Laundry Music Volume:1

Laundry’s Courtyard Opens Up to Music… and the World
Laundry presents Music Volume One

The cozy interior of Laundry stretched itself outdoors into the spacious courtyard at the Curve tonight as it celebrated an eclectic array of experimental hip-hop musicians from across the globe with over 1,000 ecstatic revelers, as part of its inaugural Music Volume One festival.

In a showcase of hip-hop mastery in all its forms, Laundry welcomed to its massive outdoor stage half Brooklyn and half Filipino male/female duo, APSCI from New York, MC extraordinaire Vandal from Canada, party rockin’ DJ and producer Micke Morphingaz from the UK and Malaysia’s very own hop guru, DJ Nesh.

DJ Nesh got the party started as he warmed up an anticipating crowd with a plethora of familiar floor-fillers and groovy bass-boppin’ numbers. As anticipated, the additional tables set on out on the courtyard were quickly filled as the crowd, made up of die-hard regulars, music lovers and curious on-lookers, slowly but surely swarmed the make-shift compound. Thankfully, this was not to be a night of uncomfortable elbow grazing and sweat-festing, as the organizers were far-sighted enough to provide a massive free area right in front of the stage.

Sassy and sexy emcee Serena C then introduced Micke Morphingaz on to the stage to a willing audience. Micke took to the decks with a mickey mouse hooded jacket, as he treated the crowd to a myriad of electronica music, effortlessly harmonizing vocalists, recorder riffs and subtle superbass with amazing turtablism skills. From his album, he performed tracks like Platterpussy, a version of Moi Aussie and Boomerang, among others. The highlight of his performance was when, in an obvious play on his name, he cheekily cajoled the crowd to sing along to a chorus of “Oh Mickey, you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind, hey Mickey!” as he dropped the famous track in the middle of loops of electronic bleeps.

Irrepressible Canadian Emcee Vandal was up next. No stranger to the local hip hop scene in Malaysia, Vandal interacted, teased and coaxed the crowd in both English and fluent Malay. He was joined on stage by local hip hop superstars Joe Flizzow of Too Phat, Wordsmanifest of revolutionary hip hop crew The Rebel Scum and Arif of KLG-Squad. Much to the crowd’s delight, Vandal performed his smash hit “KL” that he recorded with Jason Lo.

Even before ApSci (short for Applied Science) began their performance, the crowd knew that they were in for a treat as female vocalist Dana Diaz-Tutaan warmed-up on the mike with her amazing, operatic voice. Husband Ra LaMotta joined soon after with his silky lyrical rhyming as they unleashed an arresting fusion of smart lyrics and dynamite vocals with self-produced, shuffling and discordant beats that were outside the indie hip hop norm. Aided by dreamy drummer Guy Licatta, the trio rapped, rhymed, sang and drummed their way into the hearts of the spectators with tracks from both of their albums, including Tirade Highway, Robosex, Stompin and Never Give Up as well as previously unreleased numbers, That Sound and Stop Me.


Apart from the impressive music, the Music Volume One series also featured the work of Graffiti artist Monk aka Metric Symetric as he completed his weeks long mission to reinspire the walls of Laundry and its surrounding area with stunning stenciled images of surrealist, emotional art.

All put together, the Music Volume One series was a great beginning for a forward looking series that seeks to inspire Malaysians with music that is heartfelt, magically performed and always interesting.