Coming Clean With A Gritty Garage Rock Band: A Chat With Knightingale

Knightingale is Ben Ho, Rajiv Singh and Ashwin Rao (left to right) [Credit: Kyle Butcher]

What is rock & roll without a shock factor? A three-piece outfit that eliminates a bassist from the equation. A raucous sound that harks back to the fuzz-crusted, DIY days of garage rock. Incendiary lyrics that evoke the no-holds-barred spirit of “god damn youth”, aptly proclaimed as the title of their debut full-length in 2016. And madcap publicity stunts that saw frontman, Ashwin Rao, don a bridal dress at Baybeats 2018 in front of a 5,000-strong audience. 

For the youngbloods of Knightingale, making an impact is exactly how they roll.

This gig at Baybeats 2018 was a big moment for Knightingale (Credit: Anwar Hakim)

Together with Ben Ho on co-vocals and guitar and Rajiv Singh on drums, Ashwin helms Knightingale with unruffled swagger; a gutsy charm he’s honed since starting the band back in 2014. Their juvenile, punk-tinged, summer-esque anthems salute the belligerence of bands like Buzzcocks and The Hives while buffed up with vigour of the modern age, well-received with riled up moshes at gig spaces and festivals all over the island. And with a slew of singles slated for release in early 2020, following their recent explosive number, “Skate and Destroy”, the rabble-rousing trio looks all set to keep the flames of rock alive.

I chat with the band about the secret behind their big sound sans bass, their undeniable chemistry, and childhood heroes in the scene.

Formed in 2014, Knightingale has gone through several lineup changes before striking gold with this power trio (Credit: Kyle Butcher)

Hey Knightingale. You’re a small band with a mega sound. How do you make everything sound so explosive? 

It’s the summation of all three of us playing with as much energy as we can. It’s a natural experience for us to play live, and to have fun listening to our music in a live environment. Sound is vital to our music, and delivering on-stage sound is key. We make sure we equalise our instruments and amplifiers as much as we can before we go forth and conquer an audience. In terms of the technical aspect of our sound, Ashwin routes his guitar into a bass amp to generate low frequency rumble in order to create a sense of power and force, since we don’t have a bass player in the band.

Are you ever limited by your size?

We think we’re just getting started with what we can do as three musicians. There are so many avenues for us to explore, educate and experiment with. We try to keep it simple by being a three-piece band and we wish to take things step by step. There’s too much complexity involved with music these days and we’re huge fans of being limited to our resources, be it with members or with our instruments. It enables us to stretch our creativity to the max. But, we do need people who’d be into the management side of things as we’re quite tied up and really want to push our sound further.

The band’s members are united by a love for rock heroes like Nirvana and Buzzcocks (Credit: Anwar Hakim)

Can you tell us about the chemistry between the three of you? What makes y’all click?

Passion is one of our primary motivators to pursue our style of music. We are fans of our own music, and in order to pull it off and have fun, we need to have that chemistry. It clicked when the current lineup (Ashwin, Rajiv and Ben) jammed it out back in 2017. In fact, Ashwin was late for that practice, and Ben was completely new to Rajiv, but by the time Ashwin arrived, the two of them already rocked out to the entire setlist!

It is our mutual understanding to respect, nurture and take pride in our music. We clicked because we were fans of each other’s music. We dig bands like Nirvana, Bass Drum of Death, Ty Segall, Iggy Pop, The Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, Dune Rats, DZ Deathrays and The Beatles. Which to us, is VERY RARE, as finding people who’d be into that stuff is hard, let alone young musicians!

What, in the band’s opinion, is the spirit of rock & roll? And how does the band keep it alive?

The spirit of rock & roll, for us, is the DIY spirit of solving a problem within our creative practice. Our end product is to deliver music to the right people. How do we get to that point? We learn how to record, produce, seek out opportunities near and far, work on art, social media and marketing. It is a very hard thing to do, especially with the three of us being the only resource. Knightingale’s rock & roll spirit is through its members, fans, the music and the key industry players who believe in us to progress as a band.

It’s all about the DIY spirit for Knightingale (Credit: Kyle Butcher)

The realm of rock is massive. But Knightingale has championed a vintage breed of it, particularly in the genres of garage rock. What was the impetus for embracing this style?

We still find rock music fresh as ever since its inception, we guess, in the late ’60s. It’s just that the production has been amped up hundredfold to cater to technological advances and higher quality sound.

