Singapore’s Club Ecstasy are reuniting

The sun is beating down and in an open-air carpark, four men are doing their level best to not let the sweltering heat get to them while the photographer takes the necessary snaps.

“You had to get us to wear black, right?” one of them mutters to another, a little ruefully, as they gamely strike pose after pose.

The four men in question? Leonard Tan, Kevin Verghese, Geoffrey Low and Shawn Chin, collectively known as Club Ecstasy, Singapore’s premier electronic music outfit back in the 1990s. From 1992 to 1996, they put out three albums, had several hit singles and won several accolades and awards, including Best Local Album — before going their separate ways.

And the reason they’re suffering under the sun? They’re getting their photo taken to accompany the story that members of Club Ecstasy are getting back together again. It’s kind of apt; after all, it has been 20 years since they last performed together. (Although this time around, Tan is considering renaming the band Singapore’s Club Ecstasy because, as he pointed out, when you search “club ecstasy” online, you get “all sorts of funny results”.)

As a harbinger of sorts, the band put out two songs last year: A remake of one of their earliest songs, the haunting In The Trees; and a brand new, guitar-riff inflected surf-dance track called I Got What He Don’t Have.

This decision to reunite wasn’t a spur of the moment thing, said Tan, who is 43. All four of them have kept in touch through the intervening years and they toyed with the idea of a reunion to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their first album Midi Genetics.

Unfortunately for them, as Chin, 42, quipped: “We kind of missed the date!”

They finally decided to do something when Tan got wind of the So Happy initiative on Facebook. Curated by Little Ong, it was meant to commemorate 50 years of Singapore’s rock music history.

“We saw it on Facebook and we recorded I Got What He Don’t Have, and put it up there as sort of our contribution to that effort,” said Tan, who also compiled a medley of their hits on YouTube.

Verghese, 40, said: “People started commenting that we should get together for a gig, and ... we got in touch with Shawn and Geoff, and everybody thought it was a good idea.”

JOIN THE CLUB

The way Singapore’s Club Ecstasy got together this time round echoes how they originally came about in 1992. Tan was in the navy at the time, but was interested in doing something with dance music. He was introduced to Verghese one night at Zouk.

“Kevin’s brother knew that I was looking for a singer, so he introduced us,” said Tan, who gave Verghese a cassette tape of music he had been working on and asked him to see what he could do with it.

“I took the cassette tape and wrote some lyrics and recorded a few verses and gave that back to him,” said Verghese.

Meanwhile, Low and Chin were childhood friends with a common interest in dance music. In their teens, they even set up their own mobile disco outfit.

“I actually met Leonard through an ad in BigO, in which he said he was looking for electronic musicians,” said Low, 42. “So I wrote to him and he said, ‘Do you go to Zouk?’ and I said, ‘Of course!’”

“I was studying in Australia and I was doing music with some people there,” said Chin. “When I came back, we met up with Leonard and Kevin, and we got along well.”

“It started because we all had this common bond — we liked electronic music,” said Tan.

But it wasn’t easy. Their “recording studio”, for example, was essentially Tan’s bedroom.

“We had a very small setup: One keyboard and one sequencer; and Kevin would record his vocals over that,” said Low. “And it grew from that. These days, you can get everything with one app.”

“It was a lot of headache last time,” said Tan. “We could only use one sound from the synthesiser at a time, and the whole place was very messy with wires running all over.”

“We even recorded in my toilet!” said Chin. “That’s where we could get a nice acoustic reverb. The only problem was that we couldn’t turn the reverb off.”

“I think I actually benefit the most from getting back together,” quipped Kevin. “Because now we can record my vocals in a proper studio. Not his toilet.”

PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE

Apart from having to lug all that equipment around to gigs (“We were bugging our dads to give us lifts because we couldn’t afford the taxi fares,” quipped Chin), the band also had to contend with another problem: The audience.

In the early 1990s, local music fans were weaned on a diet of guitar-wielding indie bands such as The Oddfellows, Stompin’ Ground or Opposition Party. Club Ecstasy found it tough selling their brand of music to an audience that would rather hear distortion guitars and screaming vocals.

“I suppose it was a double-edged sword that we were doing something different,” said Tan.

“Maybe that’s why people weren’t happy with us, because we didn’t really learn to play any instruments,” said Chin. “We did learn to play a little keyboards, but we literally put everything together by programming. It was all programmed.”

“We were the electronic outfit in the school of rock,” said Verghese. “But I liked that we were different. I felt that we had something else to offer.”

Another thing the band had to offer was Verghese’s rather flamboyant dressing. “Yeah, that was my idea — you’ve got to be different, right?” he said.

