The failure for worshippers of technically proficient music to find common ground with minimalist experimental music is a recurring stigma in the ethos of musical genres. Some bands string together three chords, label it punk rock and proceed to lead legions of rebellious teenagers to sing their national anthems. Others carefully map out note-loaded progressions and syncopated beat patterns, impressing the aforementioned technique devotees.
Then there is The Observatory, a 6-piece indie orchestra that achieves the sought balance between the two. Their ability to harness these diverse tangents of technical aptitude and leftist experimentations, like their Norwegian heroes Jaga Jazzist, is what makes these Singaporeans’ debut Time of Rebirth, and now their sophomore Blank Walls, so magical.
The Observatory is largely void of over-excessiveness, the bane of adroit musicians. Instead, the band takes a chapter out of the Mark Kozelek book of disheartened anthems as their biblical mandate. Paying independent penance in various seminal Singaporean indie bands (Humpback Oak, The Padres) earned The Observatory sufficient demerit points for credibility, but also taught them some hard-knock lessons about constructing a brilliant album and managing their musical progression.
From the addition of a drummer to bolster their backbone to the garage noise induction in ‘Olives’, much of Blank Walls’ facets concern sequential change. Norwegian indie wizard Jørgen Traeen’s (Jaga Jazzist and Magnet) co-production has certainly added sumptuous meat and lard to the structure the band erected in their debut. Songs like ‘Finch’, ‘I Didn’t See Her’ and ‘Sea of Doubts’ were road tested in the months preceding the recording, helping the band incorporate the spontaneously enchanting character of these tracks into the album.
Blank Walls represents a triumph over many things. A triumph to achieve a cohesive body of work; a triumph to release an ambitious piece of work; and of course, a triumph over that baseless accusation that Asian bands are largely inferior to their Western counterparts. But most of all, it displays six individuals in the prime of their art, working collectively to propagate a common cause. In the eyes of even the fiercest critic, there can be nothing more magnificent than that. |