Nothing says “being the cool kid in town” more than attending the city’s all-day creative arts festival, Urbanscapes.
Shaking things up a little bit this time round, Urbanscapes treated fans with a month-long of pre-festival events. Giving festival goers a taste of what they can expect during Urbanscapes 2015, the month-long events featured good music and pleasant vibes that were perfect to get regular and new festival goers all hyped up for the big day.
2015 marks the 12th year of Urbanscapes and it kicked started with a pre-festival party featuring a live DJ set by Chvrches, two days before the band’s satellite show. The Scottish synth-pop trio was the first band that was confirmed to perform for Urbanscape’s Statelite Show here in Malaysia when the organisers announced the date and venue of this year’s Urbanscapes.
Chvrches (pronounced:CHURCHES) has been touring non-stop since the release of their debut record, “The Bones of What You Believe”. After making their first Asian appearance at Laneway Festival in Singapore earlier this year, the band celebrates the grand finale of their epic year with their first comprehensive Asian tour that includes Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Manila and Seoul.
The band’s tour in Malaysia started off with the Urbanscapes 2014 pre-festival party for invited guests at The Bee, Publika. The pre-festival party took place on November 17th (Monday) and featured local DJs Slutski & Lawrence who kick started the party with a good mix of light-hearted indie songs.
Slutski & Lawrence with Iain Cook of CHVRCHES
Slutski & Lawrence’s set lasted about 3 hours before Iain Cook of Chvrches made a surprise appearance on stage. His appearance on stage also signified that the band was ready to party with those present. Right after Slutski & Lawrence wrapped up their wonderful set, Iain took over the fort to play some of the best remixes he could give to the crowd.
It didn’t take us long to notice that the front-woman of the band, Lauren Mayberry, has also joined Iain on stage for the DJ set. Enthusiastic fans of the band flocked to the front row to take pictures with Lauren as Martin Doherty of Chvrches joined them on stage before wrapping up the DJ set.
It was a night well spent with DJs Slutski & Lawrence and Chvrches but of course, that wasn’t the only fun part of them being in Malaysia. The hype continued to grow until November 19th (Wednesday), the day all of their Malaysian fans would never forget.
The turnout at the Satellite Show was phenomenal, so much so that fans were seen queueing outside KL Live hours before the show started. Some even managed to get a few pictures with the band who arrived at the venue earlier in the day for soundcheck with +2dB, the local electronic duo that was set to be the opening act for the band.
Formed by Jeannie and Jo Ann, the local electronic duo have performed at numerous music festivals including FMFA, Urbanscpaes and Good Vibes Festival. They’ve also opened for Pacific UV, an American post-rock band that came to KL for a show in July 2013. +2dB proved to be the perfect opening act for Chvrches as they got the crowd warmed up with their very own originals as well as a couple of remixes of Chvrches’ songs.
2 hours in and the moment everyone was waiting for finally arrived. The crowd went into a frenzy as Chvrches took to stage after +2dB wrapped up their DJ set with a bang.
The band started with their opening number “We Sink” and they had fans singing along to all their songs all night long. After the 5th song, Lauren greeted fans and thanked them for their support. Chvrches also performed their new single “Get Away” which is featured on their new album.
Lauren effectively brought the house down as she rocked out with the crowd, especially when she performed the crowd’s favourite, “Gun”. It was one of the songs that was featured on “Grey’s Anatomy”, a medical drama series.
While it was expected, we were still surprised that the band performed “Science/Visions”, one of the best songs that was featured on “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation“.Apart from their stage energy and presence, as well as Lauren’s crystal-clear vocals giving us goosebumps for most of the night, Chvrches also played some of their album’s hit songs including “Recover” and “Tether”.
However, one of the highlights of the night was definitely when Martin sings “Under The Tide”.
Another crowd’s favourite #UnderTheTide performed by Martin & Iain from @CHVRCHES!
#Urbanscapes2014 A video posted by Hype Malaysia (@hypemy) on
#Urbanscapes2014After about 2 hours, Chvrches announced that they were going to perform their last song, “The Mother We Share” but of course, like most concerts, the band gave fans an encore with three more songs including, “You Caught The Light” and their latest single “Dead Air” – a song that has been included in “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1″ soundtrack album curated by Lorde.
Before leaving the stage, Chvrches stayed behind a little to interact with the fans and took pictures with them before they left to Singapore for the inaugural Asia’s largest music festival at sea, “It’s The Ship“.
Urbanscapes 2014 Satellite Show with CHVRCHES Full Track List:
- We Sink
- Lies
- Lungs
- Gun
- Night Sky
- Get Away
- Science/Visions
- Recover
- Tether
- Tide
- The Mother We Share
Encore Songs
- You Caught The Light
- Dead Air
- By The Throat
Chvrches definitely surprised us with their outstanding performance at the Satellite Show. It was such an honour to have seen them live and to have had interview them before the show. Big thanks to our friends from Universal Music Malaysia for making the interview happen and special thanks to Urbanscpaes and Tiger Beer for allowing us to get this once-in-a-lifetime concert experience.
Pictures from Chrvches Satellite Show can be seen in the gallery below.
More official pictures can be found on Urbanscapes’ Facebook page. Also, don’t forget that the next Urbanscapes’ Satellite Show with Scottish post-rock band Mogwai is happening November 30th (Sunday) followed by Tenacious D on December 1st (Sunday). Urbanscapes’ full-fledged festival will be taking place at the Horse Ranch, Resorts World Genting on December 6th (Saturday).
For more information about Chvrche, hit up their website and visit their Facebook page or Twitter!