Camp Symmetry: The Latest addition of Singapore’s Indie Music Festival

Early this month, Singapore got visited by list of Indie bands around the globe thanks to Symmetry Entertainment. From the neighbor Australia to England and America, the bands headed to Symmetry’s debut big festival so called Camp Symmetry. Despite of the super humid weather, we can say this festival was pretty much hit the scene, especially if you’re one of the crowd who came to see your favorite indie bands playing live.

The festival which located in the same place as Singapore’s Laneway Music Festival at The Meadows, Garden By The Bay, started by British promising indie band Veronica Falls. Played their indie pop songs which most taken from their latest album “Waiting For Something To Happen” such as Tell Me, Broken Toy, My Heart Beats, Buried Alive to songs from their debut self – titled album, with Bad Feeling and not to mention their hits My Heat Beats.

Not sure if its because of the fact that it was a group of youngster who organized the festival or I became older every minute, but with so many young urban-outfitters-summer-hipsters-victims filling the area, I knew for sure the next two Australian bands was the reason these kids coming to the festival, either because of their cute looking appearance or catchy pop rock music.

The first band was four pieced cool guys from Brisbane, Last Dinosaurs. They succeed proofing that Brisbane wasn’t just a place for multicultural kids to grew up but also to make catchy indie music, as we can see that most of the crowd can sing a long to their songs from Zoom album. A plus from me personally when they covered songs that only people who lives in the 90s can understand how it feels when Modjo’ s Lady and Spiller‘s Groovejet cheesy songs plays in a catchy indie tunes - Time. To. Dance.

The second act from Australia is no other than the cute group San Cisco, as they always reminds me of a younger version of British band Metronomy, same concept – catchy tunes and a girl as drummer. Its amazing how I found out about these bands several years ago and never thought they succeed taking Golden Revolver to Metaphors a half way through the globe and finally perform in Singapore and seeing them live still as cute as I remember them back then.

From catchy Australian tunes we moved to the American indie lo-fi music, as  Jack Tatum with his band Wild Nothing entertain more laid-back-chill crowd. To be honest, they are the reason I came for the festival on the first place, and it was pretty sad that due to the technical problems, their performances wasn’t as good as I expected, but anyway they handle it pretty cool, and played songs I wanted to hear live, which mostly from Empty Estate album such as Ocean Repeating, Data World, A Dancing Shell, and mixed of Nocturne and Gemini album such as Midnight Song, Nocturne, The Blue Dress, Summer Holiday and Chinatown.

The next performance was this bearded big guy with heart of gold (I just add that so it sounds mellow), William Fitzsimmons smoothly weeped all the sweat and tiredness of the heat with his swift modest acoustic folk tunes, which mostly taken from his Golden In The Shadow album and a little of Derivatives.

This was the second time I saw Ra Ra Riot performance, as they have played in Jakarta last year for Love Garage, in which reminds me of our cool interview and their quick snap in snap go catchy show back then. But as it was in a different place and time, this time they were more relax playing mostly form Beta Love album, and suprisingly they played songs from The Rhumb Line as well such as St. Peter’s Day Festival.

Then, the one and only California Best Coast came on stage with her Metallica shirt and not mention the multi instrumentalist Bobb Bruno stealing everyone’s attention with songs such as Crazy for You, Fade Away and The Only Place and everyone’s ultimate hits song, Boyfriend.

It was kind of embarrassing sometimes when it comes to recognizing band members, I will probably be the worst of all since I am one of those person who care less about who’s who in the band, all I want to know is how well they play. So when Ryan greeted us before their performance, we thought he was just some random tech guy, which then we realized that he was the member of The Cribs in which that night played We Share The Same Skies, Things You Should Be Know, Mirror Kissers, Glitters Like Gold, to Chi-Town and Leather Jacket Song. Well, they are pretty cool peeps though, and a plus for singing songs from my high school era..

Apparently, Indonesia (and some other asian countries) can be proud of because being able to brought Mew for the 4th time and now finally be able to play in Singapore for the first time. So it wasn’t a surprise when the crowd couldn’t stop being amaze by the symphonic tracks from Special , The Zookeeper’s Boy , Making Friend. 

There’s no other better way to end the festival beside watching Explosions in the Sky explode the sky literarily with their lighting stage and songs which taken from Those Who Tell The True Shall Die, Those Who Tell The True Shall Live. And as the clock heading to midnight, it’s time for us to catch the last train downtown (Oh well singapore!) and looking forward to see more progress on their sophomore festival

More pics & infos from the fest here