Bassment LAB syndicate.

If the title of the blog makes you think of experience enhancing chemicals being cooked in some dodgy basement somewhere down in Geylang, I will have to disappoint you. What I have started to describe, took place on the attic of Blu Jaz cafe and the only experience enhancers there, to my knowledge, were; some alcohol, two great bands, and an awesome crowd, who obviously knew what they came for and were definitely not disappointed.
 
First to the stage was LAB with:
 
Aya Sekine on crazy keys

Michaela Cruz voluminous vocals 

Timothy de Cotta boisterous bass 

Teo JR On Drums.

I am very sorry not to have any pictures of the LAB drummer. I don’t know how she managed it with her size 0 figure, but (t or not) Michaela blocked my vision to the drummer the entire set.  Since my primary objective is to be audience, I like to take my shots from the audience point of view. So where I sit or stand is mostly what you see. It’s a bit more challenging, but gives in my opinion a more real perspective.

LAB’s music was mix of own compositions and rearranged soul covers, of which one even more enjoyable than the other. Most of the fun however, was to be discovered in the numerous solo's, and when Michaela 

belted it out like she was 6 feet tall an weighed 120 kg. With the actual body mass probably only a fraction of that, I am still wondering where she gets it from.

 

With the Bassment Syndicate the band composition changed a little bit with focus Marques Youngs’ Trombone as the evident added value.
 
Hiran Benton – Keyboard

Koh Keng Hui - Bass, Guitar and Vocals

Marques Young Trombone Vocals

Omar Ibrahim Drums

 
It was now more of Marqous Young's Trombone that set the tone for the band, equally voluminous, if not more, as the Michaela before.

At this point, in all honesty, I have to do little soul searching, and try to pin point on the real reason for my preference for the long hard notes by Marques and Michaela. Of course for the most part it was because it felt exhilarating, but I was also thinking that the 3rd floor music was finally louder than the downstairs "comedy" event, a regular on a Thursday night. I do like a good joke, but never understood why the delivery has to be so screamingly loud, that it regularly over screams  good solo's.

Back to Bassment though. Although, there is not too much to add. The pattern was pretty much the same as that of LAB, a lot of good originals and some covers, with great vibes from the musicians, so the two sets seamed a perfect match. I read a comment the next day by Chok Kerong, who is a pretty damn cool cat himself. It was simple but showed a lot of respect. “Marques Young is Mad….”. If I may say so I agree wholeheartedly and want to give additional credit for the other band members, who sounded pretty “crazy” to me too.