Having released just one demo in 2005, it's rather unusual to find that Citizens of Ice-Cream's first EP is titled The End. Rumours of the band disbanding had been circulating amongst the Malaysian indie scene for a little while, but have never really been confirmed. So is The End meant to signify an official announcement of the band's dissipation?

No clue. Yet in some sense, it would be a mild shame. Citizens of Ice-Cream can barely claim to have 'arrived', yet they have earned a well-deserved reputation as one of the bands on the forefront of Malaysia's Chinese indie scene. Theirs is a vastly intelligent brand of post-rock with an added knack for exotic Oriental melodies, somewhat akin to Explosions In The Sky meeting Ride during Chinese New Year. Strictly local, gorgeously global.

And yet a listen to The End is a strange exercise in managing expectations. As the band straddles between the cusp of greatness and the lure of oblivion, the EP bears a similar ambivalence, and a surprising lack of consistency. The songcraft could certainly do with a bit more top and tail tweaking so that those shimmering moments of magic are more evenly distributed. Opener 'The Last Emperor' (which also appeared on the 2005 demo but is noticeably more polished and sonically inflated here) drags around a succession of meandering melodies for three minutes, before the entrance of delicate, quick-picked single notes shatter the frostiness. 'Parks and Funerals' fares no better in its opening two-note twinkles, and the luminous synthwork lacks an equally adventurous guitar counterpoint—until the song's emphatic coda, where  guitars and keyboards frolic in a mystical, kinetic whirlpool of goodness.

The End also underscores the band's never-ending thirst for fountains of freshness, and here they swing to the more drone-centric facets of shoegaze and Brit rock. But evidently, this aspect requires a smidgen more journeying. 'Those Who Walk in Chaos' employs a fleeting burst of jazz and funk chordings to trite effect, while 'Life is Short' and its uneventful mod-rock riffing is even more ineffectual. It is not until 'Leave it to the Ants' that the band successfully extrapolates those Cockney influences into a cohesive, functional equation capable of eliciting widespread "Eureka!"s, where new wave rhythms find solitude amidst a reverb-dense neighbourhood.

Firmly wedged somewhere between the head boppin' works of Ellis the Vacuumchild and the high energy performance of Natsumen, Citizens of Ice Cream create a sound as delicious as the name implies. "Leave it to the Ants" tantalizes the senses with twangy guitars, punctuating synth, and skittering drums. Dominated by a non-linear movement, the track expresses a spatial freedom that is overwhelming, captivating, and all together blissful. The different instruments dance around each other as the layers smoothly gel, regardless of the configuration. We couldn't ask for a better track to guide our summer days.

Citizens of Ice Cream is a great, accessible introduction to the Malayasian post-rock scene. So grab a copy of The End (the band's debut EP) and a scoop of ice cream and prepare yourself for a wild ride.

You wake up from sleep, only to find your eyes opening up to the painful glare of the sun. You want to linger in bed a while more; whenever your eyelids shut, you hold on to the sheets a little tighter. You know you'll be doing the same thing tomorrow morning, and the morning after, but it still feels like the right thing to do now. In the brief moment between the alarm clock ring and your actual waking, there is a familiar place we've visited since childhood.

The sounds of Citizens of Ice-Cream fit effortlessly there, in Elysian Fields.

Describing themselves as citizens of the unattainable-yet-always-longed-for, Petaling Jaya boys Phang (synth), Hwang (guitar), Tan (guitar), Choy/Ray (bass) and Kuan Seng (drums) pledge their allegiance to the matrimony between the surreal and the hunger to find reality in dreams. While fancy names are given to add value to simple Chinese dishes, track names like 'Bird, Gliding Up The Wall' and 'Vastness, At The End of The Alley' offer only simple poetic phrases that hint at the conceptual complexity each song embodies. Far more fulfilling than a four-course MSG meal, Citizens of Ice-Cream's self-titled EP is a multilayered meditative soundtrack that harks back to the sounds of Cocteau Twins, minus Elizabeth Fraser's glossolalia.

