[Event] St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival, Singapore
“Long Entry Ahead. You’ve been warned.”
*Ladyhawke on stage playing My Delirium*
If there’s one way to describe St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival at Fort Canning yesterday, it would be – WET! (We’ll get to that later.)
Outstanding line-up at this debut music festival in Singapore, it was an EPIC party that is unforgettable and one hella experience for me. Firstly take a look at the awesome artistes involved - !!! (Chk Chk Chk), Beach House , Deerhunter, Foals, Holy F*** (Heck, it’s Holy Fuck), Ladyhawke, The Temper Trap, Warpaint and Yeasayer. It was really a treat for music lovers like me, though I must admit I’ve only listened to 5 out of 9 bands before this. I can guarantee that the bands were all fantastic and totally worth standing in the rain for! The music was just so good that I’ll regret for the rest of my life if I didn’t see them live. My personal favorite were !!! (Chk Chk Chk), Holy Fuck, Ladyhawke, Yeasayer and of course The Temper Trap!
Speaking of rain, it was quite the ‘Rainway – a Mudfest’ instead of ‘Laneway – a Musicfest’ ! The location is, of course, open air and the raingod probably has bad taste in music – it was pouring almost the entire day! Every single time a band goes up, it starts raining. The rain before The Temper Trap came on was the worst ! Ponchos were nothing but just a piece of irritating plastic that keeps sticking onto your skin. But that did not dampen the mood of the crowd at all, people were stripping (yes, stripping), dancing in the rain and getting muddy all over. Mud swamp is an understatement, you gotta see the mess for yourself. There were even mudslides at the end of the event which looks really fun – I’d totally join in the fun to see how pigs rolling in mud feels like (lol) if I’m alone overseas or not going home for the night ! Yesterday night could have been one of the things to do on my bucket list, if I had one.
Of course I had wonderful people (mostly on my twitter list) to hang out with, bumped into probably half of my Facebook friend list at the festival as well ? We all agreed that dancing in the rain, getting mudcaked, singing at the top of your lungs (even if you knew nobody can actually hear you, including yourself), booze and whatnots, taking pictures with random people – this was probably one of the stories that we can proudly tell our grandchildren:” Hell yeah! We were once young and happening!” If you ask me how I feel about LanewaySG – IT WAS DOPE!!! Like what Utt said, it should have been a 2 day fest !
As I was representing SMU Campus Radio, I had the chance to interview the bands and take some pictures with them. (The rest of the pictures were taken in the heavy rain, it wasn’t exactly…viewable.haha) Will post those up when the nicer stuff are ready for release! Below are some of my personal shots in the media tent, didn’t take more pictures during the acts since it was pouring =(
Warpaint – lovely girls !
Deerhunter – Brandon Cox (guy in yellow) is really skinny but he’s the friendliest too! They were trying to be funny with the ponchos.
Holy Fuck off stage and on stage – I LOVE these guys ! Very friendly and chatty. It was nice interviewing them. No airs at all !
Yeasayer – Doing what bands love to do at interviews now, taking pictures of the media while being photographed!
Temper Trap – the band that everyone was waiting for that night (they were the last act). Everyone in the media tent were soaking wet while interviewing them, probably amusing to them since they had this trying-not-t0-laugh expression. Lorenzo Sillitto is so cute! Toby Dundas and Joseph Greer were really nice, got to shake hands with them!
Last but not least, an unglam poncho shot with @litford in the rain ! (Yea, I had my geeky specs on for vanity purposes. hehs)
Oh, after being to gigs and music festivals…I think it’s time to share MYY Survival Guide to concerts and music festivals ! Especially after seeing godknowshowmany ‘walking disasters’ there were yesterday….coming up next !
Heineken Green Room : Trip the Light Fantastic !
Heineken Green Room is indeed a pushing music boundaries event – I didn’t quite expect myself to enjoy the event this much ! As mentioned in my earlier post, I really find it hard to enjoy the “diu diu diu music” but surprisingly, I had a great time and Moderat was just mindblowing !
Joshua and I made our way to Tanjong Pagar Distripark and first look of the event venue was pretty cool, a very unique/underground industrial feel. 
Thank goodness we were quite early so there wasn’t much of a queue. We were then ushered into this huge cargo lift with glowing green light (duh, it’s the color of Heineken and it’s not called Heineken Green Room for nothing!), I like the feeling of “godknowswhat it’s going to happen next!” while waiting for the lift to reach the party location. Being a cargo lift, the door really opens up slowly but that added on to the effect in a good way – you see lights and smoke from the tiny little gap and viola, it opens up to the dance floor with DJ Cherry already playing on the main stage ! She’s pretty cool – I always have a thing for female DJs, girl power ! (lol)
Since it was still early, Joshua and I had the chance to walk around the area freely. There was this interactive area where guests get to be their own DJs and do their own mixes via the iPods and Korg kaossilators which were pretty cool. It took us awhile to figure out (we must be really dumb) and I was wondering where’s the instructions – but who the hell reads 
instructions at a clubbing event right !? -slaps forehead- Pardon me, it is obvious that I’m no party animal ! (Haha) We then moved on to grab ourselves a Heineken each at the long bar which was so much better than event bars I’ve been to, no long queues and quick services. One downside to it was that, by the end of the night, the floor was wet from the ice and people were littering their bottles everywhere. Poor cleaners but I guess it happens at all these clubbing events.
I love the lights and visuals we were surrounded by, Joshua was telling me which patterns and how he has done the light effects for one of our school events. You can’t blame the geek/nerd in him, can you ? It was a good thing that the smoking area was out of the party area so I didn’t inhale any 2nd hand smoke at all ! The crowd was pretty much a disciplined mature group (there’s a reason why it’s exclusively by invites only!) and I didn’t see much drunkards around, especially with the amount of security lurking around. Afterall, people are really here for the music ! (Well, some are here for the girls…Joshua and I were observing how some guys were trying to hook up with the Heineken girls who were walking around to take polaroids for the guests) I had fun with Joshua nonetheless ! 
Speaking of music, Moderat was really awesome ! I’m totally sold by their live performance and the stunning visuals. Still quite head-bobbing but it was quite adrenaline rushing ! I managed to snap a few (bad) shots and the starting sequence on video – the sound quality was quite disappointing though. (Will some kind souls please sponsor me a proper video recording+picture taking gadget or something ? hur)
Moderat_02 from Ingrid on Vimeo.
I enjoyed myself alot, especially when I got to meet a couple of my friends there ! Had a great date with Joshua and it was a brand new experience for me. Although I have to admit that I went home with a bad throat after all that yelling over the music and blocked ears, thank god I didn’t drink enough to get any hangovers. It was a fabulous “trip the light fantastic” indeed !
