JJ & The Paperplanes launches debut single

SINGAPORE — Another week and another new single from yet another new Singapore indie band — yes, it’s an exciting time to be a Singapore music fan.

The band in question is JJ & the Paperplanes, fronted by JJ Ong with Debbie Lim on bass guitar, Xavier Lee on keyboards and keytar (a lightweight keyboard) and Micah Tan on lead guitar. The young pop-rock band also recently released their debut single, aptly titled A Simple Hello.

According to Ong, they started as friends jamming together during our time off from studies at the same polytechnic. “The band has now started to exceed expectations and has started gaining visibility in the local music circuit,” he added. “We went through what I’d like to call the ‘break-up’ phase quite a few times but we managed to pull through.”

Based on the group’s performance at the Hard Rock Cafe for the launch of A Simple Hello, it is somewhere between a seasoned school band and fully fledged music-making outfit; its undeveloped technical abilities compensated by its raw enthusiasm and energy.

The band also performed numerous originals — the best of which was the well-arranged Time Travel — which raised the question of why the band decided to release a single instead of a complete EP to launch the band.

“This single will serve as a teaser to what is coming in the EP we are currently planning to record and launch,” Ong explained. The other reason is the hefty cost involved in recording an album. “We don’t have enough money to produce an entire EP … and we didn’t want to release half-hearted work. I always say, if you want to do something, do it to the best of your ability, so we are planning the EP really carefully and hope it will sound as great as we imagine it to be,” he added.

The choice of A Simple Hello also seemed quizzical considering the strength of other contenders but Ong reasoned that it is one of the first songs he wrote and the first original they played together as a band. “It is the song that brought the band together … (it) means a lot to us and we hope everyone will enjoy the single as much as we did making it.”

Having achieved the initial objective of releasing A Simple Hello, JJ & the Paperplanes are already working hard on pushing their music abroad. “One of the main promotional plans for the single will be the small tour we have put together traveling around Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia to promote this single and let the world know about JJ and The Paperplanes,” Ong said. “Other plans include a music video currently in production, to be released in early December.

And for music fans, who are thrilled by A Simple Hello and are hoping for more, Ong has good news “We are currently selecting our bests tunes and putting them together to produce an EP. The expected release date will be somewhere in April next year. But before the EP, we will be releasing a second single which we hope everyone will look forward to!” KEVIN MATHEWS