We feel so lucky to have this video assembled by Don Fierro, of Hakanai Recordings. It is of the last mr sterile Assembly show, playing the last song on the last album.
Footage was gathered from generous folk in the audience.
The album HELLo is still available on Bandcamp, only about 40 copies left.
Overhead fans
Slice air
Sound draw
textures of wood
Braille
of grain
The table gives up
everything
Waves push
up against
down coming rain
Oceans ruck
This is no Disaster Radio
Sonic monologs
silence everything
EVERYTHING hears
Waves to frighten
It’s what the train wheel hears
The mosquito knows its own sound
The trees’ experience of the city
The noise is being itself
This is no Disaster Radio!
Sonic monologs
silence everything
Everything hears
Wooden scartissue
Extraction is action
The table withstands
BootyCall, a noise artist from Copenhagen/Finland
I manage to catch good sleep on the overnight train.
Inside this carriage, the smell is overwhelming. Outside the window is mile in mile of sugarcane, but somewhere among all this is lemongrass. Maybe it’s a companion crop? It is however quiet unmistakable.
Everywhere else is rice. The labour required to cultivate looks enormous. It’s early morning, and there are only a few working in the fields. The farmer is using a tool Id call a grubber, to slice first, scoop second, the nearly black mud from the earth, to deposit onto the rising mounds built fur holding water in the rice field. Human dredging. Digging deep.
Malang.
Arriving on the overnight train, I obtain a taxi and take off in the direction of accommodation. Driving for 30-40 minutes, we get to the place where Google Maps says it should be. It isn’t. A deeper investigation offers a second location. We backtrack towards the city in the hope of success. We arrive at a point where it seems I’m in close walking distance. The cab leaves, and I head off on foot. I get to the place, again, where Google Maps says it should be. It isn’t! My phone is running. I’m in the middle of a kampong, s made of dwellings, and reliant on the maps app. I have enough juice to find my way to the main street and to hail a cab. I head to the venue and plan to sort later.
The venue is the Malang Creative Centre, a serious multi-story facility of venues, Co working spaces, gif stalls, and ongoing constructing. The show itself is epic noise. Act after act after act. Quick changeovers. The audience grows in capacity through the day. I have a rough idea of what I can do in the allocated 15-minute performance. I abandon most ideas mid fight and deviate of in surprising and satisfying directions.
During the day I get offered a bed at someone’s house. But later in the evening, they disappear, so I look for plan D.
There are not many options at this time of the evening. I choose something that onscreen looks ok. The internet is quite different from real life.
It’s a small blue concrete box on the third floor of a decaying residence through large rusting metal gates.
The young women on reception was helpful. I am appreciative of this place to sleep. I actually think I am staying in a super cheap hostel for those of the Muslim faith. Signs everywhere that female heads must be covered. If you are a couple, you must be married. But it’s quiet and peaceful.
The room has one power point, so i turn on the fan to cool down? Or charge phone? And it has a mattress on the floor, stained sheets, and if I’m quiet enough, I get a whiff of piss. The springs of the mattress massage me to sleep and wake me up.
I look for Plan E the next morning. Friday, it’s a day with no shoes. I catch a cab across town. Plan E is good. Still minimalist in amenities but closer to where Ineed to be.
I have a detour planned for Friday. I freshen up and walk to the train station to catch a train to Blitar. I want to visit old friends. The family and extended kin of Stella, the now young women who we wrote that song all those years ago.
16 years ago was the first time we traveled to Blitar. At the time, I thought it was a village, but it’s actually a sizable city. I met Lestari, Stella, and family and talk and eat. Afterwards, I have time to visit Ni Kita Jibril Komunike, the collective who hosted our previous shows in 2007 and 2012. We talk about times, friends alive and gone, and those unwell. Illness can hit younger and harder here.
And I try to answer questions about the white supremacist shooting at two mosques in New Zealand in 2019. It’s not the first time I’ve had this conversation here. The phrase ‘an attack on one is an attack on all’ feels painfully true this far from home.
I sleep two hours and then return to Malang with Lestari’s husband by car. He is going on to Surabaya to drive a taxi for income, thy money is better there than in Blitar. He has family in Surabaya but tells me he sleeps in his car.
Every week or two, he says he returns home to Blitar for a day/night to visit.
The second Malang show is upstairs in a heavily graffiti cafe, amazing coffee, good food, and a rooftop [where my band member comes is found]. The show is organized by the same crew as Thursday, and the first performer is on near 4 pm. Wall to Wall intense noise with much dynamic difference. Some use instruments, some voice, and some prerecorded sounds. It’s hot! Outside is a busy road and its traffic is constant and loud. Inside is the same.
