Midnight Marvel | Official Site

Our dear friend Patrick, who plays in TypeWriter and the...

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:46:00 +0800

Our dear friend Patrick, who plays in TypeWriter and the Oddfellows, is getting married! Do come by for the wedding celebration gig where everyone is invited. Details as follows:

WEDDING POP!
featuring:
Livonia
TypeWriter
Etc
Midnight Marvel

Venue: Home Club (The Riverwalk #B1-01 To #B1-06, 20 Upper Circular Road)
Date: 27 March 2010
Time: 8pm - 11pm
Free entry before 9pm. After 9pm, $12 inclusive of a drink. Club rules apply.

The bands will donate all proceeds to H.O.M.E., a non-profit organisation that provides welfare assistance to migrant workers.

More details at the official Facebook event page!

Home Club, January 30, 2010 SETLIST:Spit It Out / Wago Fever /...

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:43:00 +0800

Photo: Jonathan Fong

Photo: Jonathan Fong

Photo: Jonathan Fong

Photo: Aw Siowting

Photo: Aw Siowting

Home Club, January 30, 2010

SETLIST:
Spit It Out / Wago Fever / Her Wicked Smile (Le Chat Noir) / Your Girlfriend Knows / Gold Mine / You Bring Me Down (Blood Red Shoes) / Straight Doll / King Kong Beat

Gig Diary: Noisy-Pop Vol. 2, Home Club, 30 January 2010

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 04:33:00 +0800

Salutations, fancy web dwellers!

I love reading sanctimonious exposé of life on the road. Some of my personal favorites are Ben Blackwell’s Tremble Under Boom Lights, Screaming Females’ official blog that’s updated mainly by their drummer Jarrett D and The View From The Bus!!, a blog by Steven who’s the touring lighting designer for The Killers. (PS: If you haven’t read Steven’s latest entry on the Killers’ Asian tour cancellation, you should.)

While there’s hardly any “life on the road” for us just yet, we still play the odd one-off shows, all seasons around the year. Naturally, because shows don’t really happen frequently or back-to-back, they become somewhat of an highlight of our band career. It also doubles up as a social outing because we also get to reconnect with old friends who would drop by, as well as make some new friends along the way. Just last Saturday, we played our first show of 2010 at Home Club and had a blast. Here’s what went down!

Being a drummer is tough luck because of all the gear you’ve got to carry. Neither of us drives. So it’s pure manual labor via public transport all the way. Sitting in the cab and speeding down the highway, I felt like AC/DC wrote “It’s A Long Way To The Top” just for me.

Shirley has it easy ‘cos all she carries is a guitar. Under that cutesy Emily bag was a Joan Jett Melody Maker. Rock beast camouflage, I’d say.

We got to the venue on for soundcheck at about 3:30pm. Things were running late. So we sat about and had a chat with Famie from The Pinholes who told us that they were invited to SXSW 2010 and wrote a song called “Youth Of Goal” for submission to the Youth Olympics. Good, exciting stuff!

The boys of Karl Maka and their guest vocalist Biddy, who also plays in Breakbeat Theory, were milling about too.

Went out for some “fresh air”. I didn’t know the bridge just outside the venue’s called Elgin Bridge. Shirley said she didn’t either and was all bummed at our lack of knowledge of bridges in Singapore.

After Karl Maka’s soundcheck, we did ours. It was short and fast, just like our songs. CK and Georgina took the time to decorate the stage with blinking lights that said “Noisy Pop.” Just like the TypeWriter song, it’s all about “Details.”

At 5.45pm, we took the stage and rocked the hell out for 30 minutes. Of course we didn’t turn electro, contrary to our last blog entry. We certainly did have some friends fooled though! Played four tunes (“Spit It Out,” “Wago Fever,” “Your Girlfriend Knows,” “Straight Doll”) from back in the day when we were a four-piece, two new songs (“Gold Mine” and “King Kong Beat”) and two covers - Le Chat Noir’s “Her Wicked Smile” and Blood Red Shoes’ “You Bring Me Down.” If my memory serves me right, we have played a BRS song at almost every gig except for Baybeats 2008. We ended the gig with the oriental riff just for CK.

