Singapore And SoundCloud Searches

Earlier this year I played a small part in helping kick-off HKSocial, a monthly breakfast meeting, for creative types in Hong Kong who are interested in better understanding Social Media. Despite having moved to Singapore, it’s nice to see they haven’t forgotten me, yet, as I was reminded on Friday when my Twitter stream lit up with comments from people attending their recent event.

I had been mentioned in relation to SoundCloud, the excellent social music sharing platform. SoundCloud came up in two talks I gave in Hong Kong this year, iMusic in February, which was part of Social Media Week Hong Kong (read more about it here and see the presentation outline here) and my presentation to HKSocial in June.

All this reminded me that my “to-do” list includes searching SoundCloud to find cool new music here in Singapore. Actually, that’s easier said than done. One of the weakest aspects of SoundCloud is the search facility. Searching for a genre of music works fairly well. But, searching by location is patchy (at best) and when you do start to narrow things down, it’s really time consuming to separate instrument based musicians from DJs (I’d love it if SoundCloud would introduce a way to exclude mixtapes and tracks over 20 minutes long from search results!).

Still, I managed to find a few interesting tracks to share with you. Take a listen and see what you think.

Marcus Wong
Do You Know When (demo) by marcuswong

Marcus Wong describes himself as a former side-man who is now striking out on his own. He plays with indie/alternative band, automobil. His bio is a little apologetic about the quality of his demos, but I felt they had a really engaging vibe. You can hear more of Marcus’ demos on SoundCloud.

supersixteen.
01 Less Is More, But More Is Still More (new) by supersixteen.

Instrumental post-rock can be really engaging and, in it’s best moments, very cinematic. That’s certainly true of Jowell Tan’s solo project, supersixteen. You can find more beguiling music from supersixteen. here.

shinodax
Area of Affection (Instrumental demo) by shinodax

Shinodax was one of a number of appealing metal acts that came up in this search (also check out Scentless Apprentice and taufiklast). Although Shinodax had a number of good covers and clips on his page this instrumental demo really caught my attention.

Lihkin Iyer
Anniyan – Randaka Rework by Lihkin Iyer

Lihkin Iyer is Nikhil Ramakrishnan’s Drum & Bass project and from the sounds of this remixes and demos, he has a lot of really fresh ideas.

Asyraft
The waves of whatever by asyraft

Firdhauz Asyraft has a really diverse set of playful and witty music on offer. Although many of this tracks are just short demos, like the one above, the musical ideas are really good. I’d love to see more of these tracks expanded into full songs someday.

Sharliza Jelita
Sharliza Jelita – Breaks My Heart In Two by -Sharliza Jelita-

Sharliza Jelita hails from Singapore, although it looks like she is now based in London. She has a really unique voice and some really entertaining pop tracks (unfortunately, my favourite Jelita tune Strange Things did not have an embed code enabled).

Arujua
Arajua- Quotation by Abdulhakimhj

You’ll hear some really impressive experimental rock on Arujua’s SoundCloud page (with plenty of shoegaze and post-rock textures. It was hard to pick a favourite track from them, since I also really liked Sky and I Had An Abstract as well the tune you can hear above – Quotation.

Aeondrift
Aeondrift – Core Djent-neration (Crisis Imminent) 2.22 [2011] E 128kbps by Aeondrift

Aeondrift is Jun Lee’s extraordinary gamemusic-influced avante-garde metal project. If that sounds like a mouthful, then you try to describe the amazingly intricate music Aeondrift offers up.

Kevin Teoh
Sending Off by kevinteoh

Kevin Teoh is a composer and his soundtrack cues work equally well as ambient listening music. Check out his other tunes, it’s some of the most engaging and raw stuff I’ve heard on SoundCloud this year.

Sage
Sage – Here For You (demo from upcoming debut) by sridharsmusic

Sage is a project from the multi-talented Sridharan Ravichandran (you can check out all his music here). On the strength of this one demo track I look forward to hearing more from Sage.

Bharat Goel
Bharat Goel feat. Mansheel Gujral – Aaja Soneya (Folk+Dubstep) by Bharat Goel

Bharat Goel is based in Mumbai, London and Singapore. Perhaps I could have left this track out, in the interests of some kind of “purity.” But, that’s not my style. And, besides, this is such a cool remix. Check out more from Goel over at SoundCloud.

And, the internet being what it is these I should point out that I have no financial interest in SoundCloud. I pay my subscription like every other user. And, none of the acts featured in this post approached me to be showcased here or offered any consideration for having their tunes highlighted. I found them the old fashioned way, trial and error and picking what caught my attention.