When it comes to the local music scene, Malaysia has plenty of talent that remains untapped. In this challenging industry, besides having opportunities, one needs to have the skill and showmanship to appeal to the audience. Having said that, for an artist or band to be successful, there will be blood, sweat and tears. An Honest Mistake is a local band that has done exactly that and created a name for themselves.
About An Honest Mistake
An Honest Mistake is a Malaysian pop punk band. The band composes and performs original music and has performed at various festivals locally and regionally. They have been nothing short of impressive ever since their debut in 2008. The band, headed up by lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist, Darren Teh, joined by Leonard Chua on lead guitars, Tomas Tam on bass and Ian Ng on drums, may have seen quite a number of personnel changes ever since their inception, but their penchant for creating catchy earworms has remained the same – in fact, it’s evolved. Signing with major label, Universal Music Malaysia in March 2016, the band has been on a roll.
Works of An Honest Mistake
They have performed openings for international artistes like Against The Current, Boys Like Girls, Motion City Soundtrack, Neck Deep and Chunk No Captain Chunk.To date they have put out 5 albums:
- 2010 – ‘An Honest Mistake’
- 2012 – ‘Say What You Want, Say What You Will’
- 2014 – ‘The Acoustic Album’
- 2016 – ‘An Honest Christmas’
- 2017 – ‘An Honest Mixtape’, released along 13 music videos by local and regional collaborations
- April 2018 – ‘The Corporate EP’
Starting Honesty As A Virtue
The goal for the band has always been to write good and fun music where people can enjoy. It is has also been Daren’s goal to encourage people in Malaysia to learn to love what we have locally especially in arts and music. There are lots of great musicians and artistes and Malaysians will need to look inwards a little more. Teaching and educating the audience to love Malaysian-made music and art. Eventually, they want to continue making music and breaking new grounds and to lead the way to opening new market opportunities outside of Malaysia. They also want to go full on organizing events and to maintain the platform for new artistes to be discovered.
Launch of Their New EP on April 2018!
Their new album ‘The Corporate EP’ is a 5-track EP of covers of some of the most popular pop songs ever written. On top of that, they are also hoping to penetrate into the ‘corporate’ market which is something that we used to struggle with previously as most corporate clients would prefer to listen to covers. The track listing is as below
- Whitney Houston’s ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ ft. Haziq of I Lost The Plot
- Katy Perry’s ‘California Girls’ ft. Mimifly
- Bruno Mars’ ‘That’s What I Like’ ft. Sasha Nichole & Aisyah Aziz
- Beyonce’s ‘Single Ladies’
- Taylor Swift’s ‘You Belong With Me’ ft. Kareema Ramli of Maddthelin
They have also tied up with Levi’s Malaysia to do a 6 stop college tour. They will be hitting 6 of the major universities in the Klang Valley together with some of the coolest acts in the scene right now (DJ Biggie, Kiddsanthe, Cuurley, Damnyoudan and Aisyah Aziz). This tour with Levi’s will hit Sunway Uni, KDU Glenmarie, SEGi Kota Damansara, Nottingham Semenyih, UCSI and Taylor’s Lakeside beginning 30th of March 2018. At each location, there will be mentorship sessions led by them for the students in each university. On top of that, the main feature will be a battle of the bands called, ‘Summer Jamming’.
One winner will emerge from each uni who will move on to the final showdown on 12th May 2018 at The Bee Publika. The winner will also win products worth over RM2000 as well as a single recording deal, courtesy of Pulse Soundworks.
The aim is really to build the community of music lovers and to discover new talent apart from the promotions of their EP. The EP will be sold throughout the tour and at the official launch at the finale of the tour at The Bee.
“When opportunities present itself, take it. If you don’t, you might regret it because rarely would it ever come back twice. That’s the basis of how we’ve always worked. Seizing opportunities.”
– An Honest Mistake
Listen to one of their many jams at:
https://www.facebook.com/anhonestmistake/
