The band got together somewhat haphazardly amongst a circle of friends. Leslie started writing and working on songs with Vivian. Their plan was to record as many songs as they could instead of drinking as many jugs as they could. Soon they built up a body of songs and were offered a chance to perform. They felt they needed more members to be able to perform live and to develop their music further. Dharma soon joined the duo.
The first gig they played as The Observatory was Baybeats 2002 at the Esplanade. After that first gig, Evan, armed with a laptop and a head full of ideas, joined. Completing the picture, Victor joined shortly before the group's inaugural 2-night concert at The Substation's Guinness Theatre. Realising how much they enjoyed making music together, they continued to do so in a myriad number of ways, combining live elements with programmed sounds, much like most musicians who have embraced technology. The Observatory's sound slowly began to take shape with this new line-up.
The challenge was to weave together a distinct sound that they could call their own. The result of this endeavour can be heard on their debut album, Time of Rebirth. Released in March 2004, this quiet, ruminating album of poignant songs underlined by delicate textures and subtle electronic elements, was the start of a wonderful comraderie and musical partnership.
The Observatory continued to pursue musical change with relentless energy and enthusiasm with their second album, Blank Walls. It explored the group's experimentation with song form, creating depths and layers in an album of wonderfully crafted music that's non-formulaic, adventurous and challenging. Blank Walls was the product of a year of extensive experimentation, recording and arrangement amongst the sextet, of whom to join the band then was drummer Adam Shah. Fully embracing the group's collectively sharpened creative edge, Adam fast became an indispensable part of The Obs' rhythm backbone.
This was the challenge they took on, to make Blank Walls very different from Time of Rebirth. Undeniably, Blank Walls still retained a lot of the melancholic overtones of the first album but hovering just below the surface was an unmistakably menace that charted a mood-shift towards a more palpable intensity, also evident in the lyrical themes of human displacement and loss.
On their most recent and third album, titled A Far Cry from Here, the recording was produced and engineered by Jorgen Traeen of Duper Studio, Norway who hopped onto a plane to Singapore to record the band. Traeen had helped mixed Blank Walls and was roped in for his ideas and vision. The album was recorded live with minor overdubs, a first for the band, in order to achieve a raw feel. The songs essentially comprised six ideas from each one of the members. The result is an immediate vibe that reaches out and pulls you deep in. Urgent and heavy on drums with long instrumentations, rather like the progressive rock sound of the 70s. Instrumentation veers from quaint mellotron flutes to eerie synths, lending an air of mystery and surreal-like loneliness with melodies that are strange yet lingering. Incandescent rhythms and quirky percussion swing from intensely rigid to disjointedly hypnotic. Obviously drawing from a plethora of styles and influences, the music arrangements have become even more intricate, loosely combining elements of noise, krautrock, dub, jazz, indie-pop and post-rock. With new drummer Ray Aziz , replacement for Adam who left to pursue his studies, the band has developed a more complex sense of rhythm and structure, while continuing to explore asymmetric time signatures and unorthodox chord progressions. Leslie's vocal writing has undergone a significant change in its melodic phrasing but is no less personal or philosophically charged.
The band are now regrouping to write new material for their fourth album, with the possibility of an additional new member, a second drummer.
"NO OTHER Singapore band, past or present, has captured the imagination quite like The Observatory. In two brief years, this experimental space-rock combo has risen from nowhere to become a premier act which everybody talks about with a kind of reverential hush." Yeow Kai Chai, The Straits Times
"This is a band that pays no attention to traditional verse/chorus/verse song structures, managing to sound almost like Kings of Convenience meets Red House Painters..." Zul Othman, Weekend Today
