Leslie Low

Leslie Low was the vocalist/guitarist of Humpback Oak in the ’90s. Subsequently, for the next decade and a half, he was a member of several music collectives including The Observatory, Magus, Hanging Up The Moon, Piblokto and Pan Gu. 

In 2017, he released a string of solo albums in the folk acoustic vein. Two of them were recorded live and unadorned in the studio: Nature and Child of the Island. A collection of demos recorded on his phone, Singapore in my Bones, was also released for Pameran Poskad, an exhibition series by Keyakismos in 2018. This was followed by a collaboration with ex-bandmate Victor Low (AFFIXEN, Concave Scream, The Observatory) called The Monsoon in 2019. 

During the pandemic years, he wrote a lot of songs that began loosely as ‘The Mountain Trilogy’, starting with Be Still, The Mountain in 2020, and subsequently Sand and Beyond The Mountain in 2021. A lost album was also released in 2021 called Blood Red Pale White.  In October and December of 2022, Nightingale and The Drill were released respectively. He had been listening to two Japanese bands; Off Course and AB’S. This gave birth to the songs that ended up on these two albums. 

His latest full-length album, Voyager, released in September of 2023, was written primarily on a nylon-stringed guitar. After having dabbled in open-tunings for almost two decades, Voyager was written completely in standard tuning; a process that had begun with some songs on Nightingale but was explored in its totality, with renewed vigour on Voyager. Because of this, this album harkens back to the sound of Humpback Oak, bringing the listener full-circle back to where it all began.