In 'Bird, Gliding Up The Wall', the band opens with a climactic entrance of distortion and feedback, plunging into a pool of melodic electrical waves kept in beat with Kuan Seng's subtle drumming. Although it would have been a plus had they brought in more instruments to the plateau—and poor recording notwithstanding—the band manages to present the ethereal spirit of the song with a typical ensemble. 'The Last Emperor' finds the band slipping into a Buddhistic trance with chime mimes, and then shifting pace midway, picking up again only to spiral down a black hole of quick reverbs and jazzy cymbals.

Which lands us squarely in the grim neighbourhood of 'Vastness, At The End of The Alley'. The darkest track, it is clearly the climax of the EP, snaking in and about our conscience with a potency that turns playgrounds into complex mazes. The denouement arrives with 'Children's Day', a slower-paced resting place but not any less contemplative.

Each note on Citizens of Ice-Cream drips tenderly and delicately, creating a milky trail leading to a puddle of cream in which you stand dreaming for more. Indeed, it is as slow, gentle and fulfilling as a melting cone of vanilla.

Turnout

149 ticket sales (presale + door sales), 4 free media entries from Ixtive Media, total turnout estimated around 160 heads including guests.

Problems

• Time management and equipment management

• Free CDs give-away mix-up, lots of presale ticket holders didn't get their CDs
  
  Note: All presale ticket holders who didn't get their CDs please contact Phang at 016-304 2821 for redemption. We apologize for the mix-up…
  

Finances
Sales

1 ticket = RM 15, little Havana takes RM 5 for each ticket
Total ticket sales (presale + door sale) 149
149 X RM 15 = RM 2235

Little Havana takes
149 X RM 5 = RM 745

We make: RM 2235- RM 745 = RM 1490

Expenditures

Bands
Crispy Yam Toasted    RM 100
Deepset                     RM 100
KLPHQ                      RM 100
Coma ('cause they're from Penang) RM 150
Ferns                         RM 100
Elise ('cause they're from Singapore) RM 200
Total  RM 750

Equipment RM 510

Free CDs  RM 210

Total Expenditure  RM 750 + RM 510 + RM 210 = RM 1470

Nett Profit   RM 1490 - RM 1470 = RM 20

Conclusions

What else can I say? It's a fucking great gig, hope you guys enjoyed it as much as we did organizing :)

Our greatest thanks to all the bands who performed and everyone who was at the gig.

Special thanks to Gou Lou, guitarist from Crispy Yam Toasted for the excellent gig website design. Those who are interested to contact the guy can e-mail him at radio96@gmail.com

For enquires, call Phang 016-304 2821 or email phang81@gmail.com

Thanks again,
phang
synth
citizens of ice-cream

I'd like to believe that not a lot of people know exactly what they're doing. Neither do I. From where I come from, what i do is never considered to be of any importance. it is a past time, like watching a clown or a mime performing their fucking tricks and laughing it off. it's a joke. but i'm still doing it.

though it is not always true with everyone who does it, to do what i do sometimes means failing or falling short in other aspects of my life, like at the age of 25, i'm still a goddamn student in the worst fucking self-proclaimed university in the world and i'm still faling my grades. i have no job, my freelances pay peanuts which i sometimes consume to survive. the worst part of my life, i'm still funded by my parents, which is not to say they're bad people, in fact, they're some of the best people in my life.

does straying off the dictated normal life means whatever i'm doing is bad? i don't know. but what i know is that i love it. i do it because i love it when the crowd applauses even if it's the lousiest performance we've ever done. i love it when at the strike of a key, the sound of it is exactly what it's supposed to be. i love it when we stress for sessions after sessions after sessions just to make that song sound right. i love it when at the best of our sessions, there is an absolute sense of true freedom because we've create a lifeform out of inspiration and at that moment, we're both a part of it, as well as being awed and inspired by it.