I write about Slammy Karugu‘s set. My set is close to the end, I’ve only had about three/four hours of sleep since yesterday, I’m tired but throw absolutely everything at it… mission accomplished. Another joyous show.
Now I can let myself go and crash. Sleep, come to me.
Notes:
———–
The mosquitos sing to me of feasts. Even my deafened ear works well in their company. In the morning, I shall see what comments they have left.
————
The last time I sat under this roof, our friend, Pepenk, was here. A lot has happened since then. Earlier tonight I went to visit that which his friends called his new home. A plot of earth near to his father’s final resting place. He was only 30.
————–
I’m lying awake waiting for friend to wake so we can head back to Malang at 3am. I’m looking at the cracks in the walls and wonder if they came from earthquakes. Then, the whole building starts to rattle and wobble in a gentle, yet all encompassing, persuasion. The Earth is just rolling over in her sleep.
———
There is only a tin roof between me and the rain i think i hear. It’s not. It’s so quiet that I can hear the enclosed river that flows in front of the house underground. A river entombed by the Dutch sometime in the last 100 years.
A roster is singing its welcome.
This Hulk has dreadlocks
Not hipster style
Matted by mess
and degradation
Whose drums take no prisoners
Who is rolling on the sheets metal
Who will out-harsh the harsh
You ever listened with the ears of a landslide?
Warwhales!
If you could really listen to the ocean you would hear she takes
no prisoners
Bruce Banner Blastbeats
Banners of no retreat
Febrile dreams and fevers teeth
No prisoners!
Wasps beat thorax in communion
The hive is alive and knows your name
Born with mean means to tattoo
No prisoners!
It is the Hulk
Kicks the hive
Fights the sea
Crushes it all
Tears it all
Hulks pulse beats a worse morse
No prisoners!!
Slammy Karugu is one part of the incredible duo Duma, on Nyege Nyege Tapes
Performing at Malang Sub Moise
An evening of shadows and breeze, under the holding-together eves of an old abode.
The artificial light, florescent and projected, night time colors that existed fornever until almost now.
Here’s motorbikes on dopler, conversations off-kilter,
nearby hawks for dollar,
and in this allyway, a master of ceremony
Rangga turns QWERTY to grooves,
joins disjointed patterns with glue of silence.
Rungga holds court,
captures drums,
spits then grinning
This echolaction for the slow
The ghost play flutes
Ghosts that live everywhere here unless the air has been cleared
Ghosts, trapped, out of time, cursed to repeat the last thing uttered, till…
Cleanse with noise
Return to drum
Hold no pattern
Quick
Pick it up…
your pulse is ringing
Quick
Something is inside….
Your chest
Quick
This b[e]at
Has hooks
Quick
Pick it up…
your pulse is singing
Seems like a good time as any to start something new.
It’s 23 past midnight. I’m meant to be on a train, but it turns out that it left the station 24 hours and 12 minutes ago, and I wasn’t on it. So much for well organized.
So I threw away my paid for piece of printed paper and went to buy a new ticket. I was a little apprehensive that there might not be a train for the holidays tomorrow (today). The train with the same time as last night was sold out but the 0131 had seats still available, and the bloke said, though a distorted speaker, if I say and waited for 30 minutes the price would halve I wasn’t going anywhere.
I went to get a drink from the automatic drink dispenser, enter confusion Round Two. Money inserted, drink received. But it didn’t give change and still had quite a number on the dial. So I inserted another 5000 rupiah to get one more drink and 0000 on the meter. Except I put in 50000 [ NZ$5] ! Drinks on the house for the porters!! They seemed appreciative.
I hope sleep also arrives with the train. Tomorrow’s show starts at 11 am. It’s a seven hour journey.
The last couple of days after Noise Bombing have been semi-relaxed.
Monday was a day out and about the city. I returned to Krack Gallery, the venue from last Friday, to discuss buying a piece of art I had my eye on. Then off to the Yes No Wave shop. Yes No Wave is a local label that releases amazing music. The Nyege Nyege of South East Asia. Then I walk home.. the wrong way. Realizing my ability to get lost, I stopped and caught a Gojek scooter back to the homestay. Gojek is an uber equivalent that has a huge scooter division. Returning to the homestay, I set up my synth, and with the help of the documentary maker, Mattie, i record a lovely fungal cluster sprouting from a stump just in front of the homestay entrance. We gain the attention of nearby residents and kids who we invite to listen to these freaky sounds. It’s all very entertaining.
