24OWLS Playlist Series Never Going to Give This Up – The Playlist by Sham For Sham, this year’s Hari Raya Aidilfitri was unlike any other. Due to the need for social-distancing during these COVID-19 times, he could not celebrate the holiday in May with his 89-year-old mum who is living in a flat with his elder sister. “I’m not coping very well. I never thought I would live through this,” confesses Sham, the youngest of three sons and two daughters, and the guy who develops concepts and creative content for 24OWLS and 19SixtyFive, especially those dynamic [...]

24OWLS Playlist Series Lax Explorer – The Playlist by Kevin Portscher Like many people around the world, Kevin Portscher has been stuck at home for the past couple of months. This is hard for someone as restless as him. After all, Kevin – a self-described “ang moh of German-Chinese descent” who is involved in event operations, production and venue management duties at  24OWLS – loves hanging out with his friends from upper secondary school. “We’d go to one another’s house, then drive around the island,” he says. “It’d be like a road trip from Changi to [...]

24OWLS Playlist Series  A Desert of My Own – The Playlist by Corrinne Wang One thing her colleagues have come to realise about Corrinne Wang is that she marches to the beat of her own drum. Asked what she does in the 24OWLS office, she declares: “I’m Corrinne, the office desk inspector. When no one is around, I go around inspecting their desks.” In reality, she belongs to a core design duo which routinely comes up with some of our eye-popping key visuals for many of our events, ranging from collaterals to socials. A graduate with [...]

24OWLS Playlist Series  Never Gets Old – The Playlist by Stuart Waterman As a teenager in the late 1990s, Stuart Waterman loved checking out new releases at the HMV flagship store at The Heeren and Tower Records at Pacific Plaza, both of which are now sadly gone. “I’d go to the listening stations where they put up CDs, and that’s how I discovered music,” says Stuart, who is involved in client and partnership management, as well as venue management and operations for 24OWLS and 19SixtyFive. This explains his eclectic, generation-leaping taste, which he sums up as “alternative, [...]

24OWLS Playlist Series  The Time of My Life – The Playlist by Natasha Hiorns The state of the Earth is never far from her mind as Natasha Hiorns gets into the hustle and bustle of work at 19SixtyFive and 24OWLS. “As someone who graduated in environmental science, entering such a colourful arts and music company was a definite learning curve for me, but I have genuinely been enjoying this experience, including finding a more environmentally-friendly way of doing our events,” says Natasha, affectionately known among her colleagues as Sasha. In charge of public relations and marketing, she [...]

24OWLS Playlist Series Hold Your Head Up High – The Playlist by Yelyn Yeo For Yelyn Yeo, the artist manager and assistant producer at 19SixtyFive/24OWLS, growing up in a musical household has been a blessing. “We love singing and performing all the time, so naturally I’ve always been a lover and advocate of the arts,” she says. She took theatre and performed plays at Anglo-Chinese Junior College, and pursued Business Management (marketing and corporate communications) at Singapore Management University (SMU). In SMU, she was the vocalist in an acoustic duo, Crystal and Yelyn, and in a [...]

24OWLS Playlist Series When I Grow Up – The Playlist of Desmond Goh Singaporean indie fans of a certain vintage remember Desmond Goh fondly as the bassist for Electrico, the early noughties rock-pop band most famous for its 2004 radio hit ‘Runaway’ and for ‘What Do You See’, the song they wrote for National Day 2009. Younger folk would recognise him as the bassist for TypeWriter, the power-pop quintet which released its latest single, the indie-pop ballad ‘Your Eyes Catch Light’, in March 2020. Those in the music business, however, know him as an integral part [...]

LÉON Takes Charge Billed as the best Swedish pop export since Robyn, the indie-pop siren starts her own imprint and makes music on her own terms By Yeow Kai Chai You can hear instantly why Katy Perry would be besotted with her disco-pop song ‘Tired of Talking’, tweeting “she’s one to watch.” When the then-22-year-old LÉON, otherwise known to her parents as Lotta Lindgren, posted the track from her debut EP Treasure to the music-sharing platform SoundCloud in July 2015,  the song exploded, amassing millions of plays and gaining celebrity fans like Perry. After all, the [...]

Vandetta, the Doyenne of Communication Vanessa Fernandez has a million things she wants to do, but at the core of it, she enjoys creating and communicating with her music. By Yeow Kai Chai Vanessa Fernandez is reclining on a pristine beach in Okinawa, the sub-tropical island paradise off the south-western tip of Japan. Well, at least that’s how you’d imagine her. After all, you could hear waves lapping gently, a ceaseless ebb and flow echoing her mellifluous flow of ideas. Under normal circumstances, one would be ridiculously jealous of her, but this is Vanessa we’re talking [...]

Beware Stella Donnelly, She May Be Watching You The Welsh-Aussie singer-songwriter loves people-watching – which explains why she has become one of the icons in the #MeToo conversation. By Yeow Kai Chai A brief listing promoting Stella Donnelly’s gig for her recent Australian tour sums up her contrarian appeal: “She belts out her songs and stories with the voice of an angel and the mouth of a sailor.” So, it is: the Welsh-Australian singer-songwriter revels in counterpoints, delivering disarming folk-pop melodies with a killer lyrical sting. Serendipitously, she’s also become part of the zeitgeist-defining #MeToo movement [...]