Senin, 31 Oktober 2016

Annie Hall - Saudade EP

Materi album EP dari band Jogja Annie Hall bertitel Saudade begitu menjanjikan dan solid. Heavy fuzz and distortion, dan iya, full dosage of reverb.




Pagi tadi saya memutar kaset Annie Hall hasil pre order yang bundling dengan kaos, pouch, booklet, pin, dan sticker. Lumayan juga harganya, tetapi saya pikir worth it banget dengan materi di EP Saudade. Ada empat lagu, dimana terdapat single utama mereka, Hollow. Overall, album mini mereka such a beast! Saya suka semua lagu di album ini, dan hasil mixing-nya.

Sebenarnya kontur musik Annie Hall lebih banyak dipengaruhi oleh warna shoegaze paska era 90an. Beberapa teman saya menyebut band-band seperti Godflesh, Nothing, atau semacamnya, yang saya juga kurang banyak dengerin. Namun itu bukan hal yang buruk, malah saya pikir Annie Hall sudah punya cara mereka sendiri, dan itu patut diapresiasi.

Tak sabar ingin melihat band ini manggung di Jakarta. Dan jujur, Hema Records, ini adalah rilisan terbaik kalian :D dan saya gembira untuk itu! Oh ya, semoga band ini bukan proyek sementara lalu vakum atau bubar seperti biasanya band-band Jogja lainnya, itu kata teman saya Dede Wastedrockers.

ps: Hema, banyak yang komplen rilisan ini harusnya di CD juga, jangan cuma kaset. Semoga bisa ditampung saran tersebut.

Senin, 17 Oktober 2016

Annie Hall - Hollow

Jogjakarta kini tak bisa dipandang sebelah mata. Annie Hall menghantarkan gelombang tsunami fuzz dan reverb melalui album mini Hollow. Beautiful noise.

annie-hall-hollow


Saya ingin melakukan sebuah pengakuan dosa. Ketika pertama kali saya mendapati band ini, lalu hanya mendengar awalan dari lagu Hollow, saya berucap, "ah, paling postrocker style lagi nih.." Dan begitu salahnya saya ketika Dede dari Wastedrockers memutarkan single Hollow ketika saya berada di kantor labelnya.

Yang ada saya meminta Dede untuk terus memutarkan lagu Hollow, berulang kali. Saya tak pernah menemukan band shoegaze Jogja yang benar-benar purist (bebas dari hal-hal postrocking) sampai mendengarkan Annie Hall. Yang satu ini benar-benar pengecualian.

Yang ada di benak saya, Annie Hall seperti pergumulan noises dari band-band macam Slowdive, Chapterhouse, JMC, dan mungkin juga the Fleeting Joys. Dan apapun itu, saya benar-benar senang dengan band yang merupakan proyekan dari para personil the Talking Coasty, Cloud Burst dan Deadly Weapon.

Saya sudah memesan paket pre order album mereka di situs Hema Records, dan berharap bisa melihat live mereka suatu saat di Jakarta. Dan saya menantikan hal itu. Sangat menantikannya. Karena Annie Hall benar-benar membuat saya kecele.

https://soundcloud.com/hemarecords/annie-hall-hollow

Sabtu, 27 Agustus 2016

Alan Moulder Tentang Loveless, MBV, dan Kevin Shields

Album Loveless bak enigma. Penuh kisah bahkan drama. My Bloody Valentine melahirkan sebuah album yang imho meredifinisikan kembali tentang batas limit eksplorasi tekstur dan proses rekaman yang hanya ada di kepala tiap musisi, untuk hal ini, Kevin Shields.

Alan Moulder adalah engineer yang berhasil membantu Kevin Shields menerjemahkan kejeniusannya dalam sebuah album warna pink dengan gambar nggak jelas itu. Berikut saya copy paste saja artikel bagus banget dari situs polymathperspective tentang pengalamannya mengawal pengerjaan rekaman album yang dulu Pitchfork di tahun 1999 menyebutnya sebagai album terbaik di era 90an, lalu direvisi nomor dua terbaik setelah OK Computer. Fuck that!

Selamat menikmati.



Twenty years after its release, My Bloody Valentine’s second album, Loveless, is regarded as something of a masterpiece, yet at the time the story of its production threatened to overshadow the music. Contrary to its title, the album was a labour of love for guitarist, writer and singer, Kevin Shields, who spent two years battling to get the ideas from his head onto tape. Alan Moulder, the engineer who helped Kevin realise his goal, explains how the album that almost bankrupted Creation Records was made.