We embrace garage rock because it represents our life as human beings; an emotional roller coaster in all shapes and forms. To us, garage rock shares similarities with what clubbing music is these days; it’s extremely catchy, poppy and filled with a feel-good vibe. You can relate to the songs, and if not, you can bop to it. And of course, our wild performances on stage are what give us a release from all of our current troubles in life, as we take up personas or characters that we usually aren’t associated with in real life, which is quite exciting for us and for our fans to witness.

“Our end product is to deliver music to the right people” (Credit: Kyle Butcher)

How has the band grown since its inception in 2014? More mature and rugged? Or still as juvenile and rebellious?

Musically, we’ve been performing tighter than ever these days and have a more interesting approach to songwriting as the three of us are now fully involved in the process. You can mix “mature and rugged” with “juvenile and rebellious” into a cooking pot went it comes to us. We’ve still got the “not sure what’s going to happen in this show” feeling all the time, with guitars being thrown around, members running into the crowd, us screaming our lungs out and showing immense amount of energy to the point where our bodies break, while still delivering the goods.

Knightingale’s shows are always intense affairs (Credit: Anwar Hakim)

Who were your heroes growing up in the Singaporean music scene?

Ben: Ronin was that band which started it for me. They came into my secondary school and played “Black Maria”, then the next day, my friend and I bought Guitar Hero and eventually, a guitar. Later on, The Great Spy Experiment and Electrico made me realise that there was so much more in the Singaporean music scene. And when I was working at L Cube Studio last time, I really looked up to Stopgap and tried to sit in their jam sessions whenever I could, learning how everything works.

Rajiv: Heritage, Md Noor, Universal Blues Band, John Chee from Crazy Elephant, most of the bands who played the first Mosaic Festival and the world music bands who first played when The Esplanade opened. These bands showed me there was more music beyond rock and metal music and four-on-the-floor beats, and it paved my approach to music ever since.

Ashwin: I came to Singapore during my late teens from India and missed out on much of how things were in Singapore back then. But I can only claim Helluva Khai as my brother and hero.

The band recently released Skate And Destroy, released on the UK label, Painted Halo Records. Does this mark a fresher chapter for Knightingale?

“Skate and Destroy” was one of the first five songs we wrote together with the new lineup, and it is indeed a new chapter for us in terms of creating music. The hype-powered drumming of Rajiv really takes the track to the height that the rest of us envisioned. Ben’s added interesting guitar fills, huge electric rock chords and acoustic guitars which signify his presence within the song. Ashwin’s signature slapback, garage rock vocals is still the mainstay when it comes to vocals, but we’ve now tried to create a wall of sound by including three-part harmonies, creating a larger-than-life vocal experience, influenced by The Beatles.

Are y’all actually skaters, though?

Rajiv: I used to skate as a teen. It took a lot of effort just to pull off an ollie, a 50/50, and a backside nose slide. I’ve almost nailed a double kick flip, and I’ve smashed my face pretty hard down the vert and broken a rib too. I had to stop when I realised it was physically taking a toll on my drumming.

Ben: I used to skate a lot at Somerset in my teens, all the way until my body gave up on me.

Ashwin: I’ve never skated once in my life. I am a phony! [laughs]

A statement that shook the scene (Credit: Knightingale Facebook page)

The band is known for its dramatic stage appearances, like that Baybeats gig where Ashwin donned a bridal dress. What inspires this brazen flamboyance?

That idea comes from challenging the norm; to make people think, analyse and evaluate that not everything has to be done within a system or a formula, that the world progresses through change and change is a wonderful thing. It’s a pretty ‘punk’ thing to do. Artistes like Kurt Cobain, Iggy Pop and The New York Dolls have been a huge influence in how we represent ourselves as a band on stage.

While the live scene does see a surge of electronic music, you still have folks like Naybeats and SLED Productions x Decline who wave the flag of rock music high and mightily. How important is this resilience in the scene?

It’s great that the music scene has been developing into an ecosystem of sorts and this requires diversity with the music. Not only have Naybeats and SLED Productions x Decline championed our small rock scene, but organisers such as ÆTHER, Dogswain, Radius, and venues such as Lithe House and Tonehouse Studios have provided us and even more music fans a place to go and experience something new. It is very very important to keep up the resilience. Support them!

And to end off, if the sky’s the limit, what would the band like to accomplish in the future?

Go on tour and play Reading Festival with Dinosaur Pile-Up, Royal Blood and Foo Fighters. Cha-ching!

For more information on Knightingale and their upcoming gigs, visit their official website. You can listen to their music on Spotify and Bandcamp.