One of the things I like most about travelling is exploring neighbourhoods solo.Experience has taught me that when travelling in a crowd, everyone has diverse interests, so walking around on my own gives me the freedom to focus on things that I like, without feeling rushed. That being said, it’s also important to be alert, since you are in a foreign land – but I felt super safe walking around Melbourne during the day, as there were lots of other tourists.
I touched a bit about Melbourne’s laneways in a previous post, but let me take you down the city’s most popular one – AC/DC Lane.
Laneways have a long history, dating back to Melbourne’s early days during the Gold Rush. Narrow and often flanked by old brick buildings with walls sprayed over with colourful graffiti, the laneways were built as quick thoroughfares for horses and cargo. They quickly gained a reputation as slums, before gentrification saw it being filled with cool eateries, bars, cafes, indie shops and more. AC/DC Lane, formerly Corporation Lane, is one of these.
Named after Australia’s most successful rock band, AC/DC Lane reflects its rock n’ roll roots. Both sides of the street are plastered over with colourful posters, band and gig announcements, alongside rock n roll / music-themed mural art.
The star of the lane is Cherry Bar. Opened in 1999, it was a popular venue for rock bands and their crew, including Airbourne and Jet, both of whom wrote songs referencing the Cherry. You can say the Cherry Bar is to Melbourne what The Cavern Club is to Liverpool.
Take your time checking out the fantastic street art on the lane.
Bonus: View from the hotel room on Collins. Now this is a view I’d gladly get up early for!
Time flies when you’re having fun. Heck, it flies even when you’re not.
So it’s been almost a year since my last What’s On My Playlist? video. Someone once told me that the older you get, the less likely you are to listen to new songs. I find that to be true, given the stuff they’ve been playing on the radio these days. That’s not to say everything is bad though – I’ve ‘stumbled’ across a couple of nice new tunes lately while channel surfing.
Without further ado:
CALVIN HARRIS & RAG N BONE MAN – GIANT
When I’m not listening to rock and screamo, I find EDM mildly enjoyable – and they work best for running (when you need to pace yourself to the beat). Calvin Harris’ Giant is one of my recent favourites, thanks to the addictive trumpet hook and Rag n’ Bone’s husky vocals. Does the guy down 10 shots of rum to achieve that kind of scratchiness?
I would be nothing
Without you holding me up
Now I’m strong enough for both of us
AARON SMITH FT LUVLI – DANCIN
Okay, so this isn’t new, but the song resurfaced for Musical-ly or Tiktok or some shit recently. The one that caught my eye was this vid of some guy dancing with his cat, which was both creative and hilarious. The original video is pretty cool as well (let’s just say it involves mannequins coming to life and people with TVs for heads).
Get up on the floor
Dancin’ all night long
Get up on the floor
Dancin’ till the break of dawn
SENSUAL SEDUCTION – SNOOP DOGG
I was just randomly clicking things on Youtube and somehow ended up with Snoop Dogg’s Sensual Seduction. What a blast from the past. PS : Did you know that the ‘explicit’ version actually says “Sexual Eruption”?
All that we ever do is play in the sheets, sheets, sheets
Smoke us a cigarette, then go back to sleep, sleep, sleep
Childish Gambino is one of my more recent favourite artists – I loved the video for This Is America (so much symbolism and layers to interpret!). The original version of Redbone is woke, but the beat mashes up with anything. I’ve seen Tupac & Gotye sampled into this, among others.
Daylight
I wake up feeling like you won’t play right
I used to know, but now that shit don’t feel right
It made me put away my pride
Of course we can’t end this list without my favourite genre to listen to – screamo. Short but sweet, 6 di 6 is taken from Raein’s Ogni Nuovo Inizio album.
Let me know in the comments if you have any great music/bands that you think I should listen to! 🙂
Four years since I last attended a concert (not counting Urbanscapes, it’s The Cranberries at Stadium Merdeka back in 2012).
Dayum I feel old. I guess my headbanging days are well and truly over….
…until I saw that Escape the Fate was coming to Malaysia! 🙂
This rock band from Las Vegas, Nevada consists of Craig Mabbit (of Blessthefall and The Word Alive fame), Robert Ortiz (drummer), TJ Bell (rhythm guitarist and vocalist), Kevin “Thrasher” Gruft (lead guitarist) and touring musician Max Georgiev (bassist). Over the years, the line up has changed, so Ortiz is the only original founding member of the band. Their current sound, to me, falls along the line of bands such as Sleeping with Sirens and Avenged Sevenfold (post hardcore/emo/screamo/hard rock).