Loveless

“By the time I came in, Kevin was fed up with fighting with people,” says Alan Moulder, reflecting on the problems Kevin Shields was having during the recording of Loveless; an album that eventually took him two exhausting years to complete. “Creation had just come out of a distribution deal and money was short so they were putting My Bloody Valentine in budget studios and Kevin was struggling because quite often the engineers were also the studio owners and if anything was going wrong they would try and cover it up. So Kevin would not trust them and would move to another studio.
“Some of those studios were on a shoestring budget so they didn’t have full-time maintenance staff and there were always things that didn’t get fixed. Kevin would say something like, ‘I don’t think that mic is working properly,’ and the engineer would argue, ‘Oh yes it is!’
“They’d look at him as if to say, ‘Well, what do you know? I’m an engineer; you’re just the guitarist in an indie band!’ But I learned very quickly that if Kevin thought something wasn’t working, 99 percent of the time he was right. He has incredible hearing.
“Kevin’s comment was always, ‘I just want it to be decent,’ so from his point of view, quite rightly, a faulty microphone isn’t decent. He didn’t want something out-of-this-world, he just wanted everything to do what it should do.”
Although Creation Records didn’t have the finances to book My Bloody Valentine into major London recording studios, they could see that the band’s fan base was growing rapidly, and that it was worthwhile supporting Shields in his quest to get things right. Their solution was to hire Alan Moulder, who already had a reputation for getting good results. Alan was reassured by Creation boss, Alan McGee, that the project would take no longer than three weeks to finish off, and so he accepted the job and began assisting on the mixing of the band’s GliderEP.
“I got involved because I knew Alan McGee,” Alan explains. “I’d recorded Automatic for The Jesus and Mary Chain and Alan thought that that record sounded slick. So I was brought in as somebody who was considered to be a properly trained, posh engineer, who had worked on chart stuff like Depeche Mode and the Eurythmics. To Creation that meant high quality and that’s what they wanted me to bring to Loveless.
“So we’d go to a studio and if Kevin found that something wasn’t working properly, he’d leave the room while I’d investigate and deal with it. In the end he trusted me so that if I said it was fine, he could move on without having any niggling doubts in the back of his mind. And most of the time he was right, so I would go through it with the studio until it was fixed, or we came up with a way around it.
“The first thing I did with Kevin was mix the four-track Glider EP, and when I say mix, I was doing what I was told! Kevin mixed it and I was the engineer. That’s how we got our trust and a working relationship that was good.”