i do it because i believe it. i believe that just because we are the makers, does not mean it belongs to us, but it belongs to every single individul who listens to it. i believe it gives me my life, my own recognition to myself that i truly exist beyond just another face destined to be forgotten forever. i believe it brings both uncertainty and absolution, both expression and the lack of it, both joy and disappointment, both achievements and failures, both pain and happiness, and because it brings all of these, makes it real and true.  

but most of all, i do it because i share this inspiration, this dream, this love, this believe with all of you. my bandmates; my parents; the what little individuals who like our music; the people i love and the people who love me; the people who hate me and the people i hate; the friends i know and yet to know, the enemies i've made and yet to make; the people who believe in this and the people who don't...

one does not need to see the entirety of the rights and wrongs of one's life before living it; and for this brief moment in my tiny, insignificant life, this little something that i'm doing, however insignificant it is to anyone, is everything that matters to me.

phang
synth
citizens of ice-cream

In mid 2002, Kuan Seng met Tan Huat Liang during a part-time job as a promoter at a local computers convention, PC Fair. Tan joins the band as guitarist, this was to be the beginning of band's turn over away from pop. Still in its bubblegum pop status, Tan introduces progressive indie super Brit-pop band Radiohead to the rest of the members. Influences began to work its way, but the band pretty much stayed in the cover songs, bubblegum pop status. Around the end of 2002, the band joined a college band competition "Glitz" with the name "9:38"; we played a cover from Taiwan pop-rock star Zhang Zhen Yue, plus a pop original. It was a terrible performance.

In early 2003, Brit-pop influences has taken its effects on the band, we began to compose some original works very much influenced by this. It was also during this period of time when we attended our first ever indie gig organized by Soundscape Records, the then sole cornerstone of Malaysian Chinese independent music. It was an anti-war gig against Bush's opening campaign war against Iraq. This was to be the beginning of our contact with the prominent indie music label.

In the same year, we submitted an extremely rough demo to Mark, the head man of Soundscape Records. The demo recording was a major rip-off by a very shabby local studio, the tracks were originally recorded for a short-film made by Phang and Hwang. After Mark reviewed the demo, we found ourselves landing our first indie gig in Penang. The band promptly changed its name to "Meng 'Shat", which truth be told, doesn't really mean a damn thing. It was just a phonetic translation from a random Cantonese jargon which literally means "stubborn". Though extremely amateurish, we remained as a band greatly influenced by Brit-pop. The gig saw us playing 4 original tracks, singing in Mandarin, Cantonese and English.

Throughout 2003, we went gigging in various gigs, both in the Chinese independent circle as well as the English/Malay indie circuits. Brit-pop influence stayed throughout the whole year but the band moved on to more exploratory grounds, picking up influences from shoe-gazing, dream-pop and psychedelic rock.

2004 saw major changes in the band, post-rock, dream-pop and shoe-gazing has influenced us greatly during this year. The rest of the band had moved a great step forward but Phang was still greatly lagging behind in musical creativity as vocalist. After much deliberations and considerations, Phang changed positions to keyboardist in pursue to wider musical space. The band officially changes into a fully instrumental band, this line-up would stay until today. The band's music slowly took shape throughout the year as more gigs came and went. By the end of 2004, as the band pretty much stabilizes from the change, music or otherwise, we decided it was time to come up with a workable band name.

Early 2005, the band officially changes its name to "Citizens of Ice-Cream". The name is adapted from a 1950's Irish novel, "Emperor of Ice-Cream". We found the story of the protagonist in the novel was pretty much reflective of ourselves, and as such we named the band after it. Our music has fully taken shape as a cross-reference jumbling of various influences, mainly post-rock, dream-pop and shoe-gazing. In mid 2005, "Citizens of Ice-Cream" recorded its first ever 4 track demo independently.

The band continues its musical ice-cream-like-dream journey today.