Some people actually call us "fathers" of local a cappella music! We reckon it couldn't be because of our age, since none of us look older than 30. It's probably something to do with the fact that Budak Pantai has more than ten years behind us since we got together in 1994 (which isn't that long ago) and are one of the pioneers of the now-defunct “A.K.A. A Cappella" series. And we're using the term "pioneers" loosely here; nothing to do with age, mind you. All right,if you really need to know, we won TV's Rollin' Good Times' Beach Boys contest back then....hence our name, which is a literal translation of Beach Boys in Malay. Since then, we had been especially privileged to make music with the likes of Kym Ng, Jeff Chang, Sky Wu, Sandy Lam and David Tao and lately, the ubiquitous and lovely Stephanie Sun. We were also featured in the “Sing Singapore" series in 1998 and in 2000, complete with our own music video for “Singapore Town" and had worked with Iskandar Ismail on numerous other projects, including the 2005 televised show entitled Muzika Extravaganza in Penang.
Among our other notable projects, Budak were featured on Arts Central programmes a few times (including Bandwidth) and even made a cameo appearance in the local movie titled "The Leap Years" which is slated to be released in mid-2007. We even composed a song (Leap) specially for that movie, although it was never used. Through all that, we released four self-produced albums, all limited editions. We've had the honour of performing at the Esplanade Concert Hall four times and once at the Esplanade Theatre (well, twice, if you count one time we performed there to launch a product). Today, Budak Pantai are probably the longest lasting vocal bands in Singapore.
Described as "professional yet eccentric & believers of the freedom to express (read "butcher") almost every song they arrange, with a big dollop of Budak humor", we trade in business attire and etiquette to entertain those in the know, once every month* @ blue Moo cafe on the rooftop of YMCA Orchard. The fact that we do not perform to musical scores means you may not hear a song sung in the same way the next time we perform it!
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