cigars and both bands are on a South East Asian tour, making Manila their second stop in the leg and their first time to ever perform in the country. I met up with both bands and we had a small chat at the back of one of the organizer’s friend’s house. While we were exchanging the importance of having cross-cultural communication, we then proceed to talk about each and every one of our music cultures. Sobs and Subsonic Eye are always looking forward to looking outside of their hometown. As Raphael Ong, lead guitarist of Sobs, describes his own perspective of the Singaporean music scene as “a big fish in a small pond”. He then also contemplates how they were ambitious to look outside of their country. Their scene is too big to fit inside their small city full of acts that are wanting to reach out to countries for them to have a worthy place in the South East Asian music scene. A cultural exchange between different countries is one of the important reasons why this show is a must-go for music fans. Most people who are about to attend haven’t reached the layers of acts they know of: bands like Ourselves the Elves is the most well known in the lineup while The Buildings and Mellow Fellow x Ruru received a fair feedback from their longtime followers. Meanwhile, both Sobs and Subsonic Eye are receiving praise from their peers back home and are gaining international recognition from music media outlets online. They themselves felt like there’s so much to discover, with a bunch of members mentioning about the local bands that are about to open them as a “gargantuan” lineup. The organizers and even I myself were excited to welcome the visitors and give them a treat of what our version of “Original” Philippine Music sounds like. Three months of effort had been spent in organizing the event, and it all came to a head on a Friday night on the first week of March. I arrived at the venue around 6:30 just as a punctual gig goer would arrive 30 minutes before the show would start (it’s as if Filipino Time wouldn’t exist for him). There was a sound of music coming out of the open front door of Mow’s. I actually didn’t expect the hear noise inside the bar around that kind of time but as I went down the slope, there was the band, Sobs doing a sound check. I assume that they were covering DIIV (this is just an assertion of one of my friends outside the venue since I am not that much of a fan of DIIV’s music). The smooth guitar interplay and the lead vocalist of Sobs, Celine, was singing. I just stood there in the middle getting amazed and hyped in another level. The show started around 8pm and the first act to play was lo-fi/dream pop trio Memory Drawers. Their music was magic to me the first time that I saw them live back in October. Their guitarist, Kevin Ingco, is amazing at soloing the guitar as if it sounded like there were three layers. Their bassist, Paula, and their vocalist, Andrea, are doing back to back vocal duties on each track. I personally think that they should grow out of their sound in the future. Their lo-fi sound might sound stagnant if they still keep it in the near future. I’m still looking forward to their music, this is a great start for a great show.
The second act of the night is indie darlings Ourselves the Elves, it’s the usual set except they extended it to two more songs. I haven't seen them play “Longing For” in forever. The last time I saw them play that was at the Rest is Noise Year-Ender last year November. Great set nonetheless, it’s the usual Ourselves The Elves I’ve seen for many many times. I can’t wait for their new release that is slated (maybe) to release later this year.
The third act of the night was noise rock supergroup, The Buildings. The band was one of Sobs favorite bands of the night not because of their performance but also they were their inspiration by listening to their album CELL-O-PHANE back when they were recording their debut EP Catflap. It’s amazing to see their reactions wherein they’re finally listening to the Buildings live. The friends of the band are starting to mosh with their songs, even I never got to mosh to the Buildings live before. It’s also great to see the Buildings play in a very long set. They’ve played a bunch of new songs which to me sounded like they are kind of leaving the noise rock element in their tracks. The newer songs sounded a bit more of fuzz-pop or a bit of twee pop. I guess this was the lead guitarist and vocals, Mariah’s segway to her new solo project Brain Twins and this is her way of debuting some songs while she was going solo. The new songs sounded great but at the same time what happened was most of those new songs weren’t that polished, like they were at times where Mariah wasn’t really prepared or didn’t do any work on the guitar solo, which I completely understand because they were experimenting on stage which I can give them props at most of the time. This is one of the Buildings rare appearances live and this may be their best performances I’ve ever witnessed.
