Tsao Chieh’s early 1990s experiments in electronic and computer music were virtually unprecedented amongst “serious music” circles in Singapore, with perhaps the only exception being composer Joseph (Joe) Peters, assistant director of the Centre for Musical Activities at the National University of Singapore and founder of the Electronic Music Laboratory there. Where electronic music was more readily explored as a mode of composition and performance, was in the realm of popular music, influenced by the rise of new wave, industrial, synthpop and eventually, all manner of dance and club music.
Through personal collections of media artefacts and print ephemera, this section offers a subjective and desultory tracing of the development of electronic and computer music in Singapore’s popular music scenes. We start off in 1992 with the release of an important electronic music compilation, the same year that Tsao Chieh was interviewed in the newspapers, expressing his intention to learn the necessary software and systems required to use the computer as a serious compositional tool. By 1994/95, as the local electronic dance group Club Ecstasy were releasing chart toppers, Tsao had finished composing the five electronic and computer music pieces that make up a relatively small but important part of his legacy today.
As we move beyond 1996, the year of Tsao’s passing, into the present, what we find is the incredible absence of Tsao Chieh’s influence on other musicians. While his electronic and computer music have a conceptual playfulness that still sounds impressive and fresh today, and foretell the wider movements in Singapore’s experimental music especially in the new millennium, the truth is that many in Singapore today have not heard of him nor heard his music. This is the result of Tsao still being largely known for his orchestral works, with few having knowledge of his electronic and computer works. For what it is worth, this exhibition hopes to help remedy that.