Later, I go out to see Gorz, one of the touring bands, playing a hastily organized show at a local poetry reading. I’m told these nights are a regular event, so rural workers and farmers can read their writings.
Gorz sounds great tonight, a much fuller guitar sound.
Tuesday ( when I should have been preparing to leave) was instead dedicated to rest and writing. So low-key. But by mid afternoon, I felt much more energized and went out to two shows. The first is Deathless, which I responded to in the previous post. Then, across town to a second show of a more noisy disposition.
And today’s been relaxed. Finished writing an interview for some local magazine and a video interview with Mattie about the what’s and why’s of my project.
Then, home to pack and depart. It’s been a lovely stay. The homestay seems to be a family affair, warm, friendly, and good humored. One of the children, maybe 4, is very comfortable coming forward. He’s started calling me uncle.
I then head out to one last noise show. The venue is a 15-minute walk to the train station. It’s around 11 when I noticed my error. And here I am. There’s a train coming in, but I’m not sure if it’s mine… nope, too early.
See ya later.
Above the H Block enclosure, with the roof missing, the day turns into evening sky.
Birds that I do not know the name of, in a frequency range I can not hear, are shouting to each other. From branch to branch. From wing to wing.
Dusk bugs, trying to avoid both the before and after, swim between the chairs, an air breathing fish built like a tank, a cousin perhaps to kin who hear with their legs. Soon, they will be trapped in the gaze of ten million moons.
The percussion of the bats’ echolocation drumrolls the air in search of food, a sound source faster than blinking, swifter than thinking.
Deathless is in front of us. Dreaming up electronic drone for Yogyakarta, music for the heat, soothing like the shade.
All around us, the green and the brown, of leaf, and bark, and earth. Washed over with waterless waves flow through wet air.
The sole inhabitant of the vertical world, the Lizard, only hears itself.
Yogya falls silent.
————————
Deathless is an electronic artist from Bandung, Java, Indonesia.
This festival has been running for many years on local spirit and limited funds. A festival in the spirit of expression outside of any box. Maybe initially as a gathering to present the extreme and diverse musical explorations, but also to reflect back into the cities environment, the noise that IS the city. For example, the ambient background sound at this cafe I’m sitting at fluctuates in the high 70 decibel range. Above 70db is recognized as a volume in which bearing damage can occur.
30 performers are scheduled to play with an impressive international contingent. The organizers also made additional effort to have a strong number of women performers in the lineup, an important step in a very bloke- heavy music scene.
Friday night is the first of two films screened. Greed for Speed: the Singeli music movement, which is at the best of the Nyege Nyege label from Kinshasa, DCR. It seems like a tight community that contains large parts of both bursting creativity and in-your-face motivation and desperation.
Noise is Serious Shit. A film about the incredible beast that is the Jogja Noise Bombing Festival. The films core performance footage is from the 2014-2015 festival and also contains a number of interviews with participants and organizers.
A Q&A session after with Sam Kurugu, from Kenya, and the band Duma, speaking on behalf of the Greed for Speed film maker. And talking about Noise is Serious Shit is the filmmaker Hilman Fathoni.
After this is an after party into the small hours.
Saturday:
The afternoon holds the street performance, Jogja Noise Bombing at its rawest (roarest?). I don’t know what part of the city we are in, but it contains a lot of shops, cafes and steady traffic. A crowd is gathered, bursting from the street and onto the road. Yet there seems to be a mindfulness not to be obstructive to others moving through the area.
A stage is set into an alcove, a small courtyard of an abandoned shop. A table is loaded with gear, power comes from who-knows-where, and sound comes from two guitar amps. Three acts play the first location, each presenting fresh ideas through noise. The locals look on, but no one seems perturbed in the slightest. What’s happening here is just another thing in the life of the beast Jogja.
The table and speakers are assembled into a wheelbarrow, banners collected, and a parade gathers to walk 500 meters up the road and around the corner to the new location. This time, under a large shading tree over a driveway into a property. Reassemble the gear, the crowd gathers and go! Two/three more acts in quick succession, each different from the last and all solo performances.
The breakdown/setup happens one more time, and this time, we gather on a corner for the final set. A performance from the wheelbarrow, then the first duo of the day, their set contained an intermission while call to prayer sung or over the city. They pick up where they left off and end the set with everything exploding off the table. The last act argues segues into movement to the night time session of JNB.
