SINGAPORE, Dec 7 — In the middle of his set at the *SCAPE The Invasion music and crafts festival, musician Charlie Lim stopped to thank his audience for turning up to watch his show on a cold, rainy weekend afternoon.
“Thanks for coming out here on a Saturday when you could be sleeping, which is something I would really like to do,” the Singaporean singer-songwriter deadpanned on stage to those who had gathered at *SCAPE.
To some extent, Saturday’s torrential rains, which caused flash floods in some parts of the city, did put a dampener on things at *SCAPE The Invasion, which was a full-day festival that sought to celebrate Singaporean music and crafts with stages and booths set up all around the mall.
When the first music acts kicked things off in the early part of the afternoon, only about a dozen people had turned up. Even more disappointingly, some of the performances that were set outdoors, such as Stopgap’s and ShiGGa Shay’s sets, had to be cancelled because of the rain — although pop rock band Doves & Ravens made a valiant attempt at putting on a very short set before surrendering to Mother Nature.
But the weather, quite inadvertently, added an element of intimacy to the festival.
When indie folk pop band Enec.e (pronounced “anecdote”) took the stage to play songs such as Ribbon Blues, Crystalised and Satellite, this reviewer felt like she was ready to sink into a couch in front of a fireplace with her bubble tea. (That’s a good thing.)
And when singer-songwriter and Singapore Idol alum Daphne Khoo began her set, more people started to stream in and take their seats on the floor around her stage as she sang tunes such as Weak, Wonderland and the SG50-themed Raise Your Voice, making her performance feel more like a casual musical conversation than a show per se.
Downstairs at the larger Ground Theatre, that sense of intimacy translated into exuberance. The crowd, which had swelled to a respectable size by the time rockers Caracal came on, went positively mad for the band. Feeling encouraged perhaps by the enthusiasm of their fans — some of whom were dancing and jumping with such verve that others had to give them a wide berth — and who had come to see them despite the inclement weather the rock band executed an excellent set, performing songs such as Naga, Entrepreneur and the title track from their latest album, Welcome The Ironists.
By the time the band got to its last song, Strain, Caracal frontman KC Meals had already ripped his shirt off and jumped off the stage, to the audience’s sheer delight.
Perhaps many in the audience had, like Charlie Lim, required a lot of willpower to extricate themselves from their beds to attend *SCAPE The Invasion. But judging from the looks on their faces during the festival, they were sure glad they did. — TODAY