Gig aftermath: Shirley didn’t break a sweat while I poured like a waterfall. After wiping down a little, we headed to the front for our homies.

I loved the new drum sound that Ken did for “With You, Always.” The newly reworked duet “Say It With Maka” with Biddy went for a bullseye at my heart. Biddy, being a chameleon, could work her style and vocals in all sorts of musical situations. The electro-pop Biddy reminded me of Victoria Bergsman. It was damn right lovely.

Eve and Alf, who played in the first formation of Midnight Marvel, came down as well. We attempted to take beer cheering to a new height.

After Shirley and Biddy’s tag-team super boogie-ing at Quasimodo’s set, we went off for dinner. I was famished. I could eat a cow even though I’m don’t eat red meat. I ate a huge bowl of udon instead.

As you can tell, I was pretty psyched about it. It came with Hokkaido seafood, which was good because then I didn’t have to wake up the next morning, thinking of how delish Davvy Jones looks to me.

At 10pm, we returned to the venue to catch TypeWriter. To my chagrin, they’ve started way earlier as Moods cancelled their set. I heard them even when I was in the loo and ran all the way back in. Only managed to catch their set from “Enemy” onwards. But I didn’t miss their new song, “The Deepest Blue,” which Shirley misheard as “The Dimples Blue.”

The Pinholes closed the gig with a regal bang. Famie is such a consummate frontman. I can’t imagine what it was like for those girls watching Elvis perform. I certainly did feel like a gleeful small girl with Famie working his old skool, retro charms on us.

And we split. Shirley continued her wayward, havoc ways till the morning while I was back home by midnight. Our spitfire singer spent her Sunday in her cosy bed while poor me was suffering from food poisoning after a piece of bad fish at lunch. Should have heed the culinary advice. You know what they say about seafood on Sundays and Mondays!

Till the next gig! We strongly encourage you to stalk us on Twitter. You know you want to.

\m/
Lennat

Whatever happened to my rock ‘n’ roll?

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 22:44:00 +0800

Whatever happened to my rock ‘n’ roll?

Announcing our first gig of 2010! We will be playing with some...

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 03:43:00 +0800

Announcing our first gig of 2010!

We will be playing with some of our favorite local bands such as the Karl Maka, TypeWriter and the Pinholes.

As the boys are all cool gents, it’s ladies first. Midnight Marvel will kick off the gig at 5pm sharp so be there early if you want to catch us. Details as follows:

Noisy-Pop! Vol. 2
Date : 30 January 2010 (Saturday)
Time : 5pm - 11pm
Place : Home Club
Entrance Fee : $15 (including 1 beer or house-pour)

CRANK IT UP! ALL THE WAY UP! Let the WALL OF SOUND surround you, and DIVE into ALL that’s noise and pop! WE ARE BACK and NOISIER than EVER! NOISY-POP! Vol.2 features a stellar line-up of 8 bands across genres. A whole night of manic, pure & juicy, noise-making goodness!

A-go-go to the foot-stomping, hip-twisting, heart-breaking beat! Be fueled by the shimmering, hypnotic sounds of TypeWriter, Midnight Marvel, The Karl Maka, Quasimodo, Cheating Sons, Shelves, Moods and The Pinholes! Who knows, by the end of the night you might just fall in love all over again with your old favourites, or grow a brand new crush?! Ah, the dizzy days of a blossoming relationship between fan and band.

How’s that for a grand way to kick start a brand new year of NOISY-POP?!!

More details at the official Facebook event page!

Greetings! A new year is upon us. To kick things off grandly, we...

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:35:00 +0800

Greetings!

