OK ladies and gentlemen, I have with me quite a number of Indonesian zines, tapes & CDs gathered (given & traded) during my band’s recent trip to Java and I’ve been trying to find free time to write about them and share it you BUT so far I only managed to do TWO! Pathetic really.

Anyway, before it become as basi as the last Aedes zine in 1996 (which never came out!), here are the reports. More will be added to the list as time permits.

RAMPOG JB
Perlawanan pro-cassette
(JB Records)

A bit like rock kapak meets 80s not-so-speedy speed-metal trying to get into the neo-street-punk territory, featuring dense rock guitar sound which reminded me of less-heavy early 90s Cromok and songs that flits between singalong celebration of their hometown (Parung) to simplistic political sloganeering against the authorities, the state and yes, wars.

If you like the early Bollocks, with a bit of rock-kapak-ism or early Cromok, it’s highly possible you’re gonna dig RAMPOG JB. This 14-song cassette came out in 2004 and traces of the band on the net is pretty scarce, but the band is from the chilly Bogor area which is pretty active with tonnes of DIY shows at the IdeGila Music Room.

Rating:

JB Records, Jl. H Mawi, No. 14, Gg Musolah, Nurul Hikmah, Parung, Bogor, Indonesia

THE REFUSAL / BUNGA BANGKAI / NONSENSE IDEA
Continue or Die 3-Way Split pro-cassette
(Jublek Records)

Another Bogor product from 2004 featuring BUNGA BANGKAI (from the same area) with NONSENSE IDEA and THE REFUSAL, both from Jakarta Selatan. BUNGA BANGKAI apparently played the Jakarta Bersatu festival last year and I’m glad to hear they are still around.

Of the three bands here, BUNGA BANGKAI tramples over the rest in its irreverent zeal at mixing bits of rough and screechy grindcore elements with intense (and funny) mix of lightened power-violence & fastcore; all usually started with some groovy hardcore breakdowns. Charles Bronson-esque but utterly kelakore!

Their lyrics is pretty oblique too, check out Cinta Semalam; “cinta semalam, seorang pelacur, uang birahi yang dia cari, hanya kepuasan sex yang dia inginkan, tak peduli orang mencaci maki” To see a love song title such as that delivered in the band’s falling-down-the-stairs manner is a treat! But hmmm, is that admiration for a prostitute’s resilience, or is it a put down?

Anyway, the other two bands are both very different, with NONSENSE IDEA being a weak singalong street-punk and Oi! mix while THE REFUSAL threads the UK82 bits reminding me of OPPOSITION PARTY’s mid-period. Not great but like i said, BUNGA BANGKAI’s 10 storming tracks made this tape worthwhile.

Rating: for BUNGA BANGKAI
while the others are both Rating:

BUNGA BANGKAI can be contacted via the label itself, Jublek Records c/o Cepot, Jl. H Mawi, No. 14, Gg Musolah, Nurul Hikmah, Parung, Bogor, Indonesia (same address as above)

THE REFUSAL - therefusal at hotmail.com

NONSENSE IDEA - Jackie, Jl. Lebak Bulus III, No. 8, Rt. 04/Rw.08, Jakarta Selatan 12430 Indonesia

(more coming!!)

The Garrison
The Garrison CD-R
(Concussion Records)

With recent punk/reggae sensations Kuchalana retreated to an indefinite and rather mysterious hiatus, I find it exhilarating to know that The Garrison is still here; more active than ever and most importantly, sticking tight to their The Clash meets The Members route, with all the reggae bits intact.

This CD-R features five tunes, all rough’n'ready recordings made a few months ago in Subang; some are straight-ahead classic Clash-y street-punk while others are ponderous dubby-reggae. Best track for me is still Rupert Murdoch,; a tune they recorded for the (still ‘coming soon”) Ricecooker/Knot Records comp recently, a sharp and spiky number reminding me of Australia’s H-Block meeting The Angelic Upstarts.

Hidden in track number five is a live tune recorded amongst the chatter and chinks of a club somewhere, a bit like The Specials more laidback nightclubbing tracks, all jazzy, soulful and relaxed lovers rock, skanking the night away. Utter cool! Listen to it down there. I think it’s called “Moonlight Rebel” or something along the same line.

