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!