Poly Pony Club’s Synthy Silliness

By Zian Mei • 14 Apr 2015 in Detonate

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Image Romeo Shagba

Max was sitting alone in front of a Korean supermarket, absent-mindedly sipping on a bottle of soju, where his lonely presence caught Dee’s attention. Dee then walked up to him for a casual conversation; they started from being absolute strangers to bonding over mutual fondness of Korean rice liquor. As they got to know each other better, their conversation went onto the topic of music. That’s when they knew they were the one for each other.

No, this is not a paragraph off a romance manga, nor some overly twee indie flick starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but it’s exactly how synth pop duo Poly Pony Club started out.

This was back in March ’14 though, and ever since then this duo from Batu Caves, Kuala Lumpur has made a SoundCloud page for themselves, and that’s the only thing they have online. We’re not even kidding.

Taking obscurity to a whole new level, Poly Pony Club owns neither a Facebook page nor a Twitter account for themselves. Heck, to date they’ve only played one show (Rantai Art Festival). SoundCloud seems to be the only medium they use to upload their new music, and it is because they just don’t know how to use them. Yup, you heard us. They may never do anything about their social media illiteracy, as they hope to never have to deal with it – even if they managed to make a name for themselves in the local music scene.

Being social media illiterates aside, which we still can’t decide whether they were being facetious about it, Dee is a full time traveller and part time art director, whereas Max is a music tutor and sound designer outside of the band. When it comes to serious business, Dee is the man behind the microphone while Max is responsible for the synthesisers.

In a strange fashion that only made sense to the boys, Poly Pony claimed that their name meant “playing with Ms. V,” with Ms. V being a super on the nose reference to the female genitalia. The band name may be a tribute to their nights of debauchery and objectification of women, there was a level of self-awareness to this claim of misogyny. Or at least think so. Still, Max and Dee have no time to confirm or deny our perplexed reaction, “… this is our club and we make it happen with our own music.”

Fascinating.

It’s hard to tell if we’re supposed to take them seriously or not, and you can’t blame us. All of their song’s lyrics come from Dee, who claims to be obsessed with a girl named Poppy. The real issue here is that Poppy isn’t even a real person – she is merely a figment of Dee’s imagination that only appears in his dreams.

Despite being relatively new, they have churned out three tracks within the last year. These songs were inspired by their predictably anachronistic influences – ranging from Japanese new wave rock band Polysics, to classics like Blur and Sonic Youth, to Delia Derbyshire and Malaysia’s own Francissca Peter – but their music is closer to a recent Malaysian act than anything they’ve listed. ‘Seashore Romance’, ‘Crusx’, and ‘Little Tokyo’ are all dream pop tunes with upbeat synths, delivering chill vibes not unlike Tenderfist – an oft-repeated comparison when discussing Poly Pony Club. Hell, they could be tracks recorded for Tourist Car that didn’t make the final cut if we didn’t know any better.

Presently, the band isn’t in any rush to record an album. In fact, they weren’t interested in doing so prior to being approached by us, “We only made music for fun – but now that you are featuring us in the magazine, we’ll think about it. Thanks guys!”

Suffice it to say, they’re now in the midst of recording a debut EP. JUICE just got trolled.