Krack Gallery is a collective printing gallery and work space. It has functioned in the location for over ten years and is the venue fit the evenings’ event. First up is a session of local experimental films. One explores a Nietzschian idea from a local perspective. The second is an animation of old photos referencing some historic event. The third is an Indonesian experience of CoVID, reflecting on the fears, struggles, and misinformation of that time.
The final evening session is the ambient session. Two solo and one duo all accompanied by live visuals somehow managed by an old arts gamer controller or some such thing. I was greatly impressed but the set from Rannga whose music was generated from live coding, something I know zero about.
Sunday:
The stages are located at the beautiful Sangking Art Gallery. One open-air stage and two enclosed. There is always a performance somewhere. It is a decent sized crowded. All spaces feel well utilized and attended. Performances range from a myriad of examples of noise and improv electronic music, experimental gamelan, multi-speaker installation, a collaboration, but oh dance, and live instruments alone and with electronic processing. There is drink, a coffee shop, a merch stall and the warmest, welcoming and enthusiastic crowd.
I personally couldn’t have felt more at home here. It’s such a beautiful contradiction that an event of extreme music, whose imagery and symbolism is often full of dystopia ideas, feelings of hopelessness and rage, and pictorially reflective of brutal and graphic ideas, could contain such a joyous crowd of humans. Impressive!
I’m waking earlier than I expect. It’s Thursday and a proper rest day, nothing planned other than where ever my ramblings take me.
And they take me first to breakfast. I return to the same place as yesterday. I am introduced to the dish nasi lengko. Rice, tofu, tempeh, bean sprouts, chili, and crackers. It is good. When I convert to Nz currency, it works out at NZ .90 cents, they don’t let me pay more… that price also included coffee, which seems to typically cost for NZ.50 cents.
I later find out this is a vegan style dish specific to the Cirebon area.
I spend the afternoon repairing my gear. Somethings had come loose, something had stopped working completely, and I wanted to work on refining something in planning for Jogja. The repair seems to work perfectly, added by the magic of gaffa tape.
Later, I catch up with Sam, a performer from Kenya, Alif, and Wawan, the show organiser. Another fantastic meal by the roadside, this time a gado-gado styled dish. The spicy paste is made for each individual dish. All spices and nuts are crushed with a pestle in the shape of a cow horn, I actually think it’s made of wood.
This is the last time I will see Wawan on this trip. This is one of those things about touring that leave a bittersweet feeling. There has been a lot of contact until now in preparation of travel. Then arrival, anticipating of and then delivery of the performance. Through all this, an intensity of feeling and comradery can develop if it all goes well. It all happens so fast. And then you have to say goodbye. It would be wonderful to say with conviction that we will meet again. But that would be dishonest. Sometimes, things unfold in a way that that does happen, but in this, there are no guarantees. It’s hugs, small gifts, and gone.
Next day, Thursday, I catch the train to Jogja. A stranger asks a question, and we start talking. Remarkably, this guy is a scientist at a local university working on microbial compounds that can digest plastics and other pollutants. They can then be converted, he says, into something akin to a liquid fertilizer. He says he is having great results, producing plants with high nutritive value while simultaneously working on a possible solution to a massive problem of plastic pollution.
The train was less than comfortable initally as the air conditioning was set at 29°c.
Crossing central Java. It’s easy to be gobsmacked at the astonishing lush beauty or the window. Rice fields go all the way to the feet of the mountain and volcano alike. It’s staggering.
I finally get to the homestay after getting lost in a taxi in the backstreet labyrinth of allyways off the main road.
I settle in and get ready to go to the first event of Jogja Noise Bombing. It is a screening of Greed for Speed, a doco on the Singeli music movement from Kinshasa, and Noise is Serious Shit, a documentary about the history of Jogja Noise Bombing. It is cool to also reconnect with good friends from previous trips. This is the sweet of the experiences mentioned above.
———
Other notes:
The lock to the room in Cirebon is dodgy. Not only once have I had to pause and plan my escape from the inside of my room. My small freedom arrives, but I can not figure the reason why it worked or when it did.
—————-
Football is the sport of obsession here. I’ve sat wordless while people have discussed the intricacies of an Italian division from before covid.
—————-
The locals are saying they are finding it hot. So it really is. It’s official. It’s a heat wave! Someone said something like 37°c!
————
At the first event of noise Bombing I go looking for ice cream… nothing anywhere… the last shop I go in had none also, but perhaps I looked desperate. So person in attendance of the shop had one personal ice cream in the frozen foods freezer. She generously offered out to me.. I asked to pay for it but she refused. The ice cream is called Choco Corn.. corn cob textured waffled around chocolate ice cream. The ice cream was average, but the experience was excellent!
