Deep Blue - Skye

It's Skye, not Skype. A local singer who does weekly stints at St. James Powerhouse. Got to know of this album from maggielurva of desirable audio boutique. The album was recorded in Republic Polytechnic Music Room 1 and 2. This was the venue for the past 2 years of NoiSing (07 and 08). Acoustics there is really very good. I think the students may not know that they have such good facilities at RP.

Back to the cd. My wife thinks the CD is horrible. I tend to value her comments. This made me listen more critically to the album. To be fair, she heard the cd when she walked past my room. I play my music LOUD and with no apologies. Maybe if she was in the sweet spot, the comments would be more positive.

Skye has the tendency to sing at a lower volume, then reach a crescendo in later parts of her songs. She slowly builds the energy and anticipation depending on the songs. Track 4 - 味道, seems to be recorded on a totally different day from the rest. It just sounds different in terms of background and gain level. After listening to this track, I can't distinguish if the others are done the same way.

It's interesting to note that William Scorpion and Angie used to sing 味道 back in Canto days (yeah baby!). Now he's paired up with Skye at St. James. I have not listened to them at Dragonfly though. Perhaps will drop by one of the weekends.

Singing covers is always a tough job. These were staple songs during the 80s-90s and there will always be a tendency to benchmark against the original artists. Skye did a good job by using her variation to interpret the songs. I think some of the music accompaniment on the songs are quite distracting. Maybe this is the Iskandar Ismail style.

The recording was done using B&K mics and recorded direct to a 2-track DSD recorder. No mixing and mastering. As simple and truthful as it gets. If NoiSing09 comes along, I wonder how deja vu it would be to play this particular album there.

Buy this cd if you support local music, want to listen to something refreshing, like Mandarin pop, like Skye, like St. James. Overall nice album. Her renditions were not bad. I have a bias for the A-Mei songs. ;)

I got mine at Gramaphone - Cathay. Now I just need to search for 赵学而's cd. Give me a shout if you know where to get one in Singapore.