Assault & Battery 2 Studio control room: Alan’s current studio in West London

Recording The Bass
By the time Alan started work on Loveless, some time around the start of 1990, the drums and some of the rhythm guitars were already recorded. Although there had been some problems tracking the drums, Alan remembers that Kevin was reasonably happy with what he had on tape.
“Even back then Kevin really knew what was good quality was and what he would and wouldn’t settle for,” insists Alan, “so everything was good quality. The rhythm guitars were down and sometimes there was a guide bass, but the rest of the parts were in Kevin’s head. So we went through doing bass on all the tracks. We used a Steinberger bass with no head, so it was very ugly looking and nobody ever used it live, but it had a consistent tone that worked well with layered guitars.
“Before that they’d been using a Warwick bass which sounded better if you compared the two in solo, but in the track the Steinberger used to cut through. The worst thing about a lot of basses is that certain notes ring out, maybe 20dBs louder than other ones, which drives you nuts. This one was very even up and down the neck.
“I thought it sounded very good and Kevin liked it, but it had to have these specific Steinberger strings and we were changing them three times a day. Kevin always had to have the strings very fresh on guitars and so he’d change them as soon as they had lost their zing. So we cleared the whole of London out of these strings.
“He also had a Vox Tone Bender distortion pedal and used that on the bass pretty much all the time. There are lots of different models but he had a great one.”
“The bass went into a vintage Ampeg SVT amp, which was a pretty standard bass amp in those days. It was a big valve one with an 8×10 cabinet. We rented most of our amps from a vintage guitar and amp supplier called Harris Hire, and I’m sure it was one from them. Ampegs vary a lot but we got a good one.”
To capture the sound, Alan remembers positioning a Neumann U87 about three inches from the Ampeg and also believes that there was DI recording taken at the same time. The policy for recording was to eradicate the sound of the room and to avoid using compression, hence the need for a very consistent bass!
“Kevin didn’t like any room sound so the mics were as close as possible,” Alan recalls, “and we may have put a blanket over the whole setup to make it even deader!
“Compression wasn’t allowed; Kevin didn’t like it. I managed to get away with a tiny bit of compression on the backing vocals because I asked if I could try it and he said I could as long as he couldn’t hear it. But he’d test it by shouting into the microphone and if he could hear it ducking down he’d say there was too much compression! But his singing was about 15dBs lower than the shouting so really there wasn’t any compression at all.
“And there is no point ever trying to get one over because if you are caught out then the trust has gone, so you can’t do that, but the compressor added a tone that I liked, so I didn’t care. It sounded good and that’s all that mattered. I didn’t really do much creatively as an engineer at all.”
As for the bass DI signal, Alan can no longer recall whether or not it was used: “I’m pretty sure we recorded a DI but I can’t remember how we balanced it. We didn’t mix it to tape so they were on separate tracks if we did do one.”
Taking The Lead
After the bass, Alan remembers recording the lead guitar parts, but says that there was no consistent methodology. “Each song had a different approach. Kevin would have an idea for different amp and pedal setups and we’d try them out. On one song, for example, there were two amps facing each other, quite close together, with different tremolos on each amp and mics in between, so there was some kind of pulsating sound, as if they were pushing and pulling against each other.”
Kevin’s distortion sound was mostly created using effects pedals rather than the guitar amplifier settings. The pedals Alan most clearly remembers were the Roger Meyer Octave Fuzz and Active Fuzz. “We were using them a lot,” Alan insists. “Kevin used the Active Fuzz and Octave Fuzz together because you could drive the Octave Fuzz so that would respond with a weird gating effect. It would decay to a point and then shut the notes down in a way that he liked.
“But he had lots of other pedals too and he’d pick certain ones for a track. We had a Digitech Whammy pedal that did octaves when you pushed the pedal down, which he liked. He also had a wah wah and some other fuzz pedals including a Jim Dunlop one, I think.
“I seem to remember, all the rhythm guitars went through a 1960s Marshall head with an old 4×12 cab that matched the amp, and also a Vox AC30. The signal was split between the two amps and they were close mic’ed with SM57s right on the cone. I always mic guitar amps right on the cone and usually in the middle. If there are four cones I just pick the best one. Sometimes the cones sound different if the cab has been used on the road a lot, but normally they sound pretty similar. Sometimes I put a Shure SM57 and a Sennheiser 421 right in the middle as close to the grille as I can get, because I find that if I balance them 50/50, that generally sounds exactly how it sounds in the room, but on the Valentines I had one SM57 on the Marshall and another on the Vox. The guitars Kevin used for recording were normally a Fender Jaguar or Jazzmaster.
“We’d usually experiment with the sounds for quite a while and then he’d change the strings. Once we’d got the sound right I’d set the tape machine to cycle and leave the room, and he’d practice for about an hour. I’d be sat outside and he’d just be there on his own working it all out. For Kevin, it is not just the way he plays it, but also the way he makes the effects work and the way his guitar responded to the distortion.
“Eventually he’d say he was ready and we’d change the strings again. We’d record it all from top to bottom three times onto three different tracks. Then he’d pick one and say ‘Yes, that’s it!’ and it was normally the third take. There were never any drop-ins or any track comping – it would always be a complete performance.”
Coming and Going
Throughout the production of Loveless, Alan received many offers to work on other projects, the most notable of which was the Hormonally Yours album by Shakespeare’s Sister, which he completed in a couple of months. On another occasion he found time to mix Transvision Vamp’s album Little Magnets Versus the Bubble of Babble, again completing it and then returning to carry on with Loveless.
