20 December 2002

VOL. 01 ALBUM
Lu Rui En
(Alfa Music)
*** 1/2

AS A music reviewer, nothing warms me more than releases by homegrown artistes which make me hit the repeat button.
This week, I experienced it twice with two rather different debut albums.
Less captivating, but more commercially-minded and street savvy, is Lu Rui En’s R&B-infused Vol. 01 Album.
Arguably Singapore’s answer to Elva Hsiao and Landy Wen Lan, the pixie-looking NTU Business undergraduate who first did some part-time modelling and later acted for Channel 8, resembles a younger version of MediaWorks artiste Irin Gan.
Unlike Chua, Lu’s vocals are more rough-cut, and are suited for the hefty contributions from R&B heavyweights such as Jay Chou, his collaborator Vincent Fang, and Michael Lynn Hammar.
That Lu has a style all her own is more than audible on tracks such as the Misia-sounding Dislike and the mid-tempo ballad Tired.
What sucks is when she attempts to mimic Chou and Landy Wen Lan’s mumbly singing on White Feathers, and comes off as a badly-cloned copy.

Source: The Straits Times

Categorised in Rui ∑n vol. 01, The Straits Times.