I roped a friend to go along with me to the show at KL Live. Traffic was super bad that evening, was almost late to the show. When we got there though, the place was painfully empty… ._.
KL Live’s venue is divided into an upper mezzanine floor which looks down into the ‘mosh pit’ area. The ‘crowd’ upstairs was ONE row of people leaning over the railing, so we had a pretty clear view. But since there weren’t many people, it meant that we were easy pickings for the overzealous ushers – first they said we couldn’t take videos, then decided that we couldn’t take any pictures as well. So I don’t have any photos of the band performing .__.
Opening act (forgot the name, sorry :P)! They did their best at getting the ‘crowd’ warmed up, but all in all the crowd that night wasn’t very enthusiastic – I think my friend and I were the only ones really going full head bang (on the second floor, at least). It was livelier downstairs.
You know lah, Malaysians are quite shy xD
ETF came out and played an awesome hour-long set – including some of my favourites like Remember Every Scar and Hate Me, but also quite a number of songs from their older albums that I didn’t know (I only started listening to them recently). But they had a nice balance of high energy tracks mixed with mellower, sing-along songs.
D and I after the show.
Got hungry coz haven’t had dinner yet before jumping straight in to the show, so we walked about 15mins to Bukit Bintang for McDonalds.
This is just a random post to remind me years later that I once went for an ETF show.
I did a post like this back in March – link here – but the playlist has since been updated with some new songs. New workplace, new songs, perfecto. Enjoy!
Hate Me by Escape the Fate
So Escape the Fate is coming to town next month and I’m psyching myself up before the show. Hate Me is one of my favourite songs. The lyrics embody feelings of loneliness and alienation, tinged with defiance. Like, I’m not sorry I’m this way, if you hate me that’s your problem. As a former victim of bullying, I think it makes for a great theme song (besides Hater by Korn).
Remember, one day they’ll get their comeuppance. 😀
Eevee – Unexpected
A random Youtube find. Chilly, floaty, great music for work or long drives at night. The mixtape songs are all named after flowers, like jasmine, lily and dahlia. My favourite one is sakura. at 6:08.
*If you Google, you’ll find that there’s actually a Filipino band with the same name, although they play very different music. both are good 🙂
Hippie Sabotage – Options
Another accidental discovery. I like the trip hop elements. Dark and delish, like my soul. lol.
Little White Doves – Dirty Vegas
On the rare occasions I feel optimistic about life, this is my jam. It makes me want to travel, see the world and fall in love.
Incubus – Stellar
I remember a time when I was completely obsessed with Brandon Boyd from Incubus. If I’ve ever had a ‘dream man’, Boyd would have fit the physical part of it. (Yes, I love my men tattooed, with ear plugs and generally bad-boy looking, but who is really a softie on the inside. He must also love cats.) I’ve recently stoked this old flame by going on an Incubus binge.
Kriminal – OC Dawgs
You might be wondering why there’s a random Tagalog rap song on my list. Idk either. I think I was watching some Musical.ly videos and ended up here (it’s a popular dub-over song). There’s even an English translation of the lyrics – basically the song is about how the rapper killed a bunch of his friends and set them on fire. Ouch.
Lemme know in the comments if there are songs you think I should listen to ! 🙂
A friend once went through my playlist, looked at me weird and then said: “You don’t look like you listen to screamo.”
I didn’t know you had to have a ‘look’ to listen to music. That’s like saying only people with piercings and tattoos are allowed to listen to rock. Or that you must have a Mohawk to listen to punk. Or people who like power ballads are all sappy, bleeding heart romantics. I think everyone should be allowed to listen to what they want: it’s Music after all.
But if we’re going to talk about that it would be a long rant, so I shall stop. 😛
Here are 10 of the most recent songs on my playlist, in various genres – I usually listen to them at work coz it helps me chill. Enjoy!
Jonas Blue – Fast Cars ft Dakota
The original by Tracy Chapman was released in 1989 and was quite a hit, but if not for this tropical house remix, I wouldn’t have heard of it at all. I like both versions, but the beat in this remix is really sick. 😀
**another thing that annoys me is when people go “omg the original is so much better” and “omg you haven’t heard of it before this?” Yes I haven’t, so stop your judgmental crap.
