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S’pore singer Anise: Waiting in the wings

SINGAPORE — Anise (also known as Suhui Hee) is one of the many female singer-songwriters you might come across at the occasional songwriter showcases that are beginning to pop up all over the island on a more frequent basis.

SINGAPORE — Anise (also known as Suhui Hee) is one of the many female singer-songwriters you might come across at the occasional songwriter showcases that are beginning to pop up all over the island on a more frequent basis.

While it is fair to say that her baroque-pop approach to acoustic folk structures sets her apart from her peers, it is in her lyrics, with its decidedly socio-political bent, that makes Anise’s songwriting even more distinctive. She is, in her own words, a singer-songwriter delving into the darker varieties of acoustic folk.

Anise will launch her EP, appropriately titled Inwards at the Play Den, at The Arts House on Sunday. Yes, it is a collection of introspective chamber-folk songs. And this sense of deep reflection is also evident in her considered responses to questions posed during our interview.

As is common with many Singaporean children, Anise first took up classical music at a young age (she is also an accomplished violinist), although she admits to being “quite rebellious” to her mother’s teaching methods. Some good did come out of it, she said, affirming that she owed a lot of her musical training to her mother.

But it was not until she moved to London to attend university that she began to explore songwriting. “When I first touched down in London, I found out how lonely it could get being away from family and friends; so I got myself the cheapest guitar I could find and started playing and eventually writing,” she said.

When she returned to Singapore, she set out to fulfil her musical ambitions. And after an online conversation with Jeremy Lee, one of the founders of the Diarists’ Open Mic sessions that were held at the now-defunct cafe Pigeonhole, Anise decided to give it a go, armed with her looper gadget and guitar. “I played one song,” she said. “Prior to that it was all bedroom singing. I remember that day vividly — I was really nervous. My heart was pounding in my ears and I couldn’t look up.”

Her EP, which contains songs that turn “feelings of anger and displacement into poetry”, and in the process, she said, “bid goodbye to the pain of the past”, will find like-minded souls looking for something more than light entertainment from music.

The songs include Pulp Fiction, a commentary on the pulping of books that are considered objectionable by the National Library Board earlier this year, and Midnight Sweepers, which Anise said was written in a dream state. “I was midway through 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami and was falling in and out of sleep when the sounds of sweeping outside crept into my dreams. It is an ode to those who pick up after us. I’ve included the fictional story that wormed its way into my head whilst half-awake in the lyric sheets of my EP.”

The nature of Anise’s music, especially its tranquil ambience, provided her with unique challenges in getting her music out, in particular the lack of quiet venues in Singapore. “I know my music isn’t exactly easy listening, so a cafe or bar setting never really worked in my favour,” she said.

Coupled with a general perception that the Singaporean public is not as receptive to new music, “or rather, do not take much initiative in searching for new music,” she said, it was a constant struggle for the singer-songwriter to get heard.

Nonetheless, Anise seems to have found the silver lining. “I don’t think I have any reason to complain — for what little I have put out there, there has been more attention than I have dreamed of,” she said.

 

Anise will launch her EP on Sunday at The Play Den at The Arts House. Tickets from Peatix (http://aniseinwardsEP.peatix.com). The Inwards EP can be found on https://anise.bandcamp.com/album/inward.

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