“The rest of us ... without Kevin in front, we were quite boring to look at,” added Low.

“It was hard, man,” said Verghese. “At the gigs, when you stand in front of a crowd that’s there to hear rock music and then you play electronic music — they start to jeer you. So what can you do? You hit back at them with the flamboyant outfits to say ‘s**** you – we don’t care about you, we just want to perform’.

But as clubs such as Zouk, Fire and Nutz took root in Singapore’s nightlife scene, the band’s clout grew. They proved their mettle by being one of the winners of the New School Rock band competition; and they were soon signed to record label Valentine Music Productions (VMP).

The band released their first album called Midi Genetics, which featured the singles Morning Glory and Will U Test Me, as well as a remix of one of their first singles Orchestra Of Passion. The album went on to win the Best Local Album award at the 1995 Perfect 10 Music Awards. They toured and performed in the biggest disco clubs in Singapore, as well as on TV and had several hit songs on local radio charts. The group even had enough fans in Bangkok to warrant a short jaunt to the Land of Smiles, where they received the royal treatment.

“At the airport, I was quite surprised we didn’t even have to go through customs or anything,” said Verghese. “I think that was the highlight for us. We always thought that such things only happen to other people. So when it happened to us, we thought, ‘Oh, so that’s what it feels like’.”

“We had our own dressing rooms and there was a bottle of (Johnny Walker) Black Label for each of us,” added Chin. “And I was like, ‘Is this for us, really?’”

And if imitation is indeed the best form of flattery, then Club Ecstasy certainly got their share of that.

“We found a pirated copy of our album being sold in Bugis. That’s like a compliment, man!” said Verghese. “Our music is worth pirating! I don’t think other musicians would get so excited over that, but for us, that was exciting!”

SECOND WIND

The band released two more albums: Virtuosos Of The Infinite Acid Bath and Club E to much acclaim — featuring singles such as Technohead’s Sax Education, Manifest and a funky dance version of Andy Gibb’s Shadow Dancing — but it seemed that time was running out for Club Ecstasy.

Clubs came under scrutiny with the clampdown on recreational drug use at nightspots. Under advice, Club Ecstasy changed their name to Club E, just to distance themselves from that.

“We told people the ‘E’ meant ‘ecstatic dance music’,” said Chin.

But by the time 1997 rolled around, the band was no more. So what happened? With members having to juggle day jobs and studies abroad, they just ... drifted apart.

“The party has to end at some point, right?” said Low.

“And then life started,” added Chin.

Still, that didn’t stop them from keeping their fingers in the musical pie. Verghese released a solo album and occasionally worked with Tan, who continued to collaborate with various artistes including Dick Lee and Chris Ho, as well as being in outfits such as The Force, The Usual Suspects and StarFunk. He’s also a fitness trainer and holds a job at EQ Music.

Low is a senior lecturer in Music and Audio Technology at Singapore Polytechnic, and he started a recording studio SoundFarm. He was also involved in the production of the 2015 National Day song Our Singapore; while Chin set up his own business.

But after nearly two decades apart, Singapore’s Club Ecstasy are determined to give it another go, even if the times, and the music, are a-changing.

“We know that things have changed a lot,” said Tan. “We want to do something that still has that signature sound of ours that we genuinely love, but at the same time, we still have to apply some of the sounds of today.

“We are still discussing the direction we want to go in,” he continued, adding that they’re considering putting out an EP.

Other ideas they have bandied about include reworking their old songs, or inviting younger musicians to collaborate on their project.

“I think coming back together is quite an interesting thing,” said Chin. “When the four of us come together, something happens. I think it’s good that we are all quite grown up now. We’ve had lots of experiences and it’s interesting to see how we apply what we know to what we’d like to do.”

“I’m approaching this in the same way we did when we first started out: Just put it out there and see what happens,” said Verghese. “I don’t want to think too much about it. I enjoy making music with these guys and hopefully, other people will enjoy the music we do. If nothing happens, I’m okay with that too. I’m waiting to be surprised.”

“We all had different ideas but was what made it fun,” said Low. “Sure, some days we’ll have some drama ... but after all these years, we kind of miss that. I don’t have any expectations — although I guess we do expect to have fun. As Kevin says, we want to be surprised again.”

Still, the band has no deadline set yet. “We want to put out something because we like what we put out. Not because we have to meet some deadline,” stated Verghese. “But I’m sure we can come up with something. You just know it when it happens. It’ll come naturally.”

Listen to I Got What He Don’t Have by Singapore’s Club Ecstasy on YouTube (http://tdy.sg/1PECa7Z)