ConcaveScream April 1st Launch Gig at Zouk

Desperate to get my hands on the tickets to the launch gig, I decided to play it safe and arrived outside Zouk at 8:15pm. Wasn't long before I found familiar faces. Mark Ow was there as well and was later introduced to his friends; Cheryl (or Sheryl?) and Spencer. Pin, under the impression that he could get himself in free (yay!) found out that the event needed club members to pay (boo!). Mark's fren was super kiasu and went straight between the barricades to queue. Which caused a little panic as the crowd, paitence bated by the waiting, wanted to get into the club.

The band played a set that went on for slightly more than an hour or so I thought. And comparing this gig to the Baybeats free concert, the band certainly delivered more tracks. Simple mathematics would show that each song was worth more than $1 as the tickets were $15 each.

The concave scream still sounds the same all these years. much as they want to say they have changed, they have this trademark sound that despite all the changes in the line up in terms of the bassist and drummer, pann and sean were the anchor and continue to drive a sound that sounds like early U2, some Echo and the Bunnymen, a smatter of Cocteau Twins...Sean doesn't have the best of voices but it works for the songs. The sound in Zouk probably could be better engineered because they definitely sounded better in the open air compounds of the amphitheatre outside esplanade. Their songs probably fitted better in a bigger compound. Some bands were just built for the outdoors.

They went through a number of track from their new album Horizons, before a rewind to earlier songs from Erratic. Midway through, they played Fiction from Three as well. One of the best received songs was Driven which was a hit in the local airwaves. They closed with the title track of their latest album, which was the same closing song for the Baybeats gig.

They did return for encore of course.

Spotted amongst the crowd were the members of the observatory. Victor, current bassist for the obs was from concave scream originally. andy yang, current bassist for concave scream is the designer of the obs' second album as well as the current concave scream album, horizons. Sujin Thomas was around somewhere as well.

When everything ended, you could see the band keeping their equipment. To which, Spencer remarked, was really unglam. Oh well, local bands, don't have a huge team of roadies yet.