6th May 2016: Urbanscapes 2016 returned to the center of Kuala Lumpur, in the beautiful Art Deco building that used to host OCBC Bank, now known as 2 Hang Kasturi, and perhaps Urbanscapes House.
Graffiti in the basement floor.
I’m guessing this was the former bank’s storage area.
I’d heard of an underground bicycle parking area, but I would not be able to tell.
Annoying magenta light, the bane of concert photographers everywhere.
Makes for difficult white balance.
Urbanscapes’ first ever event was at Grappa Soho, Bukit Bintang, as an offshoot of KLue Magazine that covered the Kuala Lumpur scene; I bought that magazine and on it was a sleeve with a ticket.
I was there, and I’ve been to Urbanscapes every year since then.
Of those who went to the first, I guess not many people can claim to keep this streak.
The festival happened in many sites in Kuala Lumpur, but none as near to the origins of where Kuala Lumpur got its name as this.
The building, on the intersection of Jalan Hang Kasturi and Leboh Pasar Besar, was just a 2 minute walk from the Klang River bridge on Leboh Pasar Besar that overlooks the intersection of the Klang river and Gombak river, where a muddy estuary formed; “muddy estuary” is translated to Malay as Kuala Lumpur, and that is where it got its name, and is the zero point, or exact center, of Kuala Lumpur.
I wondered if this ever flooded.
My ticket into this venue was Hey Orang Kita (screening + live gig), which was happening on the ground floor. We got to see a short bit of the movie; after that, the cast talked about their experiences. Left to right: Raja Syahiran, Christian Palencia, Takahara Suiko, Talitha Tan.
Talitha Tan! This was also my first time hearing her speak Chinese, and only in film.
The crowd.
Raja Syahiran!
Takahara Suiko!
She also performed with Christian and Talitha backing her.
Christian Palencia!
Christian’s cool cut!
Accentuated asymmetry.
I only brought my Sony Carl Zeiss Distagon 24mm F2.0 ZA T* SSM, so I’m glad it is sharp enough to be able to be cropped like this.
The grass was too precious and must be protected from our violent moshers, so we took up a little semicircle, which beats sitting far away from Billie Eilish. She is metal even if her music doesn’t tell you she is, and that’s why I went and paid RM500 only to get a seat far, far away. At least here there was no problem…
…unless you count this, one of two creaky bridges to allow crowds to enter the standing area. I have to wonder what the normal way to the standing area was supposed to be!
Elysha Arnold of Fly FM interviewing the crowd!
First band I managed to catch: KLAN.
But first, cool shirts in the crowd!
Not to be defeated is a band in full swag.
Margasatwa sounds as they look…
…psychedelic indie rock!
In the tried-and-tested two stage setup, the crowd could walk over to the other stage after one performance finished to see Rock The World regulars Restraint.
By then the moshpit had filled up.
Crowdsurfers from the coast of rock.
Some with a little help from their friends.
Spotted architecture legend Ng Sek San!
Fook on keyboards and bass for this next band…
The Impatient Sisters.
Ryan (not a sister).
As always, I’d bring my Sony Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 135mm F1.8 ZA with Sony LA-EA4 autofocus adapter on my Sony A7S for shooting stages from the camera pit.
Sometimes it gets tight if I turn around to the crowd.
Fred Perry also sponsored the bands on stage.
Calm before the storm.
A surprise indeed when they turned hardcore!
Shahril Redzwan of Kami Akta brought on the screams. Note also the metal logo in the background!
Jimmy, another Rock The World veteran.
Prasasti.
Down on the padang, a picture of a picture of a picture.
Up was The Padangs.
There was probably a decade or so I could walk into a guitar shop and recognize all the Ibanez guitars. In September 2023, I couldn’t recognize (especially the surprising influx of headless guitars), but I was in a rush so I didn’t look at all of them.
Republic of Brickfields.
Aru!
Pop Shuvit!
Gotta love animated backdrops.
LO and behold, Jason Lo has returned!
Pacai on bass.
I’ve been to every Rock The World except the first one on 25th March 2000. The last event was the 17th instalment, Rock The World 17 in 2017, making this technically Rock The World 18 or Rock The World 22nd Anniversary?
