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Kitchen. Label is a record label & publishing house based in Singapore. Despite its domestic-sounding name and penchant for delicate gestures and empty, impassive interiors, Kitchen. Label is a thoroughly metropolitan phenomenon. A bit like the roving eye of the flâneur in Baudelaire, who found solace in the bittersweet juxtapositions of urban life, Kitchen. Label documents momentary flickers of melancholic beauty in unlikely environments. Part of the independent design studio Kitchen. (est. 2005) — Read more
March 31, 2009
Pinto Books / Pinto Musica (Macau)
Euseng, April, Anson
Nice display of our albums
There are 2 cats hanging around Pinto Books. One of them is camera shy.
Pinto Books and Pinto Musica are 2 shops owned by Anson (who also runs Node Culture in Taiwan where he is based now). Located at the central district of Largo do Senado in Macau, the word ‘Pinto’ is romanized from the Cantonese pronunciation of 邊度, the shop name 邊度有書 literally means “where there are books”. April’s “shining water, silent waves” exhibition was held there too. For people familiar with BooksActually in Singapore, Pinto Books is very much the Macau equivalent except that it stocks more Chinese books. With an interest in the electronic and experimental scene, they are also the sole distributor for our CDs, along with other Asian labels such as Schole, Mu-nest, Plop, so::on, Spekk, Liquid Note, Noble etc. It is not a surprise afterall that many people in Macau are familar with this niche because of the culture these 2 shops have introduced.
March 30, 2009
Ox Warehouse (Macau)
Our 2nd leg of the tour was held at Ox Warehouse Arts Space in tiny Macau. This is also the same space where Piana, World’s End Girlfriend, Fourcolor among others, have had their performances in the last couple of years. Organised by Anson of Node Culture, he has been involved in bringing in artists like Tape, Lullatone, Sora and the aforementioned to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. This time, the focus would be a showcase of fresh sounds from South East Asia featuring Flica (who will be touring with us for Macau and Hong Kong) and aspidistrafly.
Opening act : Macau’s 3 piece band Evade
Malaysia’s Flica aka Euseng Seto
Singapore’s aspidistrafly
Turnout was massive for a small place like Macau !
A signed poster by all the artists involved. Cheers to 南洋電子音樂
March 29, 2009
Bangkok > Macau
March 28, 2009
Singapore > Bangkok
The first show of our tour started at SOL Gallery located at the outskirts of Bangkok, Thailand. SOL Gallery turns out to be part of a mini village that contains a sound studio, creative office, gallery and guest rooms. Set up by Koichi Shimizu of so::on label, the organization is currently one of the few but important representation of the independent music scene in Thailand…
This cat attended the show (photo by numm)
hummingbertStereo – acoustic pastoralia, a possible future artist of Schole (photo by numm)
aspidistrafly (photo by numm)
Talkless – Another bright hope in the asian electronic scene (photo by numm)
Another Thai artist I met, Atit Sornsongkram who is based in Germany now.
Over the past 5 years, the independent music scene has been growing in Bangkok and I believe it is about time that their music get distributed elsewhere in Asia at least. I enjoyed the laid back atmosphere of the people and the way the show was organised…running informally from 7pm all the way through 2am and boosted a huge crowd of over 200-300 attendees…some fans of haruka nakamura who didnt know who we are, even came up to us to say how surprised they were when we performed “cielo”. Amazingly, we sold out our CDs (and also including CDs from schole that we brought along with us). Thank you Bangkok ! Hope to see you again.
March 23, 2009
'i hold a wish for you' review by Soundscaping
A review by Norway based label + webzine called Soundscaping
http://www.soundscaping.net/soundspot/240/the-first-touches-of-spring-from-aspidistrafly
“Oh my, what a lovely little jewel of a release this is, marking the inauguration of the new Kitchen label based in Singapore. aspidistrafly is the collaboration between April Lee and label-owner Ricks Ang, that sees the two combining their talents with summery vocals, light guitar melodies, music boxes, percussive elements and various harmonies and melodies.
The album comes in delicate packaging, an artbook of sorts with lush, colourful photographs by April Lee and Rika M in a fold-out poster format. Pleasing then, that the music is just as warming and graces your hair and skin like a gentle, spring breeze. April Lee’s youthful vocals sit neatly atop the gentle, atmospheric melodies weaved by the two, and her voice is very reminiscent of Kirsty Hawkshaw of Opus IIIfame – both adlibbing and humming a breathy chorus with angelic undertones to the sung vocals with light as air verses nestled in the comfort of Lee’s acoustic guitar and electronics accompaniment. With them, is also Haruka Nakamura contributing with guitar and piano backing on the dreamy “Endless Dreamless”. Throughout the album, light, airy electronic textures and warm washes of synth-based soundscapes and strummed guitar melodies join with gentle vocals by Lee, often set to the field recordings of children’s voices and nature. This gives rise to some immediate associations to Sawako, and during the course of listening to this album, it feels like a soundtrack of sorts to the wonderful literary universe of Murakami in a sense – both present and down-to-earth, unassuming and kind, yet also retaining some mysterious, delicate qualities to distinguish aspidistrafly’s music from their peers.
The album concludes with 花火, which is a joy of shimmering sounds and very colourful, lots of tingling bells and actually reminiscent of Soundscaping’s own Air Resort release in certain places, an uplifting and optimistic way to end a great first album and expectations of a promising future for the Kitchen label.”