“I was doing very varied stuff at the time,” he recalls. “I worked on Loveless in lots of sections because I’d be offered a project and I’d ask Kevin if we’d be finished in time. He’d say, ‘Yes, we’ll be done by then,’ so I’d accept the project and, of course, we wouldn’t be finished and I’d have to go away. But it was good because we were working very nocturnal hours and the pace got slower and slower, so having a break meant I came back re-energised.
“But I kept coming back because I liked working with him. It was long, weird hours, but being in a studio with Kevin is fun. Even if you are not working you are having an amazing conversation. The guy is very interesting to be around so I felt I was part of something special.”
Just before Alan departed to work with Shakespeare’s Sister, Kevin started experimenting with a sampler to create some guitar textures for the song ‘To Here Knows When’. This was done by recording lots of guitar feedback to DAT tape, and then turning it into Akai S1000 samples which could be triggered from a keyboard. To Alan’s surprise, the experiments were still ongoing when he returned several months later. Alan attributes the slow progress to the new sampling technology, which not only took some time to master, but also offered the band the chance to try out new musical ideas.
“We’d started off moving at a fairly brisk pace, doing bass on maybe two or three tracks a day,” Alan recalls, “and then we got into the guitar overdubs and were doing one song a day. But after that Kevin’s energy was sapped and it started to become a slog. When I returned they had already been working on the sampling for eight weeks and I worked on it for another two weeks after that, so it was pretty slow.
“The sampling was uncharted territory. We didn’t know the gear properly – we had just gone from the S900 to the S1000 which was a massive jump – and there were lots of possibilities to explore. I remember there was what sounded like a blur of notes to me, but Kevin could hear that some were cutting off and weren’t playing properly, and we couldn’t understand why. Now it is obvious: we had overused the polyphony, but at the time we couldn’t work out why it wasn’t playing back. I don’t remember solving it but we managed to get it so he liked it.”
Alan believes that Kevin’s guitar feedback sampling experiments were an attempt to achieve a sound which had the same qualities as those of the flute, having previously used a flute sample on the track ‘Soon’.
“Kevin was into the flute,” explains Alan. “There is something organic and pure about it that he liked and the sampled feedback seemed to have a similar tone. The thing about the feedback is that it changes the longer you hold the key down, so you get all these weird changes and a bit of discordance and randomness that he liked as well.
“In the end Kevin mixed the feedback quite low in the track but it was the right level. It gave the song this bubbling little tone underneath. It is quite subtle but you couldn’t take it out because it was a major part of the track. Of course, the great thing about those records is that there is actually not that much on them. Pretty much everything fits on the 24-track, so, compared with records today, it’s pretty simple. It was all about sound and performance.”
Tape and Voice
Although Loveless was recorded in a large number of studios, Alan was able to get a consistent result by lining up each tape machine at the start of the session. Most sessions were done on Otari MTR90 24-track machines which, according to Alan, the lower-end studios tended to use because they were considerably less expensive that Studers.
Before starting work on the lead vocals, Kevin took the unusual step of laying down the album’s backing vocals without any lead vocal guide at all.
“It was amazing,” says Alan. “I kept saying to him, ‘Do you not want to put a guide vocal on,’ and he would say, “No, I know what it is going to be.’
“We built a sound booth with a blanket over the top so that it was completely dead, and we had a Neumann U87 going into a UREI 1176 compressor, which was set on 8:1. I always tend to use higher ratios, but if the gain reduction needle moved I’d be amazed. It didn’t really do any compressing, but just running the signal through the 1176 adds a nice sheen to the top end. There was no EQ, or if there was it was very, very minimal.”
One aspect of the vocal recording Alan recognises as being different to how most people work today was the use of the in-house mixing desks preamps, rather than dedicated preamp hardware. “Nowadays everybody brings in vintage Neve 1073s and API mic pres; but we only ever used the desk,” reveals Alan. “We worked a lot at Protocol Studios which had a Soundcraft and a DDA, so we were not using high-end mic pres. I remember doing the backing vocals in room B at Protocol on a Soundcraft.”
“The tambourine, which Kevin played, was recorded using the same U87 setup, but without the tent. He’d stand about three feet away from the mic and play. He was very good at playing the tambourine – it’s not easy.”
The lead vocals were the last tracks to be recorded, by which time Alan was being called away to work with The Jesus and Mary Chain and Swervedriver.
“I was there for a couple of the lead vocals,” says Alan. “Quite often you work on tracks that sound amazing, but when the lead vocal goes on it is a disappointment because you have a certain expectation, but none of theLoveless ones were like that. They were at least as good as I’d hoped they would be, and some were better. That’s pretty good when you’ve been hearing the backing tracks on their own for about a year. I remember thinking that was quite remarkable.”
Although Alan didn’t mix the album, he did find time to visit The Church studio in Crouch End, to see how the mixing was coming along.
“Kevin was sub-compressing the drums pretty hard to get them to cut through,” remembers Alan. “It’s the age-old mix problem that we all have to fight with when there are really loud, overwhelming guitars. It is hard to get the whole drum pattern loud without it taking over, and if you are compressing it hard and you hit a cymbal, that’s all you hear, because the cymbals and hi-hats get through the compression.”
Another factor which made it even harder to balance the drums and guitars was Kevin’s dislike of panning, as Alan explains. “Getting your drums to cut through is not easy if you have everything in the middle and most ofLoveless is mono. When I mixed with Kevin on the Glider EP, I said ‘Everything is down the middle, Kevin, do you not want to pan anything off?’ He said ‘No, I don’t like it.’
“I remember getting away with panning the tambourine slightly to the right because he couldn’t hear the difference, but that was the only thing. If he couldn’t hear it, he didn’t mind.”


