Last weekend we saw an explosion of arts, music, films and everything creative. The city’s all day creative arts festival held at KLPac was a blast. This Urbanscapes feels like it’s bigger then the previous one. The are a hell of a lot more stalls at the marketplace.
My previous experience of Urbanscapes at KLPac told me that you won’t have enough time to look at everything that Urbanscapes has to offer. Therefore I pace myself to prepare for a long day and mainly focus on three things that I would want to see, that is the screening of Gadoh, the collaboration set of Deepset with Butoh dance performance, Nyoba Kan and the collaboration set of Damn Dirty Apes and Perezoldskool.
The day starts out with the hot sun grilling us. However festival goers, ourself included were not going to let something like the hot burning sun to stop us from having fun. We walk around the marketplace to check out the plethora of stalls that sells everything from books to dresses.
Nevertheless the sun was too hot and we decide to go inside too cool off and went to the Cinescapes Stage. Up next was Gadoh a 70-minute feature film directed Brenda Danker and Namron. Gadoh is bold, raw, and hits home. A film about hope in the struggle against racism. Gadoh deserved it’s own post review.
The thing I like about watching film screening in events like Urbanscapes as opposed to watching it in a cinema is that people actually clap and applause at the end of the show. With Gadoh, it deserved a standing ovation.
Right after Gadoh, I went to check out the Lawn Stage, just in time for Prema Yin. She give out an energetic performance, but the crowd wasn’t that energetic. Maybe because it’s still hot outside.
As the weather cool down during the evening, 40 Winks gets the crowd going for what to come next. Pop Shuvit, the rap rock band went on after that, a few mosh-pits and crowd surfing started happening. I thought it was cool of them to cover Smooth Criminal as a tribute to Michael Jackson, even though they didn’t quite practice it.
Yuna up next and it’s clear that this little Malaysian indie sweetheart brings in the crown. The Lawn Stage was pack full with everyone wanting to check out Yuna,
More awesome indie bands were up next, but I decide to leave the Lawn Stage and went back to Cinescapes Stage. It was Deepset with Nyoba Kan collaboration set up next. I could see all the other bands perform anytime, there will always be another gig going on, but Deepset an Nyoba Kan on the other hand is not something you could experience often.
Deepset performed their melancholic instrumental soundtrack, while Nyoba Kan Butoh performer, dance around the stage as if he were floating while at the same time freaked me out, especially when he starts to walk around among the audience.
After that we went to grab something to eat before we get back to the Cinescapes Stage for Damn Dirty Apes. This band have been off the radar for quite sometime, I thought they no longer exist.
Damn Dirty Apes is the band that introduced me to post-rock instrumental music, or as they would have called it, Sci-Fi noise. So I was please when I hear about them playing at Urbanscapes. And they were awesome.
It is a collaboration performance with Perezoldskool pumping out visual to accompany Damn Dirty Apes music. Although the visual did accompany the music well, but it’s nothing special other then some visualization with the name Damn Dirty Apes on it, I was expecting something more.
Now if someone were to create anime video to go with Damn Dirty Apes music ala Darft Punk’s series of music video, that would be very cool.
After Damn Dirty Apes, we went back to the Lawn Stage and finish the day with bands like Gerhana Ska Cinta, Couple and Killer Calculateur.
Urbanscapes was a blast, it should be an annual events. It gives the chance for local creative scene of all kinds to showcase their arts.
Check out more pictures on Flickr Photo Set.
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