Laut Loud (((~~~)))

Born in Ubud, Bali, Putu Septa inherits natural talent as a gamelan player from his grandfather. Despite being stereotyped as a mountain guy, his compositions expressed the opposite of calm and quiet. Founded and using the gamelan set designed by Putu Septa, Nata Swara is actively producing new compositions, exploring classical gamelan music, as well as instilling, mobilizing, and increasing cooperation.

ROLLFAST is an enthusiastically psych rock band from Bali. Rollfast has learned to intergrate their music with contemporary approach. They soon evolved into an extended basement studio jam, exploring a variety of sounds and arrangements. Rollfast progressively creates eclectic materials consist of eccentric mixtures of krautrock, gamelan, electronic noise, free jazz, and more. Here Rollfast share "Segar'a", a piece composed for Laut Loud.

Kadapat has a strange tendency to pit contradictory forces against one another — not just tradition and modernity, digital and analog, but also cultural traditions that were never meant to intersect.

GABBER MODUS OPERANDI is an accidental project founded by Kasimyn and Ican Harem. Born out of a shared obsession for all sorts of high-octane, fast-paced sounds, they explode an extensive range of influences into vibrant, outrageous productions. Together, the duo fuse the challenging sounds of gabber, footwork, grindcore, and noise with a number of uniquely Indonesian sounds such as jathilan (a trance dance in which an animal spirit possesses the body), dangdut koplo (a subgenre of a popular folk music), and funkot (reminiscent of both European happy hardcore as well as dangdut).iption goes here

MAMA ESTHER has fought hard to keep her ancestor’s stories alive. She has perfected the art of jungga – an all-encompassing term for the sparse, haunting form of lyrical storytelling practiced throughout the isolated island. Improvisational and spoken in a poetic form of the Sumbanese language only taught to jungga singers, it provides an opportunity for its artists to greet newcomers and old friends alike, while singing pretty laments about current affairs at the island.

Jekshon is famous throughout the island, but finding him requires a superhuman feat. The young jungga prodigy lives a solitary life in the remote plains of East Sumba, barely accessible by road and almost certainly beyond most cell reception. Once you find him and get him to sing, though, the journey would be worth it. His eerily haunting voice, mature far beyond his years, strikes out without the naivety or rawness one expects of a young singer. Instead he is assured, expressive in his freeform poetry, and insolent enough to take on some complex melodic shifts in his singing.

There was a time when Tesla Manaf was Indonesian jazz's golden boy. His sophisticated licks and virtuosic guitar playing led to comparisons to Pat Metheny, a series of well-received albums, and tours abroad. Then, of course, he decided to rip it up and start all over again.

Arriving onboard Arka Kinari mid-tour, he found himself in unfamiliar surroundings. Semarang's harbor -- one of the busiest in Central Java -- has experienced periodic floods and the entire coastline is slowly sinking to the sea. Amidst this macabre backdrop, his music becomes the soundtrack of encroaching doom.

Three things make Bawean unique- a devotion to Islam, to martial arts, and to the sea. So when Arka Kinari dropped anchor in Bawean and broke bread with a local pesantren, Penaber, we asked if some of these future sailors could demonstrate their skills atop our vessel. They responded by sending what seemed like an entire village of musicians, clerics, martial artists, and aspiring sailors under the banner of their troupe, Rasbuba.

After the sunset swordplay finished and the cameras were put down, a hallal fiesta commenced, with guests and Arka Kinari playing drums and dancing as the sky shifted from blues to violets to a tapestry of stars.

It's been a slow burn for Monohero. The trio from Malang has slowly staked their claim for being one of the country's most interesting psychedelic bands. Combining electronic music and vintage-futuristic projection art, their performances are an immersive and impressive artistic journey.

And then there's the not-small matter of Arie W. Omen's vocals, clearly inspired by his East Javanese roots and a deep dive into the region’s archaic philosophy. At times subtly straddling the melodies and other times almost fraying under the pressure, Omen’s vocals are a modern approach to Javanese mantras – born under the ominous creep of monoculture, as kampungs give way to shopping malls and forests are felled for suburbs.

DThe furious din of hadrah kuntulan is their rhythm of their resistance – a tradition preserved and interpreted here by local group Uni Osing. Songs of love, mantras recalling their ancestors, and elegant melodies of praise are accompanied by frantic interlocking drums and careening violins.

Uni Osing makes music that is as challenging, uncompromising, and relentless as Banyuwangi. Beyond the spectacle of their performance, though, lies an underlying tone of poignancy. A month before this video was released, our crew received news that pak Buang, the violinist and elder statesman of the group, had passed away.

We feel honored that pak Buang and his group has entrusted us to document and release one of the last recordings of his performance during his lifetime.escription goes here

Tau' Riolo A'dendang (formerly known as Theory of Discoustic or T o D) first emerged on Indonesia’s nascent indie folk scene with a familiar recipe: subtle guitar picking interspersed with close-harmony vocals. As time passed the band gradually expanded their musical palette.

On their recently released EP Silaga (2024), electronic influences come to the fore, with rhythmic pulses and vocals that recall memories of the brave sailors of the Spice Route. Their lyrics dive deep into the complex Buginese mythology, Makassar's dark history, and their current reality as a coastal city that are slowly removed from their soul's calling as seafarers.

Empat Sekawan’s charms are less known outside of South Sulawesi. This is hyper-local culture, with lyrics riffing on regional folklore, stories of village life, and ribald humor, accompanied by the kecapi, a home-made string instrument electrified to be blast from speaker horns at maximum decibels.

For Laut Loud in Pare-Pare, South Sulawesi, Empat Sekawan brought a more laid back & intimate performance, but still had the crew falling off their chairs. Don't start the party without them.

When Chalvin took these notes to producer Ardelony Imlabla, they concocted Archa. Their restrained mix of soundscapes, downtempo beats, and looped bass are blank canvasses for a choir of emotive vocals & spoken word, all inspired or copied from the ancestral verses Chalvin collected in his journey.

On the day we met Archa, tragedy had struck. Barely a month before we set sail for Ambon, Chalvin passed away after a short illness. In his place, Ardelony, still visibly shaken by grief, gathered a collection of local musicians, singers, and poets, turning the performance into an impromptu wake.

Once, the four kingdoms of the spice islands vied against one another in a tense stand-off. After years of cold war, the kingdoms of Ternate, Tidore, Bacan and Jailolo came to respect each other's presence as inevitable. In a gesture of reconciliation, a phrase was coined to describe the four kingdoms in unison, inspired by their shared seafaring history and their close relationship with the four volcanoes that tower over their castles: Kie Raha.

As Arka Kinari dropped its anchor in Ternate, one of the most prominent of the Kie Raha, this uneasy generational truce is reflected in their art. Cakalele, an ancient dance used to welcome warriors, is a universal expression in the former four kingdoms. Driven by hypnotic, riotous drum beats and guided by the trance-like screeching of the dancers, cakalele is both a declaration of triumph and unity in adversity.

Dendang Jawi is a rare riposte from Buru’s native history. This art of oral storytelling recounts the Mapahit armada’s arrival in Buru’s distant shores hundreds of years ago. It is said that after the fleet broke bread with Buru’s native kings, the Majapahit left behind singers to immortalize their kinship through poetry, dance, and song.

Mama Aminah is the last Dendang Jawi singer left on the island of Buru. A retired religion teacher, she inherited the repertoire through a dream in which her ancestors appeared, allowing her to sing. It is this mysterious relationship between reality and myth, history and folklore, art and mysticism that underpins Dendang Jawi.