Assault & Battery 2 Studio

Release and Reception
Today, Loveless is widely regarded as one of the most influential records of the 1990s, but when it was released, at the end of 1991, it received mixed reviews. Alan believes that the recording process overshadowed the music, and that the expectation was too great.
“As we were making the record, the Glider and Tremolo EPs came out and the band was getting bigger and bigger. Everyone was massively influenced by the previous record, so their reputations and their cool points were going up through the roof. You could feel that, but you also felt the pressure and expectation.
“When Loveless came out you couldn’t read a review that didn’t go on about how long it took to make. Everyone was saying, ‘Why did it take so long?’, but the important thing is the quality of the record.
“It’s good that Loveless is now so revered because Kevin put his soul on the line. I remember when it was being mixed he was talking to me about how he thought he was losing his mind, and his hearing! He’d toiled over that record and by the end it had just about sapped the whole of him.” TF

Senin, 08 Agustus 2016

See The Eye - Social Bribe

See The Eye adalah band nugaze or shoegaze whatever you want to call it dari Jakarta. Single terbaru berjudul Social Bribe yang patut disimak.



Band ini sebenarnya pecahan dari Deasterina, dimana dua personilnya, vokalis dan gitaris, memutuskan mundur dan mendirikan band baru bernama See The Eye. Personilnya adalah Yudhitaprawestiah (Vocal),Harry Zulhazs (Lead guitar),Danny Yuwanda (Ritem Guitar), Abee Kusmara  (Bass), dan  Arya Adita ( Drum )



Single Social Bribe menjadi salam pembuka dari band ini. Materinya oke juga, bisa menjadi single perkenalan bagi para penikmat musik sejenis. Penasaran juga untuk melihat penampilan live mereka kelak di atas panggung. Untuk sementara ini, bisa disimak lagu Social Bribe di laman soundcloud mereka https://soundcloud.com/seetheeye/social-bribe


Jumat, 24 Juni 2016

Swervedriver Gig at Singapore, 15 June 2016


Beberapa hari lalu, saya dan beberapa teman menonton penampilan Swervedriver di Hood Bar & Cafe di Singapura. Tiketnya murah, Rp500ribu saja. Secara keseluruhan, penampilan mereka tetap tight dan keren meski hanya ditonton mungkin sekitaran 100an orang (mungkin juga bisa kurang).

Mungkin karena acaranya memang dibuat dadakan dan memanfaatkan waktu transit para personil Swervedriver sebelum memulai tur di NZ dan Aussie. Tapi malah bikin kami bisa leluasa untuk obrol2, poto-poto, dan legalisir apapun yang kami bawa dari tanah air hahaha

Jadi saya ingin share saja pepotoan dari konser Swervedriver untuk manteman semua :) selamat ngiri eh maksudnya menikmati! Konser mini yang menyenangkan!

stage panggung di hood bar & cafe

mick quinn basis supergrass menjadi basis adisional tur swervedriver

adam franklin dan jimmy hartridge, dua personil asli swervedriver
gitar jazzmaster adam franklin
efek rig milik jimmy hartridge
detil efek rig disisi kiri immy h
d etilrig effect jimmy di sisi kanan
rig efek adam franklin
rig efek adam franklin di sisi kirinya
kontingen endonesa poto bareng sebelum berpisah!
set list
legalisir!

Btw, beberapa hari lalu saya mengirim email ke Jane Blondel dari Songs For Children yang membawa Swervedriver ke Singapura, dan email dibalas, dan isinya bikin saya sumringah :D mau tau apa balasannya? 

"Swervedriver would love to go to Indonesia, next year"

Fuckin' A! 

Senin, 06 Juni 2016

How and Why I Love a Band Named Swervedriver

Tanggal 15 Juni 2016, Swervedriver akan manggung di Singapura. Dan saya berharap tak ada aral melintang untuk menonton mereka.