A new year is upon us. To kick things off grandly, we managed to catch one of our biggest inspirations live on January 12, 2010 at the Esplanade Concert Hall. It was a fruitful and rewarding journey, as we also got to meet the band, as well as spend some time with our friend Brian the next day. “In Chase, We Trust” indeed!

We are still reeling, of course. If you really want us to summarize the whole experience, we can only say: The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are untouchable!

YEAH x3!

“KING KONG BEAT” - HOME...

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:07:00 +0800

“KING KONG BEAT” - HOME DEMO
[DOWNLOAD: MEDIAFIRE]

Second song that we’ve worked on as a duo. Recorded live with our handy Zoom H2. Still a work in progress. Like the economy, it can always be better.

Prince Of Wales, October 8, 2009 We played our first gig as a...

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:06:00 +0800

Photo: Angela Chng

Photo: Angela Chng

Photo: Angela Chng

Prince Of Wales, October 8, 2009

We played our first gig as a fledgling guitar and drums duo at the John Peel tribute gig at Prince Of Wales. The show was plagued with Murphy’s Law and we played a super sloppy and short set of a couple of new songs (“Get Out” and “King Kong Beat”), old favorites (“Spit It Out!” and “Wago Fever”) and covers (The Upholsterers, Blood Red Shoes, The Coathangers).

Here’s a review we found on the Internet:

“Opening band Midnight Marvel could have sounded tighter, but that was really secondary to the snarling riot grrrl vibes it projected reminiscent of Sleater-Kinney.”

We like how the reviewer was “honest and unmerciful,” the way proper rock critics should be. Keen observation with the reference to one of our favorite bands too.

The first time we didn’t engage the help of the self-timer...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:42:00 +0800

The first time we didn’t engage the help of the self-timer for an official band promo photo. Taken by one of our good friends, Kaya Ow.

Sometime in April 2009, one of the Converse representatives from...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:32:00 +0800

Sometime in April 2009, one of the Converse representatives from Shanghai got in touch and lots of emails and a couple of phone calls later, we were on board for their Fall ‘09 Music + Lyrics campaign that centers around indie music and its community around the Asia-Pacific region.

Converse has been part of the whole rock ‘n’ roll heritage for a long time. We’re definitely most honored that the Shanghai folks believe in the band enough to choose us as the only band from Singapore for the campaign. You also would have never guessed that Shirley originally wrote the song about Lennat’s obsession with paintball. (Keynote: Lennat has since quit the sport.)

Other than the song and lyrics, we also contributed a series of local stories for their Dispatches column. We had a lot of fun in the sun chasing stories as a band, interviewing our peers, talking to them about their hopes and dreams, sharing the very same hopes and dreams - we learned a lot more about that “renegade indie spirit” that we were told to capture. In a way, Singapore definitely lacks the derelict urban decay of China, Korea and Thailand but we are all still here chasing teenage kicks, aren’t we?

You can download the lyrics from “Kill Pill” as your wallpaper here.

We have a long list of favorite bands. When this interview with...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:30:00 +0800

We have a long list of favorite bands. When this interview with inSing.com was done, our flavor of the day was The Ting Tings. A couple of months down the road, we caught the band live and weren’t that blown away. We attributed the lack of “fist punches” to the heat and probably the bad sound engineering that day.

Taken late 2008 for an interview with inSing.com. Eve and Alf...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:28:00 +0800

Taken late 2008 for an interview with inSing.com. Eve and Alf had left the band and we needed new promo photos to reflect the change of line-up. Another self-timer gem.

The Songs Of 2008

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:22:00 +0800

What have we learnt from 2008? Writing songs are easy. But writing a good song is another matter. Here’s a list of songs we’ve written and performed in 2008 and a live version (with kinks, dings and mistakes) of each for free download.