Justice – Planisphere
Justice is a French EDM band. I first stumbled on their music on MTV (back when I still had MTV in my cable package) with their song D.A.N.C.E. The video was super trippy, with a black and white background contrasting with pop art changing on their tees. Planisphere is a four-part series that is 17mins long combined. I like how it has that apocalyptic/horror-influenced tune to it which is reminiscent of 80s/90s horror film soundtracks, or songs like Thriller.
Pryde – Low-Key
There was a time when I was listening to a lot of Asian-American rappers, and I discovered many gems: Dumbfoundead, Ed-Two, P-Keys… one of them was D-Pryde, or just Pryde is he’s known now. He’s a Filipino Canadian, and has been rapping since his teens. His lyrics can be a tad misogynistic, but I really like the beats and you have to admit that his rap game is good. In an industry dominated by blacks, it’s nice to have some Asians representing the community 🙂
Miike Snow – Genghis Khan
This is a very tongue-in-cheek gay-pride song. The villain falls in love with his captive, and they finally start a family life together. The tune is so catchy I find myself bobbing my head unconsciously at work. I’ve re-watched the video a dozen times, and every time they start the dance I feel like jumping up and doing the dance too! I also think it’s a giant thumb in the face of LGBT-haters.
Alesana – Congratulations, I Hate You
I recently dug out this song from memory and it has been on replay throughout the day. Back in my teens, I listened to a lot of screamo and emo music like My Chemical Romance, Asking Alexandria, Sleeping Sirens and Suicide Silence. Alesana was one of my favourite bands because of the high but scratchy vocals, and this song in particular, was attached to a person because I kept listening to it after our breakup. It’s been a long time… the rage has turned into a wistful nostalgia lol.
Saosin – I Can Tell
After Seven Years, they are back! (see what I did there? :P) Another one of my favourite bands in teenhood, they were inactive for awhile and recently announced a new album, which got me looking for all of their old songs. Although… the new lineup won’t have Cove Reber, whom I like better than Anthony Green. 😡
Justin Nozuka – Heartless
I once dreamed of flying to Canada, bumping into Justin Nozuka and then having him fall hopelessly in love with me. We’d make beautiful babies and live happily ever after.
Coming back from that creepy fantasy… JN has a voice that can immediately melt every woman that hears it. Over a sea of good-looking but auto-tuned boybands, his songwriting skills and prowess is definitely a breath of fresh air. And it’s just so calming ❤ I always feel better after a stressful day when I listen to his songs.
M.I.A – Bad Girls
I only heard of M.I.A recently while skipping through random songs on Youtube, but she has been around for a long time and is apparently quite popular. ‘Bad Girls’ has an Arabian influenced-melody coupled with an uber cool video. Imagine Sheikh-looking guys in clean white robes doing the drift in the desert. I actually think it’s a very clever idea to incorporate Middle Eastern culture into the music vid, since the Western press is so Islamophobic these days. Also, watch the video and be mind blown that M.I.A is 40 years old.
Selah Sue – Alone
Proof that although sex sells, sometimes pure talent does as well. I like Selah Sue because she’s sexy without being slutty, her voice is one of a kind, and I’m glad the new Transporter movie introduced me to this Belgian songstress.
Kye Kye – Hiding Place
I watched a tattoo video on Buzzfeed which used this song as BGM, and that – coupled with powerful visuals – made it a constant on my playlist. I like the floaty, airy vocals and uplifting chorus, it feels like I can travel anywhere and see the world.
Cigarettes After Sex – Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You
Another accidental Youtube discovery (thank you recommendations!). This is the kind of song I like playing in my car while I’m driving back on lonely roads at night.
There you have it, 10 songs on my playlist! Hope you enjoyed them, and happy chilling/rocking/dancing out to them 🙂 If you have other great song suggestions, lemme know in the comments below !
Local indie band BUNKFACE consists of Sam(vocals, 2nd guitar) Paan(lead guitar), Youk (Bassist) and Biak (Drummer).
This up and coming band was formed while at a jamming session between four secondary school frenz. They shot to stardom after winning the Battle of the Bands in UNISEL, organized by ROTTW in 2006. in 2007, they launched their first EP “lesson of the season”. Their first hit song “Silly Lily” was a hit and received wide airplay on local radio stations such as hitz.fm and fly.fm.
*adapted from http://www.myspace.com/bunkface
Their current Malay hit “Situasi” is one of my faves ^^ (watch video above)
You can view their page and have a taste of their music at their myspace page, http://www.myspace.com/bunkface
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