Swervedriver adalah band favorit saya jika bicara soal band shoegaze. Ketika dua minggu lalu ada kabar mereka akan manggung di Singapura, saya langsung terhenyak, karena tak terlintas siapa juga yang mau mengundang band ini ke negara terdekat dari Indonesia. Maksudnya, mereka Swervedriver. Bukan Ride atau Slowdive. Tak begitu banyak yang menikmati musik mereka.

Band ini terlalu penting untuk saya cuekin, bahkan, jujur saja, ketika tahun lalu Ride dan Slowdive manggung di Singapura, meski saya pengen nonton, tapi sebegitu inginnya, tak nonton juga tak apa. Namun Swervedriver berbeda. Karena ada tiga band favorit saya, dan harus nonton mereka, yaitu MBV, Swervedriver, dan Medicine. Semacam bucket list saya!

Bicara soal Swervedriver, band ini benar-benar memikat saya lewat album-albumnya. Band asal kota Oxford, UK, yang berteman dengan Ride, yang mana juga membantu mereka untuk dikenalkan kepada Alan McGee. Bos Creation Records ini kemudian merilis ketiga album mereka. Jadi jika Alan McGee sudah oke sama sebuah band, bisa dipastikan keren lah hahaha

Sebelum mengenal Swervedriver, saya sudah mendengar band-band shoegaze macam Slowdive atau MBV dan lainnya. Suatu ketika teman saya menjual sebuah kaset Swervedriver dari album Mezcal Head, dan bilang ke saya kalau band ini shoegaze. Saya beli, dan ketika diputar, cuma bisa bingung, ini shoegaze? Kok beda yah? Nggak ngiung ngiung macam MBV atau berdelay ria kayak Slowdive hahahha



Tanpa sadar selama sebulan lebih kaset itu saya putar terus di tape deck dan walkman. Saya putar terus jika di angkot atau ke rumah teman hahaha Band ini kok berbeda dengan MBV atau bahkan Slowdive. Mereka lebih rough, lebih intense, grungey in some ways, tapi punya feel yang sama dengan band-band shoegaze lainnya. Kayak antara Sonic Youth, Dinosaur jr. atau Husker Du yah. Tapi, maaf, hahaha lebih keren dari ketiga band itu hahaha

Coba dengarkan lagu-lagu di album tersebut, seperti Duel (pernah masuk lagu di game Road Rash kalo gak salah), Duress (intro wah-nya, adalah yang paling keren sedunia menurut gue), atau lagu terakhir berjudul Never Lose The Feeling. Beberapa lagu bahkan pernah saya cover di Damascus. Materi di album ini bagus banget.

Sejak itu saya mulai mencari album2 lainnya, dari band yang dimotori Adam Franklin, Steve George, Jimmy Hartridge,, dan Jez Hindmarsh. Album pertama mereka Raise, juga keren banget, bermaterikan lagu semacam Rave Down, Sandblasted dan Son of Mustangs yang rough banget, memancing orang untuk stagediving.

Album ketiga mereka Ejector Seat Reservation dan keempat 99th Dream, saya suka. Ada sedikit perubahan musik yang pelan-pelan sedikit kalem. Untungnya saya tak kesulitan untuk mendapatkan album-album tersebut, yang ketika itu mungkin 12 tahun yang lalu, dimana siapa pula yang mau dengar band semacam ini. CD macam Swervedriver bisa saya dapatkan hanya 50 ribuan ketika itu.




Perburuan pun berlanjut dengan mencari vinyl-vinyl mereka. Harga vinyl album first pressing mereka sudah tinggi. Beruntung saya mendapatkan versi reissue limited edition untuk album pertama dan kedua dengan harga bagus yang kini harga jualnya sudah kayak album aslinya di Discogs. Dan koleksi lainnya pun semakin tak tertahankan untuk saya beli yang kebanyakan di Discogs.

Bicara aspek musiknya, Swervedriver mungkin bisa dibilang paling alternative rock untuk sebuah band shoegaze. Mungkin karena pengaruh dari band2 US yang diatas saya sebutkan yah. Band saya Damascus pun berdiri tak lepas dari pengen punya band macam Swervedriver. Meski pada akhirnya nggak semua lagu kayak band tersebut, tetapi, iya, Damascus memang terpengaruh banget sama musik mereka.

Mereka kebetulan reuni tiga atau empat tahun lalu, dan baru saja merilis album kelima mereka setelah terakhir di tahun 1998. Meski ada sedikit perubahan di musik, lebih berkembang karena Adam Franklin di album2 solo-nya mulai sedikit psikedelik, namun album kelima berjudul I Wasn't Born To Lose You mendapat review yang bagus, termasuk oleh Pitchfork.

