This year, we’re showing love to all things local with our new monthly column, the Honeycombers Hot List. From local movies and artists to homegrown musicians and authors in Singapore, we spill on what we’re reading, watching and listening to. So bookmark this page if you want to be in the loop! This month, we’ve got a cool new project by local creatives, underground electro-pop singer Yeule and a captivating novel titled Kappa Quarter.
The Honeycombers Hot List: February
Watch: Wallflowers: Sights and Sounds of Singapore
Covid-19 has thrown a spanner in the works for all of us, from working from home to social distancing to putting our travel plans on hold. While we for sure miss flying off to explore foreign lands, have you really taken the time to explore your own backyard? Granted, we don’t have gorgeous rolling hills or snow-capped mountains, but Singapore definitely has a lot more to offer than just tasty food. Take a cue from the Wallflower project.
Supported by National Council Singapore and brought to you by local creatives, this multi-disciplinary project implores you to take a step back and take a closer look at your surroundings. Using different mediums like sound, video and art installations, this project highlights the in-between moments of iconic neighbourhoods.
First on the line-up is Tiong Bahru: a place where time stands still. Awash in a dreamy filter, the short video showcases people in this nostalgic ‘hood going about their everyday lives. Think along the lines of shopping for groceries in a wet market, kids playing in the playground and gleeful senior citizens waving to the screen (talk about breaking the fourth wall). Enjoying the music? The real-life sounds are recorded on-site. For a limited time, you can purchase the ambience soundtrack for free! Follow them on Instagram to see where they’ll take you next.
Listen: My Name is Nat Ćmiel by Yeule
Electronic pop meets melancholia with Singapore-born underground artist Yeule. She’s known for her heavy-synth tunes, spacey productions and mysterious persona (her stage name takes after a character from the Final Fantasy franchise). Here, she gives us a sneak peek into her sophomore album, “Glitch Princess”, with her recently released single “My Name is Nat Ćmie”.
Equal parts alluring and haunting, her latest track introduces the listener to herself with lines like “I like pretty textures in sound”, “I like the way some music makes me feel” and “I like making up my own world”. All of this in a robotic voice against glitchy techno sounds. If you like what you hear, her debut album “Serotonin II” will capture you with tracks like “Pocky Boy’ and “Poison Arrow”.
Read: Kappa Quartet by Daryl Qilin Yam
Longlisted for Epigram Books Fiction Prize in 2015 and shortlisted by the Singapore Book Awards 2017 for its fascinating cover, Kappa Quarter is an original work by local writer Daryl Qilin Yam. Before we dive into the plot, let us address the elephant in the room. What is a kappa, you ask? It’s an ancient water demon from Japanese folklore. Taking the shape of a human being, they seamlessly live amongst us and the only way to tell them apart is the hole on top of their heads. What’s their vice? They like to steal human souls.
If you’re a fan of Haruki Murakami’s work, Kappa Quartet will suck you in with Daryl’s prose, which interweaves introspection, ambience, mystery and magical realism. Set between Singapore and Japan, and divided into eight chapters, it introduces you to soulful characters, probing you to take a deeper look at the human condition. What hooked us was the way Daryl adds depth to scenes through compelling and poetic words. You can already visualise it in your head – hence the parallel comparison with Murakami. By the time you reach the last page, you will get a true sense of Daryl’s writing. We’re looking forward to his second novel Lovelier, Lonelier, which will be out later this year.
The Honeycombers Hot List: January
Watch: Tiong Bahru Social Club by Tan Bee Thiam
Who would have thought that Singapore’s cosiest neighbourhood would be the setting of an imprisonment establishment under the disguise of a happiness project? Well, in Tan Bee Thiam’s Tiong Bahru Social Club, this is reality.
The satirical comedy follows Ah Bee, a hardworking boy who ditches the 9-to-5 grind for a spot in the Tiong Bahru Social Club – a pastel-drenched community aimed at optimising its members’ happiness. But as the day passes, the happiness algorithm can’t seem to keep Ah Bee, for lack of a better word, happy. In all honesty, quantifying happiness can be strange. But in this movie, it works. From Ah Bee’s deadpan personality to the Wes Anderson-like cinematography to the exaggeration of quirky Singaporean habits, the movie is equal parts dreamy and whimsy. While Tan Bee Thiam could have easily taken the dystopian route, he keeps it lighthearted.
Tiong Bahru Social Club is, in our opinion, a must-see for everyone who calls Singapore their home. And for those who miss the iconic Pearl Bank Apartments, be prepared for a visual feast.
Listen: Forget us by Maximilian
What’s the perfect soundtrack to the rainy weather we’re experiencing right now? Let us introduce you to Maximilian. Max and Justin, who make up the musical duo, might have crossed paths in university two years ago. But what really brought them together was their mutual passion for creating music.
With no experience or whatsoever, these self-taught artists decided to dip their toes in the local music scene by producing one original song a month last year. “Our final song of the project, ‘forget us’, is a song about the feelings, emotions and lessons that have overwhelmed us the past tumultuous year”, Max says.
Equal parts nostalgic, lyrical and dreamy, ‘forget us’ was conceived as “a reminder to forget all those who don’t matter, and aspire for the toxicity this year to ‘forget us’ as well”, Max explains. If you’re digging the chill beats and euphonious vocals, you’ll also enjoy tracks like ‘Apollo #8’, ‘white-bird’ and ‘violet / aisle’.
Since the release of their first single, they have quickly gained more than 400,000 streams on Spotify and a decent following on social media. “This was something we could never have dreamt of; we are always grateful for the love that fans have shown us, and we hope to return their love by going the extra mile and continue improving with our craft”, Max says.
While we eagerly wait for new music from them in 2021, tune in to their weekly bedroom series where Max croons his own rendition of iconic songs. Think Coldplay, Oasis and Harry Styles.
Read: 17A Keong Saik Road by Charmaine Leung
New to SingLit? We recommend this poignant memoir to start your foray into local literature. Why, you ask? It has a little bit of everything: history, culture, community spirit and family, which are essentially the cornerstones of the Little Red Dot’s society.
The pages will whisk you away to a familiar street that’s set at a different time. Keong Saik Road in the 60s is a far cry from what it is now. Instead of boutique hotels and buzzing bars, the enclave was lined up with brothels and “entertainment” watering holes. Author Charmaine Leung paints a more vivid picture of the titular street’s red-light district past with her story about growing up in the area as a daughter of a brothel operator.
It’s worth mentioning that 17A Keong Saik Road is more than just a personal recount of what it is like to be living in a seedy neighbourhood. It also shines a light on the lives of marginalised women in the early 1900s who left their homeland to make a new life in Singapore. Charmaine weaves in narratives of said women with beautifully strung words, which essentially builds on her own lived experience. One thing is for sure: the book makes us pine for the nostalgia of 1970s Singapore.
Know of an underground local artist in Singapore or a homegrown title that should be on our Honeycombers Hot List? DM us on Instagram or Facebook with your recommendations!
The post The Honeycombers Hot List: What to listen, watch and read appeared first on Honeycombers Singapore.