The fourth act was garage-rock hooligans The Gory Orgies, and it’s been awhile since they’ve played live also. The Gory Orgies just came back from a band hiatus and it’s one of their many infamous hiatuses. That’s the fun of this band, they took a long break but at the same time surprised their fans in unexpected performances in gigs, and they came back, and right after they came back they never announced for an official hiatus but they took a long 5 month break, and now they’re back just to supply chaos in the show. This was also my expected turn for their performance and that is everyone moshing and going crazy in the pit. Everyone excluding their friends, there were some other first-timers joined in the moshpit, it was like this giant battlefield where people are throwing hands and jumping all around. The band weren’t just four members, they were like two more sessionists. One was Itos of alt-rock band Yurei with a small laptop and midi keyboard making static and wave noises. The second sessionist was Yuji Torres on bass. They were two drums, one was a complete drum set and one was a tom (or another snare drum i guess?) and a snare drum standing smack in the middle. The Gory Orgies played one of their iconic tracks like “Thank God It’s Doomsday”, “One Hell of a Godsend”, “Id Play”, and “Radium Girls”. They were the wildest and rowdiest bands out there and I’m not sure when they’re going to play again. This was also a very wild crowd, everyone was nuts in their set. As it progressed, the crowd gets wilder and wilder. I never experienced this hard of a moshpit in a long while.
The fifth act and the most anticipated out of the bill was Mellow Fellow and Ruru. Performing alongside Mellow Fellow is his partner, Ruru. This isn’t her first time performing, Ruru debuted on an Almost Crimes gig last year. The two are widely known to be the bedroom pop darlings of the internet today, especially it’s going to be Mellow Fellow’s first time to ever perform live. Ruru started off the set with her mellow songs. Her light pop instrumentals are backed by a full band. It’s almost like a your listening to a Bossa Nova because of the smooth rhythm section and Ruru’s delivery is always on point with the instruments. They flow right through in the transitions. There were tracks like “Sleep” and “Coco”, and there are songs that I liked that she didn’t get to perform like “Numb” and “Sepanx”. Those tracks are beyond amazing, super simple, an “audio hug” if that makes sense. Her music does kind of remind me of BP Valenzuela except she doesn’t do the atmospheric elements in her tracks. Nevertheless, it’s such a warm set. Then shortly after that, it quickly switched to Mellow Fellow’s set. Everyone was pumped up to finally see him live. Mellow Fellow looked nervous but he managed to take his time and entertain the crowd with his witty banter and random meme references. I can say that his set was super magical not because he flawlessly performed tracks like “Tired”, “Dancing”, and “How Was Your Day?”, but everyone inside sang along. Just a quick reminder guys that this was his first time performing live and everyone went in to sing along. It’s amazing, that was one hell of a moment. You guys should find the clips of both of the two’s performances online. Go check it out.
Finally, it’s time for the headliners turn to make this show amazing, Singaporean indie-pop band Sobs went in like a giant wave of hearts coming right at your eardrums. That clean sound that I mentioned earlier in this post was crisp from start to finish. From performing all of their tracks in their debut EP to their new songs that is on their debut album. That album is about to be released later around May of this year. Sobs have created so many dreamy grooves in and out of every section of each song. There are so many things to admire about this set, occasionally the synthesizers just add up to the emotion that Sobs is about to apply later in their material. Even if it’s their last song, they still kept that playfulness they had from the very start. Sobs were hands down a solid band to see live. One of Singapore’s greatest musical exports for me.
After Sobs finished, Subsonic Eye followed with another solid set. This time, they aren’t that fun like how Sobs was 30 minutes ago, they were more of a technical band that would blast every texture known to mankind. To my surprise, Subsonic Eye sounded a lot better than I expected. The drummer’s driving snares and rattling hi-hats.The guitar melodies are vibrant, the overall instrumentation was very thematic. It almost sounded like they merged dream pop and shoegaze together to create this very coherent piece of music. One of the biggest highlights of their performance for me was they covered the intro of New Order’s “Ceremony” before switching up to the lead single “Sun Kissed Skin” which spazzed the hell out of me and I can’t control but jump around to the beat of their set. Honestly, when it comes to their mateiral, Strawberry Feels didn’t have that big impact the way how Catflap did. But it was a surprise that they exceed everyone’s expectations live. Subsonic Eye ended the show with a climactic finish.
Overall, what I can say about this show is that it wasn’t only the best show locally, but it was also the best show I’ve ever been in all year and I think that’s too early to call but it was so good. The Singaporeans found themselves at home because of the energetic crowd, the food, the culture, the bands, the music, everything. They loved what they saw and what they experienced and I can experience the same what they’re feeling and it was amazing to see the organizers who worked hard on it and they’ve just pulled off an amazing show from start to finish.
We can conclude that independence does come along way. It can bring you in different places when you do good things. The entire journey of sharing one another’s music will bring not only our local community together but also create a friendship between international communities as well.
Thank you to the Almost Crimes team. More power to both local and international music scene. And anyone reading this blogpost, please do hire Morris as your photographer. He takes great pics!!