Because Good Music Needs to Be Shared - Twilight Chases the Sun by Furniture


Artist: Furniture
Album Title: Twilight Chases the Sun
Release Year: 2005
Label: -n.a.-
Country: Malaysia
Keyword: Dream, post rock, shoegazing, Mono (Japanese band)
Bitrate: FLAC

According to this website, this debut album by (one of) Malaysia's leading experimental-cum-post-rock band is currently out of print, and is made available as a free download, so we thought we share this here, courtesy from us, ripped into glorious, glorious lossless audio quality.

Information about this band is not immediately available, with the band's own website looking like a too-similar attempt of trying to be like Radiohead's Dead Air Space, so we had to rely solely on our own memory, level of trustworthiness be damned. (Kidding though) Not obviously, tales of fabled and celebrated Malaysia's underground or indie bands goes back to the glorious years of the 90's, and Ronnie Khoo's Furniture is no exception, though the name is a lot more recent.

Started out as R.U.S.H., and not to be confused with the Canadian prog rock band, they were a handful number of bands along with scene stalwart Goh Lee Kwang in defining the Chinese indie scene. It's a small movement with lots of bands in the similar post rock-noise rock vein, but as how things work out at the moment, only Ronnie's R.U.S.H. successfully made it to 2011, judging by coverage in the local music-centered media and release of albums mind you.

With a new name incarnate, and on the strength of the first single "Chasing Tipperary" which was included in KLue's one and only compilation disc Decibel, 2005's Twilight Chases the Sun saw the release of one of the most beautiful and mesmerizing album to ever grace the Malaysian market. With Damn Dirty Apes, the former premier post rock band and the standard flag-bearer, losing their plot, Furniture's arrival was monumental and at just about the right time as discerning Malaysian listeners get more sophisticated in their taste and preference towards their music.

The album works like a dream suite where it greets and welcomes the listener in with a soothing jingle, readying you as you lie cuddled up in fetus position, sucking your thumb, before a glorious guitar distortion jolts you up. Replete with assuring, almost childlike angelic voice, and lyrics that depicts a faraway place where children and cherubs run hand in hand over a vast green field on a starlit night, we won't blame you if flashes of Smashing Pumpkins circa Mellon Collie pops up in your head instead, because it did to me too while I was writing that.

This is the perfect album for all those who wants to celebrate their inner child, or dreams that are long forgotten or lost, or simply enjoys dreamy, whimsical music that transport them to someplace magical and wonderful while listening to it. Highly recommended on a quiet night with the window wide open in a dark room and the listener lying on his/her back looking at the stars, while enjoying the night breeze blowing softly into his/her face. Yeah, that detailed.

It's in FLAC, baby!

Very Grammatic - The World is Coming to an End Innit? Heh.



Yesterday evening, two storm brewed over Petaling Jaya, one near the PPUM (at the junction with the EPF office), and the other being inside UM itself. Quite surprisingly though to find that the shitstorm that took down a door made it into prime time news at 8, while the other one that took down several billboards, tree branches, and a signboard, and caused quite a traffic jam, didn't get any mention at all. That was what I came across while I was on my way to Laundry Bar, and by golly isn't that a much more interesting thing to talk about than to give some kind of a review of the show yesterday? I mean, the fracas between university students and the college guards at UM is pretty hot stuff because that's politics over there - and oh yes, we Malaysians love our politic stuff hot and flaming. So much so that a real storm that could have taken a life is not breaking news material worthy.

Oh, and because I was stuck in the crawl from Desa Waterpark (PLUS exit, from South) to the PPUM exit on the Fed, I arrived there at a very fashionable, very Malaysian time of 10 p.m. The gig that I was attending (as stipulated) kicks off at 8 p.m., so I did missed quite a number of performers for that night but still, it doesn't matter, because the three headlining acts for the night: Furniture (with a new album in tow), Akta Angkasa (the reason I drove all the way from Bangi), and PARTIMELOVERS (absolutely no idea who they were), has yet to perform. The first of the three to take stage was Akta Angkasa, and as expected they did not disappoint. They still deliver the same riotous, no frills, very technical set with meticulous precision, like some kind of a neurosurgeon post rock band. Which is to say that technically speaking, they are pretty impressive, but everything else they are very bland. The Akta Angkasa is more of a band for musicians, rather than a band for music listeners. They are the kind of people that you'd really don't want to spend an evening with, lest they started to furnish you on their wide, extensive knowledge of obscure musical gadgets. Furniture on the other hand was the final band for that night, and well, Furniture being Furniture (and they are a pretty seasoned act in Malaysia's underground/indie scene), they are, well, Furniture-ish.

The one that I'd really wanted to highlight from yesterday evening's gig however is this band called PARTIMELOVERS. They sounded like a cross between Joy Division and Ride; a very fine mixture of post punk and shoegazing and British psychedelia - the only downside being that they have decided to define their image as a hipster. Well-read modern-day Internet-age Renaissance man/woman will already know that the hipsters are universally reviled. But image matter aside, as the band kicks off their set, it was late 60's/early 70's in the air again - and the most wonderful thing is that, I can feel the vibe. There is a lot of love in this band, and it is pretty obvious where did this love comes from (hint: It's Ian Curtis). Their set moves rather beautifully from lengthy, melodic swirling psychedelia, to short and shouty punk rock number, my body only had to agree as my head starts to bop back and forth uncontrollably to the beat of the song. If only everyone in that small bar felt the same love as I did on that night, small things like politics and violent weather activity suddenly seems rather insignificant. Some religious people will come out and say it is a sign from God that we have strayed far from the correct path, which is why He brought that huge (from what I gather) storm and unleashed it at a time where people are all going back home from work. Yeah, stay classy God - stay classy.

Check out more on PARTIMELOVERS here.