From Urbanwire, written only a year and a half ago. How things have moved on:
NightLife
Written by Hajar Manaf
Tuesday, 05 July 2005
Clubbing now has taken a different spin. Hajar Manaf took a sample of this PopTart on its monthly gig at Home, and if you’re up for some pure unpretentious fun, you might just want to take a bite.
When you strip the frills of pretentious “clubbing dynamics”, you get,DJ Adrian Wee and his brainchild event PopTart, which will take you back to the basics. The indie revelry doesn’t ride on the hype and shoulders of superstar DJs or the cheap lure of a ladies’ night.
“It’s just a small party where everybody comes to have fun. It’s not a place where you feel really pressurised to look good. It doesn’t have your ‘sleazy vibe’ from clubs,” explains the 30 year-old Adrian Wee who’s spent 8 years as a professional vinyl spinner. .
The DJ at Attica started the monthly underground phenomenon last October. In its league are intimate, indie events such as the Eclectic Sessions at Cocco Latte, Drum & Bass heavyweight Subversive and House specialist Sonar .
Events such as these have created their own brand of clubbing waves. Adrian attributes the phenomenon to the fact that “people are getting a bit sick of [the] clubbing routine, people are not enjoying themselves in the big clubs, it just doesn’t excite people anymore”.
PopTart seems to have swum against the mainstream, and that wins it its fans.Adrian continues, “I think that a lot of people are taking clubbing too seriously.” PopTart, on the other hand, is “all about having fun”.
Not your archetypal independent clubbing event, PopTart is distinct in its spins. Drawn by the repertoire of 80s and 90s nostalgic grunge, brit pop, indie rock and punk, PopTart punters are those who come because “they can relate to the music,” Adrian adds.
PopTart avid-goer, 19-year-old Aisyah Omar, agrees, “I know I can sit and have my drink, and have a good time. The music’s ‘dead-on’, [you] can’t find this anywhere else.”
While keeping with the nostalgic PopTart sounds, Adrian says that “this is a good time for us to drive forward, to move on with new stuff to play [guitar bands like The Killers], instead of just looking at the retrospective”.
PopTart is not just about senseless partying and rave-like fiasco, especially when you double the decibel with booze; it’s actually “friendly and warm”. “It’s easier for the crowd to feel connected and to have their identity … [and] feel that they belong more. We don’t pull in a thousand people.” He also adds that the crowd is “nothing too atas [Malay for snooty], nothing to do with that ‘holier-than-thou kind of attitude’, nothing too poseur-ish”. Basically it’s just “a familiar ground for everybody to come together” and it makes it “more memorable”.
If you’ve taken a look at PopTart’s website , you’re bound to come across the almost philosophical input on what PopTart is all about. Adrian, who was responsible for writing it said “music has always given me a sense of time, where something meant something to me. Every moment has a song.”
If you’ve been nodding your head in agreement and are all for dressing down and having pure unpretentious fun, it may be time to sample this PopTart.
HOME is located at:
20 Upper Circular Road #B1 -01/06
The Riverwalk Singapore 058416