Rating:

The Garrison on MySpace

Available at The Ricecooker Shop for RM5

PROLETAR
Back To Hatevolution CD
(multiple-label release)

First of all, I would like to advise you people to NOT subject yourselves to one hour plus of blasting grindcore right after waking up. You see, I spent last night reading Redemption Song: The Definitive Biography of Joe Strummer, a book that has been taking a lot of my free time these past few weeks, and this time it kept me awake until 6 am.

When I woke up at at 10 this morning, I knew that I need more of that deep slumber. My head’s thumping and eyes blurry, but this PROLETAR CD stared at me. I’ve been ignoring it for a while now, so…

Gurghhhhhh!!

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Monster Sakura
Hancur Tulang Belikat Demo CD-R
(Youthrustrecords)

Bought this at Sunday’s Never Built Ruins show, and it comes in an impressive off-white art-card CD envelope, with the artwork silk-screened in grey on the surface. Very beautiful indeed. Very tastefully done.

I’ve never heard of the band before, but the sleeve had me curious. I was hoping for a fully-matured and artful hardcore-punk band with playful but deep metaphors behind the 5 songs included.

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PLAGUE OF HAPPINESS
Kawan CD
(Nyaring Records)

After so many recording attempts for this project; time and time again being ripped-off by studios, dragged around by crap production people, offers by a major label (who threatened them with total boycott if they didn’t sign the contract!) etc., Johor’s main ska-punk proponent PLAGUE OF HAPPINESS finally decided to give their best in a posh studio in Singapore; self-financed, self-dictated!

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It’s been an enjoyable xmas holiday these past few days. Been out to friends parties and dinners and also had a bit of time to try catching up with some reviews before the year runs out. So here’s the first batch of CDs I’ve gone through, there will be another batch in the next few days. Read on…

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The band Annalise had a song called “Too Much Music, Too Many Bands” and this is exactly what I am feeling here sitting in the shop at 10 AM in the morning surrounded with all these cassettes, CDs and what-nots.

My aim today is to do a few mini reviews on some new music the shop is carrying and we have a few of them on the shelves. Some are cool, some are lukewarm but I’ll try to be true to the aim here, and that is to document what I can (without too much “advertorialising”, if you know what I mean)

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Devilica
The Journey Continues CD
(Third Arm Records)

Blood On Wedding Dress
Blood On Wedding Dress CD
(Satire Records, Japan)

Seems like speeding at breakneck velocity is no longer a must but going at it with the agility of The Fantastic Four’s Human Torch is also one of the main pillars.

Devilica and Blood On Wedding Dress are intense young men going for the kill, zig-zagging through a warped and chaotic sonic tapestry with carefully-honed skill and precision. They are able to stop on a dime and then turn around 270 degrees without a pause, and they would leap over the walls in a single bound.

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Bannbodo
1313 CD-R
(self-release)

About a year ago a friend of mine, desperate to form a new band after relocating to KL from Penang, was going to try out and play guitar for “Band Bodoh”.

At that point I didn’t know of any band by that ridiculous name, or even why anyone would want to call his band as such! However, I like the self-deprecative slant.

A few weeks later the friend told me he’s not gonna be fitting well in the band. “Those guys ah, they play metal!,” he said, extremely exasperated. Y’see, he’s into shoe-gazing mid-80s indie with droning wall-of-sound guitars (think early Ride & My Bloody Valentine) and being in a metal band would be terribly unfortunate. Yup, he was desperate but not that desperate!

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PUSHER / THE PIPS
Split-Demo 2007 CD-R
(Knot Records)

A few weeks ago the recently revitalised Pusher (with guitarist Tholib back in the fold) went to Sri Gombak to record several songs for a split-release with Gasoline Grenade.

This is the studio where Carburetor Dung recorded our new album about a month ago. The new space is a remnant of the old Dreamwalk Studio (the outfit who recorded the Naked Butterfly’s debut and The Pilgrims 2nd album) but it’s very rundown and now only doing vocal recordings by nasyid groups and political speeches!

Anyway, a few days later the resulting recording was brought to The Ricecooker Shop for us to hear, and we found out that the recording is pretty good especially for a completely live set-up BUT, yeah, there’s a but… Pusher uses two guitarists and the problem was that the two guitarists used different tuners to tune their guitars.

Now remember this kids, if your band have two guitarists or two guitars, do tune up your guitars using the SAME tuner! Especially before recording! The Pusher guys didn’t and so one of the guitars turned out to be NOT in tune with the other.

