Sujud

by 
AlbumNov 02 / 2018
Avant-Folk Southeast Asian Folk Music
Popular

Senyawa are a contemporary duo originating from Jogjakarta Indonesia. Rully Shabara (extreme vocals) coupled with Wukir Suryadi's deft instrumentals (& homemade instruments), produce one of the most profound examples of experimental via traditional music happening anywhere today. By weaving Indonesian folkloric moods with various shades of modern genre hybrids, Senyawa has been navigating unexplored musical terrain for more than a decade. Sujud, their premier release on the Sublime Frequencies label, is the latest chapter of this very special and singular sound of the past, present, and future. The basic theme of the record can be summed up with one extremely powerful Bahasa Indonesian word, Tanah, which translates to "soil-ground-land-earth". Shabara's vocals are an expressive force, conjuring spirits from the soil with a deep humility and respect for the land and their existence in the universe. Suryadi has built a new guitar for these tracks and pushes the Senyawa sound into new territory, utilizing delay, loops, and other effects creating grounded backdrops of folk metal, punk attitudinal, and droning earthscapes - providing Shabara the perfect context to explore his whispering poetry and jagged, sharp-as-a-kris animistic powers. There is simply no other sound like it and Sublime Frequencies is thrilled to present this new direction in their discography.

3

7.6 / 10

In a departure from the airier meditations of 2017’s Brønshøj (Puncak), the Indonesian duo’s Sublime Frequencies debut explores an earthy fusion of doom and folk metal.