Nggak mudah juga sih untuk band shoegaze jebolan 90an bisa melahirkan album terbaru yang bagus paska reunian, contohnya The Telescopes atau Kitchen of Disticntion. Swervedriver bisa melewati transisi tersebut, tanpa harus memaksakan menciptakan energi yang sama puluhan tahun lalu.

Dan kini Swervedriver akan manggung di Singapura, dengan tambahan adisional seperti basis dari Supergrass, Mick Quinn, dan Mikey Jones di drum. Saya sih sempat menonton live mereka di Youtube, dan sepertinya energi mereka masih sama, belum berkurang banyak. Penasaran seperti apa mereka ketika tepat di depan mata.

Saya sudah beli tiket, dan menonton mereka ketika bertepatan bulan puasa haha Yah, kapan lagi, dan berharap bisa legalisir beberapa koleksi saya bersama band tersebut. Band ini terlalu penting untuk dilewatkan bagi saya. Dan kebetulan saya suka :D







Minggu, 29 Mei 2016

StrawberryWine - Taste Me

Tak pernah terlintas band ini akan memiliki sebuah rilisan fisik. Berbekal sejumput materi yang terekam, dan sesi interview. Band yang ajaib!



Ketika Dede dari wastedrockers bilang kalau labelnya akan merilis StrawberryWine, pertanyaan pertama, emang ada gitu materi yang terekam selain lagu Taste Me? Ini band yang ajaib, punya materi yang bagus dimana saya pernah mencuri dengar sesi latihan mereka di sebuah studio di Kalibata, namun hanya satu dua lagu saja yang terekam.

Orang-orang di band ini, Bernard (vokal, gitar), Bintang (gitar), Mamat (bass), dan Tiok (drum). Fuzz, distortion, dan lekungan nada dari tremolo arm. Dan single Taste Me, memang mengesankan. Di cd ini, ada materi berjudul Wastage yang direkam dari beberapa live. Jujur, cd ini lebih tepat disebut sebagai usaha archiving dari wastedrockers akan keberadaan band ini.

Tapi masih penting untuk diperoleh cd ini, karena ada cd kedua berisikan sesi interview Dede bersama para personil StrawberryWine tentang macam hal yang pastinya lumayan penting. Band yang ngeselin memang.

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Jika ingin mendengar teaser lagu Taste Me, bisa cek link artikel StrawberryWine yang lawas di blog ini. Atau ke wastedrockers.wordpress.com dan pesan cd bisa ke labelnya.


Senin, 23 Mei 2016

Heals - Wave (RSD 2016 Cassette Limited Edition)


“Wave”, single kedua dari band muda Bandung yang paling diantisipasi rilisan debutnya tahun ini, Heals. Album debut mereka akan dirilis oleh label indie lokal yang paling konsisten hingga saat ini, FFWD Records.
Waduh, berasa kembali ke era emas nu-gaze circa 2005-2007 nih…❤ (taken from wastedrockers.wordpress.com)

no doubt about it, di rilisan kaset limited edition utk RSD 2016 dicetak hanya 125 keping berisikan dua lagu, Wave dan Myselves, band asal Bandung ini benar-benar menghantui dari aspek musikalitasnya. Like it or not, materi mereka menjanjikan, dan kita lihat seperti apa album penuh Heals yang akan dirilis FFWD Records.

*thanks buat obos si label yang nyimpenin satu kaset buat saya :)) saya bayar kok

Sabtu, 07 Mei 2016

Kick!

Band ini namanya Kick! Menarik..

Mungkin bisa dibilang jarang band semacam ini. Kalaupun ada, biasanya muncul dari band-band yang dinaungi Heyho Records (label ini sudah bubar). Semacam indiepop yang berisik.

Jika kalian mampir ke laman soundcloud mereka di https://soundcloud.com/kickkickband , ada tiga lagu masing-masing berjudul Rakapoo, Black Hit, dan Behind. Materinya bagus kok, seperti band macam The Suncharms atau JMC, atau mungkin mereka terpengaruh juga dengan band-band Heyho Records. Who knows, tapi Kick! menarik untuk disimak.

Personilnya adalah Drum/Vocal: Aidil
Guitar/Bass/Vocal: Dimas
Bagi yang ingin mengundang mereka ke acara kalian, ada kontaknya di soundcloud mereka. Coba diundang, saya jadi ingin dengar live mereka.