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ricenotes; Nizang mentioned about his new blog of reviews in a comment yesterday and I decided to call him up and hijack the whole thing into this blog. I’ve been trying to get people to contribute to this site forever, yet friends are still churning out writings on their own blogs. So you want to have your own thing going, fair enough but hey, pass some of it here lah! This site is supposed to be a collaborative effort, it a community thing and it’s getting really boring doing it all on my own lah! So yeah, terima kasih banyok, Nizang!

Brain Sketching Introduction

Hi! Peace be upon you! Welcome to this newly made blog.

My label just released a CD and we felt it’s hard to expose our CDs since there’s no active and consistant fanzine around here nowadays. We don’t wanna send our releases to big magazines like ROTTW or Konsert to review. The local scene needes a channel/media for their stuffs to be reviewed. So, that’s why I decided to upload all these reviews I did here. It’s actually writtten for my fanzine. But to wait until the zine is released, the reviews will be outdated. I’ll still put out zines, no worries.

Btw, the blog name is inspired by The Rotten’s (early 90’s punk/oi band from my hometown, Kuala Terengganu) demo tape title. I define it as ‘to convey what you have in your mind, ideas or messages. Thanks!

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“Apa band-band yang best kat Jerman sekarang eh?”

Itu dia antara soalan-soalan penting yang kami ujarkan kepada ahli-ahli kumpulan 4-Sivits yang bertandang di Ricecooker baru baru nih. So, they all sat around the table, discussed among them and wrote a few names.

Kita check serta tengok satu-persatu dan rumuskan pendapat kami tentang mereka:

DEAN DIRG - hardcore punk sekolah lama, stail Amerika awal-80an. Amat cargas, laju, pendek serta penuh bertenaga. Gitar penuh spikes, raw full-chords jabs and very pogo-friendly.

Satu lagi, plus points yang memang dipandang tinggi di Ricecooker; vokalis dia ada misai, jugak afro kental yang tak MTV.

Recording yang perlu dicari: 26 Kicks to Make The Whole World Pay CD, keluaran Dead Beat Records yang kumpulkan dua keluaran awalan mereka.

myspace.com/deandirg | deandirg.net

Keputusan Muktamad: Memang best.

MORE BANDS BELOW:

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Burning Civilians
Demo 2006 CD-R
(Imaginasi Records)

Burning Civilians is from Perak (I think they from Kinta or somewhere nearby) and I like the name a lot! Been seeing the moniker on some gig flyers recently, so I’m quite excited to get this demo at the Terengganu Raya gig.

There are nine songs here, all rendered with clear recording but they are all weakly-played with not much meat in it. I think the band has enthusiastic singers and band members but they lack a certain spark that would make it special.

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Steve Towson & The Conscripts
Shah Mat CD
(Criminall Records / Redneck Records)

Australian troubadour Steve Towson is a man driven. Right from the point where his first CD-single (When The Revolution Comes / It’s Breaking) was released in 2001, Steve has been keeping on keeping on.

He put out at least one recording each year and never stopped playing, travelling, gigging around half of the world. At one point he was “supporting” Billy Bragg’s Australian tour, that is by busking outside of the venues where Billy Bragg and his entourage were performing!

And as you may have known, the man is no stranger to these shores, especially the DIY punk scene in general. He has been visiting Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and playing with local punk/HC bands at small clubs and jam studios all over.

Steve’s first album, In A Shattered State CD (2002), 2nd single The Madness Of King George CD and second album, 1 Shot At Freedom (both released in 2003) all feature him alone; a punk rock folk singer with his lonesome raw electric guitar giving the world a piece of his mind.

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The Flesh Happening
The Flesh Happening CD
(TFH)

Anal Joy. Shit On Me. The De Sade Suite. Bleed. These are the songtitles on Flesh Happening’s CD they sent over to me over five months ago. Yup. I’ve been sitting on those review CDs again; but let not lose ourselves over my predilection for classic Melayu procrastination, Flesh Happening is a top band and it’s my duty to convert all of you readers into blathering worshippers.

About six months ago, I came across The Flesh Happening’s website. I listened to their song Kamikaze and immediately felt this sense of joy and utmost exhilaration. I wanted more and boy, I was lucky. The site was offering anyone who would write a free promo CD, that is if that anyone would send a picture of his or her “rude bits”.

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