Strength In Numbers

When it comes to big communities, the numbers sure add up. Although being your own person is fine for some of us socially inadequate souls, when it comes to fighting for a cause or letting your voice be heard (or perhaps changing a light bulb), numbers create mpact. In the spirit of nationalism this month, we give credit to some larger-than-life communities in our feature story “Strength In Numbers.” We spend some time with these colossal crews in some epic photo shoots and see why they’re putting the “XL” in “excel” (har har).

The numbers game rolls on with plenty more feature stories and interviews packed in this month’s issue. First up, we revisit Baybeats and tell you why Singapore’s biggest free music festival still matters. We also hit up Hong Kong for the annual Music Matters forum and share some interesting insights into the music industry in Asia, how far it’s come and where it’s heading (us gettin’ all serious). Don’t forget our exclusive interviews with Manic Street Preachers, Datarock, Sh*tdisco, Tiga, Parkway Drive and Junksounds 2008 winners Urbandub. This month, we’re going B-I-G, ‘cause size does matter.

Reviews
This month we examine three huge festivals that took place over the past month: Pesta Malam Indonesia 3, Rockaway 2009 and the biggest of them all, Urbanscapes 2009, in which Junk were the music curators (which means we’re basically reviewing ourselves; this should be fun). Where the albums are concerned, we take a look at the chilling new album from Singapore’s The Observatory, Dark Folke (which comes with some ultra neat packaging and brilliant artwork). We also check out the much-anticipated sophomore efforts of Disagree and Paolo Nutini, as well as the companion soundtrack of Iron Maiden’s superb air docu-movie Flight 666.

Junk Music Compilation
Our playlist this month contains all virgins. Well, not really, but they’re all new to the scene: we get eight songs from eight up-and-coming bands who made it through the Baybeats ’09 auditions like Meza Virs, Audiocean and Suicide Solution!

Freebies
Our generosity knows no bounds. This month we’ll be handing out vouchers from the spanking new Malaysian T-shirt brand Graffi Tee! And we’ve got exclusive merch from the new Hayden Panettiere flick I Love You, Beth Cooper. Plus, we’ve got five CDs each of Kasabian’s West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Jet’s Shaka Rock, Ciara’s Fantasy Ride and the smoking self-titled debut album from La Roux!