Singapore

FAUXE leaves no sound unturned. It’s not that he does it all – it’s that he does it ​all​. The prodigiousness of his output – which can handily be called ‘music’ – is an emanation of the fact that he is not concerned with the flavour/tenor of the day but of how the abstractions ​history ​and future m​ ingle, carouse, cavort and interrogate each other in the listener’s ear.

“Sometimes” is an interesting concept. Because sometimes, “sometimes” can mean all the time. And sometimes, the most self-defining philosophy can be contained in the following three words: All or nothing.

For FAUXE, those three words undergird his interrelated cosmic roles of artist, producer, archivist and leader. Artist because he lives out his calling to create resonant art that intimidates and inspires; Producer because he coaxes sonic ideas from the womb of possibility and through a natural birth, brings music into the world; Archivist because he labours to preserve the essence of sound and culture, making the web of experience that defines our historical legacy less easy to forget, and Leader because his fundamental project is world-building, brining the past and present into a one-of-a-kind dialogue with each other, so that the future may be glorious, endlessly enchanting but above all, powerfully meaningful for us.

Our current moment in time has placed us in uncomfortably close proximity to ideas of a new normal – wherein the only thing that squares the absurd circle that could make something new become normal is the unrelenting devastation we face IRL and on our screens. If, indeed, fate has granted us a front-row seat to our own demise, then it’s only right that we ask more of our sources of salvation. Now, more than ever, do we need ALTRUISM.

The next iteration and the musical, ideational and spiritual successor to his career-defining Ikhlas phase, wherein he celebrated the panorama of Malaysian music cultures via the idiom of dance music, is grounded in improvisation, in the foundational life-giving essence of tempo. All or nothing is the mantra that animates this radical vision of generosity and kindness. Of musicians intertwining every fibre of their being with their instruments, to the point where living is playing and vice versa. Altruism is propulsion, is rebirth, is recalibration, is love, is the future, and at the centre of it all is FAUXE.

In its musical form, ALTRUISM is a three-year endeavour. On the last day of 2019, FAUXE lifted the curtain on its first-born, ALTRUISM: THE BEGINNING, a sprawling 21-song testimony of his vision. Levity and largesse, life and circumstance, pomp and poignance manifest in a skyward, liberating blastoff. It kneels to the beginning, to the origin of the universe, to the first boom that brought us here, but it faces the future, that rarefied place we might just be if we lived and loved with the fullest and most joyous commitment of our spirit.

All or nothing – that is FAUXE’s address and destination. And as surely as he is there, will he beckon us forth. (Indran P)