Jason is joined by his daughter.
Tres Empre.
Then it was time for something smoother…
Midnight Fusic.
I took a stroll outside the seated area where there were deejays.
I got back in to see Plague of Happiness finishing their set.
My favorite drone-rock Seven Collar T-Shirt was on!
What’s that in the crowd, you say?
Yes, ROTTW magazine with them on the cover!
Ian Koren, helping on with…
One Buck Short!
Rahul, boss of The Bee now.
Izal, boss of the bass.
Imran, returning to drums.
MonoloQue.
No Good.
Gerhana Ska Cinta.
It always makes me happy to get a shot like this, where there are things in front that are out of focus, contributing to the bokeh.
Or, a shot like this, with accent lighting from the side, but not overpowering.
Brandon Gomez who I knew from Dragon Red, and now…
Massacre Conspiracy.
Dig the Megadeth shirt!
The Times.
I also love it when I can get two colors on the opposite ends of the color wheel dominating a picture.
A.C.A.B..
Efek Rumah Kaca from Indonesia, the first non-Malaysian band in Rock The World that I can remember.
Then came thrash metal legends Cromok.
These guys have concrete riffage.
My taste in metal veers towards heavy metal, groove metal and thrash metal.
I wasn’t around music scenes when those genres were in their heyday so I would savor anybody still playing it.
Sam on teutonic thrash vocals and bass.
Occasionally, I’d take out the Sony Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 24mm F2.0 ZA SSM for wide shots like these.
Inside, the show had finished, but not outside.
I’ve also bumped up my pictures to be 1440 pixels on their longest side, up from the old format of 1024 pixels.
If you’ve visited my blog and went, “wow, those are very nice pictures!” and you’d like to take pictures that make people go, “wow, those are very nice pictures!“, you now CAN.
I am selling the legendary Fujifilm A202 digicam that has immortalized many interesting views in my blog. Every picture you will see as of June 2004 till Christmas Eve 2004 was taken with this very camera. I warn you that this is merely a barebones digicam for those who cannot afford anything better. A lot of it depends on your compositional skills and Photoshop experience.
I’m selling it because I have a better camera now.
The price? RM225, negotiable. However, it also includes a carrying case, a 16MB xD Picture card, AND hands-on training (on the camera, and about Photoshop over MSN chat) from the same person who brought you such eye-catching pictures. ME!
Consider this as well – the 1 Megapixel variant of this camera (the A101) is selling second-hand in Cash Converters Kelana Jaya for RM235.
I once again restored all my entries using Google‘s cache of my website! I managed to keep the post IDs and links intact by a tricky process of calculating how many comments go in and when. Makes me wish I coded it more efficiently. I only backed up the database last January 19th 2004 so every post after that has bogus filler posts to satisfy the quota (and some may even tell you what people may have posted!) Dejavu. I lost a lot of paranoid tracker entries but heck. There’s Brinkster‘s ad banner on top but heck. I’ve updated my About Me! page with some links.
I’ve successfully flashed my DVD writer; it is now region free, though only certain software DVD players will know it. The rest aren’t fooled by DVD Region-Free! Ah well.
Tomorrow will be a hectic day – go to post office, send in MENSA form, claim DiGi postpaid points for some discount off a new phone, send my old motherboard for repair, get my driver’s-seat-virgin-butt registered for classes, and go to Virtual Arena, Desa Sri Hartamas, to get myself a review copy of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. 😉
Sometimes the truth is best hidden or at least held back.
Serves me right, she’d say. Not like I was one for concentrating anyway, but it would make her happy.
I need a change. I don’t want to be staring and working on it all night. Sometimes even a goodnight is hushed or forgotten. Would we instantly forgive and forget? She would, and I take that for granted that sometimes she just will not forget.
She loves me more than I would like to recount or measure, but her concern becomes my loss. My loss of freedom. My loss of income.
I shall tell her someday, on the ever so rare fair-weathered day.
I’ve updated my About Me! page again, with more updated links, like the derriere-kicking Rocket Queen, the beautifully sarcastic Jay, the graphically descriptive Sixthseal and some other 404s before. Some of them were meant to go back into the limelight anyway. 😛
