Tamas Wells: The musician who's no April fool

The Sydney Morning Herald describes Tamas Wells’ work as "beautifully broken art." And art it surely is. The singer from Melbourne combines his live musical performance with visual images. It revolves around a young girl’s fictional travels in Asia and Europe and her eventual return to suburbia in Australia. Oh, and her tragic death too.

Preparing for his first performance in Singapore at the M1 Fringe Festival 2010, Wells shares with CNNGo his thoughts on performing in Singapore for the first time with his upcoming show.

CNNGo: What's the story behind the name "Two Years In April?"

Tamas Wells: The long answer is that the album is related to a story about an Australian girl who goes traveling overseas. She ends up dying in an accident, which was two years after she left home for the first time. The easy answer is that I finished the album in April over the course of two years living in Myanmar.

CNNGo: You currently reside in Yangon. How does this environment inspire your music?

Wells: I think living away from Melbourne for a few years and isolated from some of the intensity of Western life has allowed me to be more reflective about music. There is a lot of bad pop music in Myanmar, which I don’t like but I do find some of the simple traditional or folk music quite inspiring.

CNNGo: What do you miss most about living in Australia?

Wells: Cheese, friends and Australian rules football.

CNNGo: What inspired you to pursue music?

Wells: I don’t think I ever made a conscious decision to pursue music -- I think more that it pursued me -- in the sense that I would always find myself thinking about melodies and songs. I have tried to move on from music several times but it seems to keep coming back.

CNNGo: If you could perform with any musician, living or dead, who would it be and why?

Wells: Lambert and Nuttycombe, an American folk duo. I am not sure whether they are still alive but by the look of their faces on the 1970 album cover (when they were in their 20s) I suspect their lifestyle may have got the better of them by now. Great melodies.

CNNGo: You perform your music to the accompaniment of visual images -- how did you start doing this and how do you think this helps your performance?

Wells: This has actually been a fairly recent thing that we have been exploring. A friend of mine says that he finds film as kind of the pinnacle of art. There are images and music and dialogue and acting all combined together and not in isolation. Maybe it is our attempt to find other was to express things.

CNNGo: You're performing in Singapore for the first time. What have you heard about the place and what are you looking forward to and not looking forward to?

Wells: I have actually been to Singapore several times (but never to perform) and have loved it. It has all the best of Asian food, the best of progressive-meets-colonial architecture and great people. On the down side, the last time I was in Singapore, the hotel had a really hard pillow...

getting there

Tamas Wells: Two Years in April
M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2010
January 23, 7.30pm
Esplanade Recital Studio
Tickets at S$19 via Sistic
www.singaporefringe.com