Indie music festival Baybeats turns a momentous 20 this year. To mark this milestone, the organisers have added an extra day to the usual three-day festival to better accommodate a wide variety of Singapore’s independent music scene.

There will be icons such as Electrico, Caracal and The Full Pledge Munkees as well as emerging names such as rapper BGourd, alternative-rock band Cadence and post-metal outfit Summations. Popular contemporary acts like Sobs will also be taking to the stage – the band’s frontwoman Celine Autumn (pictured) will also be doing double duty as her new solo avatar Cayenne.

The festival is also taking a more holistic approach this year, under its Baybeats Budding programme, where new bands are showcased, as well as others involved in the scene in less visible capacities, such as music journalists and photographers who are equally important in contributing to a robust music ecosystem.

Check out the full line-up here.

On now till November 7

Baybeats 2021 takes place online, as well as at various events within Esplanade – Theatre Stage (Esplanade Theatre), Arena (Esplanade Outdoor Theatre), Esplanade Annexe Studio and Chillout Stage (Esplanade Concourse)

We wrote earlier this year about multi-concept space/restaurant Appetite and how it was bridging food, culture, art and music in a holistic manner. Now the latest development at Appetite is taking us digital. It has teamed up with Coinhako (a Singapore-based digital assets wallet service provider) to put on what is reportedly Singapore’s first large-scale viewing of NFTs, cleverly titled Right Click + Save.

If you’re not yet familiar with NFTs (non-fungible tokens) by now, they’re basically digital “identifiers” that certify the ownership of a digital artwork or collectable and are poised to change how we understand art and art ownership.

Curated by Appetite art lead Clara Che Wei Peh, the viewing dives into the history and visual cultures of crypto communities. It features early artistic explorations around cryptocurrencies, from Sarah Meyohas’ Bitchcoin (2015) and Robert Alice’s Portraits of a Mind (2019), to the iconic RarePepe genesis NFT.

Other works on display include Andy Warhol’s Untitled (Flower) (circa 1985; minted 2021), Tyler Hobbs’ Fidenza series, Refik Anadol’s immersive data visualisation and more, all of which are placed in conversation with each other to trace the innovations of image-making technologies as well as their new identities on-chain.

“NFTs are a natural extension of Appetite’s longstanding interest in alternative and experimental modes of artistic production. Right Click + Save will show to a wider audience that this new medium is not just here to stay but to redefine the ways in which we interact with each other,” says Kaushik Swaminathan, general manager and head of research at Appetite.

Register for the private viewing here.

November 7 to November 14 at Fine Art Storage Services in Le Freeport, 32 Changi North Crescent, #03-00

We’ve all had a nerve-wracking couple of years – which is why the latest edition of the Singapore Writers Festival (SWF) feels cheekily astute. Themed around the idea of “Guilty Pleasures”, it’s all about casting aside traditional snobbery around “low brow” material and openly embracing that trashy TV show you always have on re-watch or perhaps that Crazy Rich Asians book you’d never be caught reading outside of the safety of your home.

“This year, we’re leaning in and boldly celebrating the things we love as we challenge the very notion of what belongs to a literary sphere,” goes the official explanation behind the theme, and we have to say, the organisers are absolutely on point.

Headliners include the author behind the very prolific horror Goosebumps series R.L. Stine, acclaimed Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong (pictured) who’s had a meteoric rise globally in recent years, TV host Tan France of Queer Eye fame, as well as veteran Singapore writer Hamed Ismail, who is this year’s recipient of the prestigious Tun Seri Lanang Award – the pinnacle award given to writers in the Malay language for their contribution to the literary scene.

Closer to home, the festival also touches on topics such as food – local chefs and cookbook authors expand on what it means to eat local, stories from the kitchen and some of the most underrated ingredients found in local wet markets.

It’s a wild mix of ingredients in this year’s edition, so be sure to check out the full extensive line-up here.

November 5 to November 14