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 <span style="font-style:italic;">deja vu</span> 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.

The much anticipated event on the local audio calendar is finally here... NoiSing07, on 8th September 2007. Not having a NoiSing in year 2006 surely must have created a void as the displays in NoiSing07 is easily the best of the 3 we had so far. The venue was Republic Polytechnic. We had two rooms, one on level one, the other on level two. Accoustics was to die for. In my opinion, Level two had the better of both rooms. It is meant for panio practice. Fully treated even on the ceiling. This room was dedicated to Solid State gear. On level one, we had the tube gear, and easily the larger crowd of both rooms. This year, we only had one full range single driver speaker, represented by the famed Freastrex driver, courtesy of Willam Ang. We had quite a few preamps, two Audionote M7 designs, one other that I'm not too sure of, two Akido preamps, a Sakuma Tube buffer using 211, and my 5687 with Tamura output transformer. The main eye candy is the speakers... Ken helped setup the electronic crossover to enable a three way system using his Dukane plasma tweeters, Maxonic fieldcoil horns, 340hz Azura with TAD2001, Karlson bassbin with 18" JBL drivers, 15" Altec BR box... For the actual list of components, take a look at the echoloft posting. Both rooms had great sound. I was impressed by the ML preamp in the Solid State room, with a virtual control from the laptop. Eusof's (Synthesis) Vifa speakers, although bookshelves, turned out to be a beast to tame when we heard the solid state amp happily clipping away. It produced astouding sound when driven at moderate volume. Had to do a double take to be sure that the Orions are not playing. The 3 way setup at the tube room was equally astounding, given the 5 mins tuning of crossover by Ken. There was a distinct lack of amplifiers. I thought Ken joked with me when he mentioned that he was waiting for me to bring amps. All in all, a great way to spend a Saturday. Really enjoyed myself there. Unfortunately I was not able to stay all the way till 6 odd. Kudos to the organizer (Johari) and all those who helped in this event. Mervin (MB) did a fine job by helping us book the rooms at Republic Polytechnic. A big clap for all those die hard DIYers who brought their geat to RP! The morning rain was not enough to stop us! More pics here.