Indie Youth Fest Co-Founder/ Festival Director, Jasmine Low gets inducted to Voize Indie Music Awards 2010 Hall of Fame...

Visit Voize for details

An annual event, the Voize Indie Music Awards Hall of Fame award is given away to individuals/media who have supported and championed the local music scene over many years. Previous recipients include Ahmad Izham Omar (CEO - 8TV), OAG (indie band), Jason Lo (ex Fat Boyz, current CEO Tune Talk) and Jake Abdullah (Hitz FM).

Here's an interview with Jasmine Low, Managing Director of Go International Group, Founder of Doppelganger and The Independent Youth Festival:

Q: Tell us about Doppelganger Open Mic?

“Doppelganger Open KL Mic Open Stage is a known brand amongst the indie scene as we’ve been producing gigs and events since 2002 and have featured over 500 singer songwriters, bands, even poets on stage. We’ve seen indie acts come, go, stay and grow stronger. We’ve seen them become accomplished singer songwriters and bands e.g. Liyana Fizi of Estrella, Yuna, Ady Suwardy and An Honest Mistake.”

Q: What is the gig all about? How did that grow to be come Indie Youth Fest?

“Since our inception, it has been our goal to provide not just a platform for upcoming singer songwriters and bands. It's been to provide them the next level - paid gigs. Coming through our platform, these artistes are humbled and like us, we all start from the grassroots. Respect is earned as the artistes strengthen their names within the indie scene circuit, then as they gain a stronger foothold, they grow their own brand as well. We, as a company, have always been pitching pitching pitching for greater awareness and appreciation of independent artistes. Whenever an opportunity arises (even at corporate or governmental meetings), we would invite Clients to the indie gigs we organise, or pull up our notebooks and play a song for them to listen. More often than not, we walk away satisfied that at least one more person knows about an indie singer songwriter/ band. And this, in return benefits the indie scene because it translates to more concerts, gigs and functions. The indie scene in itself has mushroomed because of the advocates within the system. We're just one of them. There's the Troubadours by Jerome Kugan, Azmyl Yunor and Tan Sei Hon; Moonshine by Reza Salleh and more. There are so many more advocates who promote the indie scene and we salute them all!"

We launched our first giant gig and games festival in July 2008 and focused on bringing 6 video gamers to San Jose, USA to compete at the Electronic Sports World Cup. Titled Independent Youth Festival, our festival celebrates digital + DO IT YOURSELF culture. We all spend so much time online these days so what better than to bring everyone together once a year. So what we promise each year is to put together a line-up of indie bands and acoustic singers at our LIVE concert, and that includes beatboxers. In September 2009, we partnered with Malaysia Fest in Sydney Australia. Organised by the Malaysian university students in Sydney where I was once a student there, we lobbied and got Malaysia Airlines to sponsor 8 indie artistes (Liyana Fizi, Reza Salleh, One Buck Short and Rashdan Harith) to the festival. We hope to bring more musicians to more festivals each year!" 

How does the indie scene link with video games?

Indie Youth Fest focuses on providing youth with a platform. Our goal is to provide a space for musicians and video gamers. We're also very focused on developing e-sports. Go International E-Sports Cup provides a platform to train and develop professional video gamers. We believe that games are also very much a part of the lives of youth. So we partnered with Electronic Sports World Cup (France) and DreamHack (Sweden) to bring our cyber athletes to participate amongst the world's best. In fact, not many realise that our DoTA team Kingsurf clinched a Silver Medal at the ESWC 2008 held in San Jose in USA. It's a lot of hard work, but this is our role in society - to offer Malaysian youth a chance to travel, see the world and make our own world back home a better place.” she adds.

Other inductees into the VIMA 2010 Hall Of Fame include Too Phat, Dato Sri Shazalli Ramly, Issa Rodriguez, Junk Magazine, Clair Vanessa Rozell and Paul Moss. Thank you Voize!

REPORTING LIVE from DreamHack Winter 2009, Sweden
The largest digital festival in the world!

Timestamp: 29/11/2009, 10:10
Location: Jonkoping, Sweden

Singapore's HoKunXian takes 2nd place in Streetfighter, while its Counter Strike 1.6 team TitaNs fought hard in the second group stage, but was finally defeated. We interview Sam Matthews, 'da boss' of Team Fnatic, one of the most successful and highly professional teams in Counter Strike in the world! His interview will be posted shortly. We also snapped some closeup shots of Abdisamad “SpawN” Mohamed and will upload these in our flickr photo gallery.

Timestamp: 28/11/2009, 09:50
Location: Jonkoping, Sweden

Malaysia's Team [LZ] started the day well in the Counter Strike 1.6 tournament by defeating 0bites (Swe) 16 : 5. But their success was shortlived after being defeated by wooSai.fi (Fin) and Evil Geniuses (USA).

Group A
Evil Geniuses
wooSai.fi
LZ
0bites

09:00 – Group A / Round 1 (dust2)
Evil Geniuses 16 vs. 6 wooSai.fi
LZ 16 vs. 11 0bites*

10:15 – Group A / Round 2 (de_train)
Evil Geniuses 16 vs. 3 LZ
0bites 3 vs. 16 wooSai.fi

11:30 – Group A / Round 3 (de_inferno)
Evil Geniuses 16 vs. 3 0bites
LZ 5 vs. 16 wooSai.fi

Timestamp: 26/11/2009, 17:50
Location: Jonkoping, Sweden

Team Malaysia has arrived in Jonkoping and heading off on Bus 1 to Elmia Exhibition Centre. Beautiful town that is the logistics centre of Sweden. It's surrounded by a Lake Vattern. Find us on googlemap! 

Watch live video from dreamhackmedia on Justin.tv
Timestamp: 25/11/2009, 19:30
Location: Inferno Online 

This week presents a truly exciting week for gamers. With the best of the best Counter Strike 1.6 gamers from across the globe and communities at LAN shops gathered to watch amateur and semi.pro teams pit against some of the best in the world, Malaysia will be participating for the first time at the world´s largest LAN party - DreamHack! Powered by DiGi, Go International E-Sports Cup champions in Counter Strike 1.6 - Team LZ arrived in Stockholm this morning. The team is currently in training at one of the most revered LANcafes in the world (home of SK Gaming). At the 20second interview with Swedish TV, SVT, team leader Gavin Lam mentioned that there were several teams bootcamping here, including Singapore´s Team TitAns, US team EvilGeniuses and several other unknown teams. He also said that their aim is to reach Top 8 at the tournament, which will be held from 26-29 November at Jönköping, Sweden. Team LZ comprises of Abdul Azim Yazid aka Bobo, 20, Gerard Anand Saker aka Rico, 23, Ng Yew Siang aka Nyhix, 26, Lam Wai Loong aka Gavin, 21 and Sanjay Anantharajah aka Sniggy, 21. 

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