1. “SPIT IT OUT!”
[DOWNLOAD: MEDIAFIRE]

2. “STRAIGHT DOLL”
[DOWNLOAD: MEDIAFIRE]

3. “YOUR GIRLFRIEND KNOWS”
[DOWNLOAD: MEDIAFIRE]

4. “KILL PILL”
[DOWNLOAD: MEDIAFIRE]

5. “ENGLISH GIRL”
[DOWNLOAD: MEDIAFIRE]

6. “WAGO FEVER”
[DOWNLOAD: MEDIAFIRE]

7. “CATWOMAN”
[DOWNLOAD: MEDIAFIRE]

8. “HALLOWEEN”
[DOWNLOAD: MEDIAFIRE]

The first button design for our 2009 merchandise. SGD $1 each....

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:19:00 +0800

The first button design for our 2009 merchandise. SGD $1 each. Buy at our shows or email midnightmarvel@gmail.com for more details.

Radio Pulze Live Lounge, March 11, 2009 Second and last show we...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:17:00 +0800

Photo: Thomas Tan

Photo: Thomas Tan

Photo: Thomas Tan

Photo: Thomas Tan

Photo: Thomas Tan

Photo: Thomas Tan

Radio Pulze Live Lounge, March 11, 2009

Second and last show we played with Terence and Ian. Hits and misses aplenty. There were memories of being…drunk? Good with be with a bunch of people who can drink like a fish though.

Friends from Aging Youth Records, KittyWu Records, Waiting For Nothing, The Pinholes and LGF came by as well.

Esplanade Outdoor Theater, December 27, 2008 First show after...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:16:00 +0800

Photo: Soh Poh Soo Donald

Photo: Soh Poh Soo Donald

Photo: Soh Poh Soo Donald

Photo: Soh Poh Soo Donald

Photo: Mona

Photo: Mona

Esplanade Outdoor Theater, December 27, 2008

First show after Baybeats 2008. Eve and Alf had left the band and we roped in Terence and Ian to session for us. It all went pretty well. Without the boys, we could have never done this show. So thank you!

And small shows have their charms but sometimes, you just got to admit that it feels awesome to play in a proper venue with great stage sound.

Here’s some of our old band photos for a laugh. The...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:16:00 +0800

Here’s some of our old band photos for a laugh. The self-timer was our greatest friend back then.

Baybeats, August 30, 2008 Big day for the band. In 2007, we were...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:06:00 +0800

Baybeats 2008 Line-up

Photo: Soh Poh Soo Donald

Photo: Soh Poh Soo Donald

Photo: Soh Poh Soo Donald

Photo: Joey Lim

Photo: Joey Lim

Photo: Joey Lim

Photo: Joey Lim

Photo: Soh Poh Soo Donald

Baybeats, August 30, 2008

Big day for the band. In 2007, we were wondering if we could ever make it to the stage of Baybeats. A year later, there we were. Funny how some dreams do come true and one can’t seem to remember much of it.

Also met up with some of the Esplanade Youth and NUS students writers, who are among the most enthusiastic bunch of interviewers we’ve met, after our set. Zhanhui from NUS would later recommend us to play a show for NUS Radio Pulze Live Lounge.

Prince Of Wales, July 25, 2008 Always great to play in a pub....

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:05:00 +0800

Photo: Adelien Vandeweghe

Photo: Adelien Vandeweghe

Photo: Adelien Vandeweghe

Photo: Adelien Vandeweghe

Photo: Adelien Vandeweghe

Photo: Adelien Vandeweghe

Prince Of Wales, July 25, 2008

Always great to play in a pub. Booze changes perspective, you know?

And we actually gave away all our buttons and guitar picks at this gig. Feeling generous, eh?

*scape, June 14, 2008 Right in the midst of Orchard Road and we...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:04:00 +0800

Photo: Ivan N

Photo: Ivan N

Photo: Ivan N

*scape, June 14, 2008

Right in the midst of Orchard Road and we played to a bunch of people who cared more about shopping at the flea market instead.