Selasa, 05 April 2016

Noirless - Indecisive (Single)

Wow! Satu lagi band shoegaze lokal bermunculan, kali ini dari Bandung, namanya Noirless. Dan pastinya tidak noiseless, dan shoegazing as cool as fuck.



Youtuber bernama Ryoka menaruh link lagu dari Noirless di facebook IndonesianShoegazer. Dia ketik 'bandung, euy'. Well, sepertinya ini menarik setelah kemunculan Heals, band shoegaze apalagi yang muncul dari kota ini. Sudah lama tak muncul lagi geliat band shoegaze bandung setelah era band-band maritime records.

pas denger, wow, keren ini. jarang juga denger band semacam ini. single indecisive punya materi yang at least nggak akan bikin kita lupa lagu ini punya siapa. materinya kuat. saya akan nekat saja untuk menyebutkan band ini hampir mirip seperti  sugarstar. hah, sugarstar!? bukan dalam arti negatif, lebih reminding me a lot bout that fuckin great shoegaze band itu aja.

saya akan menanti rilisan fisik Noirless yang terdiri dari Rama Mazaya (Guitar&Vocal) Aryandra Kareem (Guitar&Vocal) Bayu Arifianto (Bass), dan tentu saja aksi live mereka. jika ada yang tahu kabari yah di facebook grup. penasaran. asli.

follow mereka di
https://soundcloud.com/noirless_band
https://twitter.com/noirless_

Sabtu, 02 April 2016

Hellens - Distancia EP Pre Order

Bersama Gerpfast Kolektif, Hellens bersiap merilis EP perdana bertitel Distancia.



Pre order materi digital via bandcamp mereka sudah dibuka beberapa hari lalu. Jika melirik di laman Gerpfast Kolektif, ada dua lagu yang bisa didengar gratis, dari enam lagu yang akan hadir di EP Distancia. Fadeaway dan Losing Distance (old ver.) benar-benar menarik untuk disimak dari band shoegaze asal Tangerang ini. Berasa 90's dan referensi musik mereka tak jauh dari band-band Creation Records dan 4AD. and that's a good thing, always haha

Saya pribadi tak sabar kapan bisa melihat mereka manggung secara live. EP Distancia sendiri juga akan dirilis dalam bentuk kaset, dan akan dirilis pada Records Store Day 2016 nanti, tanggal 16-17 april. Kabarnya sih kalau jadi, untuk di Jakarta, kaset EP Distancia akan dijual di booth Anoa Records pada saat RSD 2016 di Pasar Santa hahahaha :D

Mari kita tunggu!


Heals - Wave (New Single)

Interesting video for their new single, Heals. Single yang patut disimak dari band asal Bandung ini, karena sekarang ada sisi feminin-nya, dengan vokal female melatari Wave. Mari kita tunggu kapankah album penuh mereka akan dirilis oleh ffwd records.




Rabu, 03 Februari 2016

Gazing on Indonesia's Shoegaze Album on 2015

Tahun 2015 berlalu menyisakan beberapa rilisan fisik shoegaze lokal, tahun yang terbilang aktif. Mulai dari rilisan vinyl sampai kaset. Berikut rilisan 2015 yang mengesankan dan telah terekam di blog kesayangan kita semua. Maaf artikelnya gak bisa panjang, rilisan 2015 terbilang banyak. Alasan.

Indonesian Shoegazer Compilation - Holy Noise

Holy Noise

 I dont know, feeling saya mengatakan kalau Holy Noise bisa masuk ke daftar album kompilasi indies lokal yang esensial.(Wastedrockers)



 Reissued Themilo



Overall, rilisan terbaru Let Me Begin plus 4 trek lagu unreleased, menjadi rilisan yang penting untuk dimiliki. Penting karena menjadi awal musik shoegaze di negeri ini.



Elemental Gaze - Elemental

album Elemental patut dimiliki, sebuah album yang dirilis Sorge Records dengan materi yang apik, solid, dan tertata dengan baik. Spacey and gazing, beautiful and noisey. 


Intenna - Helter Skelter

Sebuah album perdana dari band shoegaze kota Malang yang memikat, Intenna telah hadir. Judulnya Helter Skelter, a parade of beautiful noises.



Deasterina - Demo EP

Band baru asal Jakarta bernama Deasterina merilis sebuah demo EP yang patut disimak. Satu lagi shoegazer baru dengan materi yang tak mengecewakan.