———-
The days are more full now so writing time is limited.
With all that previous excitment over, it’s nice to realise that I’ve got a slow few hours ahead before the show this evening. And with that, I take it’s slow.
Wake with the call to prayer from the local masjid. If I listen harder, I can hear multiple different voices interlocking, random, not together, but definitely together, some clear and others wrapped in reverb. I’m not a person of any faith, but there is something that is very welcoming of the tradition of public singing being a regular feature of the daily environment. They are songs without a function for me, and so I can enjoy them at a simple and aesthetic level.
I go walking. I’m the only one walking. Someone wants to sell them time to me and offers their transportation. They laugh that I want to stay walking. I’m looking for breakfast and find a variation on gado-gado, rice, noodles, tempeh, and tofu. And Karpal Api, black and sweet coffee from a packet. It’s a roadside banquet.
Then I find something amazing, Gonjing, fried coconut goodness. I also need to find soap… was harder than it sounds. I go into Indomart, a franchise superette. I look for the obvious to no avail. I get the attention of staff, and my mime routine also fails. I use Google and receive looks of confusion. I see later than I typed Soap for Baking.
Back to the accommodation. I entered into a long exchange with Shaiful, the bike who checked me in. We talk via text about music, the similarity of numbers between the Indonesia language and Te Reo, the rates of young fathers abandoning pregnant girlfriends, and anything else that bubbles up.
A couple of hours later, when I go get a taxi to head to the venue, Shaiful yells across the courtyard, “Go harder” in support.
The taxi massively overshoot the destination, and we end up in the absolute middle of the countryside. Backtracking the venue remains where it probably always was, cuddling side to side with a barbershop.
Kael Caviety. It’s a hip venue adorned with uplifting messages. The main things they do are drinks, ice tea of all stripes, and coffee with scientific precision. Every ingredient of every cup is weighed and double-checked. It takes pretty amazing a well.. so strong!!
The venue must be the cavity part. It’s a building outside, away from the shop, a small concrete box with AC.
The other performers arrive, as well as the PA and the battalion of scooters.
It’s a nice atmosphere. I met someone who saw us play in jogja in 2011. And it was nice to see his performance as the opening act.
And when the show started, it rolled smoothly from act to act.
Awkwayz: an electronic duo playing slow corrugations of tones, chord, and atmosphere.
Bootycall: firey and kinetic harsh noise from Copenhagen.
Resurrection the Man: Wawan, the organizers act, noise music born from the belly of an old Kiwi shoe polish tin that left me with a funny impression of dub… don’t know why
Wat Takleaw: started off super dense electronic noise but then opened up into very beautiful, brien and glitch space without losing the intensity
Gorz: do from Peru, Switzerland, guitar, vocals, preprogrammed backing tracks of wonky rock.. if Kate Bush sung in a math rock duo
Orqan: The do from Italy playing electronic smash on self-made instruments, I didn’t fully understand it, but their phones held essential functions in the performance.. maybe bending sound by moving through roll, pitch, and yaw.
Tapiwa Svosve: an impressive scape player of Swiss/Zimbabwean origin.. awesome control of the circular breathing technique.
Noijzu: Unrelenting harsh noise from Chile, I think.
Me: I did what I did. Things didn’t entirely work as planned, but the delivery was still fun. This was challenged by an electrical earthing problem, which presented as continuous small electrical shocks throughout the show. I integrated water into the performance… It’s probably not the smartest idea…
… then a bit of a wait due the last act to arrive, so a spontaneous three-way performance between Bootycall, Orqan, and myself.
Slammy Karugu’s Final Rupture of the Varicose Vein: arrived just after 9 after 30 flight from Kenya with a long stop over on India, then to Jakarta, to train, to venue, to play. Impressive!! Get the man a drink! Slammed is one half of the duo Duma, whose album of a couple of years ago is ONE of the most intense listens I know. His set tonight was great, different cookies of noise with rising and falling syncopated rhythms like something heavy from the deep… nice!
Wrap up, pack up. I can’t go with the others for food because me and my 20kg case would be impossible on the back of a scooter. But it’s a bugger though.
Other notes:
The music of the Cafe ranges from Queen to The Smiths, palette cleansing niceness between the sets.
—————–
To my right of my breakfast stool is the roadside ice market, a makeshift platform of palettes over a large gutter. Under a couple of layers of tarpaulin are large blocks of ice, attacked with saws and hooks to be then loaded motorbikes, to be delivered to the street side cafes and tea shops I’m guessing.
skirted Records 