Efek Rumah Kaca are trying to keep the fire alive

Written by on 05/04/2023

Efek Rumah Kaca

twenty years on, Efek Rumah Kaca have yet to become complacent. In January, eight years after their last album, the Jakarta alternative rockers returned with ‘Rimpang’, a record that is certain to continue their reign as indie mainstays and scene elders – though the band remain modest about their impact.

“In a dynamic and responsive music scene, we are influenced by the music of other musicians, both young and old – and perhaps we’ve also influenced other musicians,” suggests frontman and lyricist Cholil Mahmud. “How big the influence and role are likely to be, we have never measured it and have no answer.”

Cholil originally formed the band in 2001 with drummer Akbar Bagus Sudibyo and bassist Adrian Yunan Faisal, landing on the name Efek Rumah Kaca – the Indonesian term for the greenhouse effect – after cycling through other monikers (Lull, Hush, Superego). Then, it was a Cholil-centered project influenced by Smashing Pumpkins and other ’90s alt-rockers (at one point the band had a female vocalist, who left early on, leaving Cholil to take the reins).

Often called ERK, the band found almost-immediate recognition with their self-titled debut album in 2007, which was released through the indie Paviliun Records and contained the hits ‘Cinta Melulu’ (‘Love All the Time’) and ‘Desember’. Their lyrics contained a level of socio-political consciousness that not many of their contemporaries offered. That and the band’s accessible alternative rock saw ‘Efek Rumah Kaca’ reportedly sell 5,000 copies within the first year – massive numbers for an indie band at the time when piracy was already rampant.

Efek Rumah Kaca
Credit: Muhammad Asranur

Now a four-piece with bassist Poppie Airil on bass and guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Reza Ryan, ERK have come a long way. They’ve weathered personal tragedy (an illness that cost original bassist Adrian his eyesight) and taken on the attendant responsibilities of adulthood (all the band members hold other ‘real’ jobs, and Cholil now resides in the US to accompany his wife, who is an academic in New York). But ‘Rimpang’ still shows just how much of an artistic leader ERK remain to the many bands in the independent and mainstream scenes that look up to them.

ERK get something from their juniors in the scene, too. “By frequently seeing and interacting with younger bands at [the band’s creative space and bookstore] Kios Ojo Keos, we hope we can keep the ‘fire’ and also be infected with the newer artists’ enthusiasm,” Cholil says, “so that we are never tired and not afraid not to play it safe in creating new music.”

Which is why, on their first album in eight years, ERK are not holding back on politics – both the good and the bad. ‘Rimpang’ communicates an especially clear despair towards Indonesia’s recent socio-political climate – but it is also unabashedly hopeful about the growing number of activists fighting for human rights in the country.

“What constitutes ‘good’ music for each of us is never the same. We work on it until we all reach that same experience of getting goosebumps” – Poppie Airil

‘Rimpang’, which is Indonesian for ‘rhizome’ (the botanical term for an underground plant stem) takes its name from the concept of the rhizome by the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, which describes a process of existence or growth from multiple origins.

Cholil sees the term as an homage to grassroots socio-political activism in Indonesia – reading the concept in the context of “resistance against oppression”. This resistance, he explains, “ is sometimes not visible because it comes in tiny, smooth forms – you don’t feel its effects directly, but it’s spreading quietly underground, networking without hierarchy and continuing to grow.”

He expresses this sentiment directly on the title track, singing in Indonesian: “From each disappointment grows / Becoming a stem that is spreading/ With patience, hiding inside / Clandestine.

Conversely, Cholil isn’t afraid to criticise those in power who choose to exploit their status or remain passive while the country around them crumbles.

Your silence is like oppression / No empathy sympathy / Find safety [for] yourself / Your silence is oppression,” he sings on the drifting piano-driven ballad ‘Bergeming’ (‘Unmoved’).

Cholil has observed a vacuum of songwriting about socio-political developments in Indonesia. The 45-year-old musician points to the activism spearheaded by Indonesians from backgrounds as different as students, farmers, fishermen and hard labourers, who have taken to the streets to demonstrate.

He raises the large, five-day ‘Reformasi diKorupsi’ (which roughly translates to ‘reformation is being corrupted’) demonstrations in 2019, where students led Indonesians of various socio-economic backgrounds in protest against new legislation that they criticised as undermining the authority of the Corruption Eradication Commission, and various bills including a new criminal code that would penalise extramarital sex and acts considered defamatory of the president.

“[The protesters] chose not to become mouthpieces for the government and were not dazzled by the abundance of budgets for ‘buzzers,’” recalls Cholil, referring to an Indonesian term for social media personalities and celebrities paid by the government to promote particular policies, often in laughably see-through posts.

“Seeing that, [I felt] a calling to ‘choose’ political themes at an even more prominent volume than on our previous albums,” Cholil says.

Efek Rumah Kaca
Credit: Muhammad Asranur

Cholil’s eagerness to explore political themes in Efek Rumah Kaca’s music was encouraged by his bandmates and their fans, says Reza Ryan (who, full disclosure, was in a band with this writer between 2016 and 2017). The guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, who joined ERK as additional personnel in 2017 and became a permanent member in 2021, says their fans’ and team’s “openness” helped nurture the band’s artistic maturation both as a group and individually: “Self-development certainly always parallels the band’s growth.”

For bass player Poppie, Efek Rumah Kaca’s musical growth has been steady and constant. Entering the band’s orbit in 2012 to fill in for original bassist Adrian, he became deeply involved in the recording of the 2015 album ‘Sinestesia’ (inspired by Adrian’s synaesthesia, or the ability to perceive music as colours) and became a full-time member a year later.

Over the years, he has witnessed firsthand how ERK pushed their original power-trio, alternative-rock sound into something more complex. On ‘Rimpang’, they fully embrace the sonic experimentations of ‘Sinestesia’ while furthering their dramatic melancholy with almost-theatrical choices in melody and arrangement. Though the composition is somewhat reminiscent of sound-expanding records from the ’80s like Talk Talk’s ‘Spirit of Eden’, Cholil’s pensive melodies keep things approachable.

“Every album or release we’ve done, we want it to feel new. We don’t want anything to feel like it was a repeat,” Poppie says. “Over time, that approach has not changed. What constitutes ‘good’ music for each of us is also never the same. We work on it until we all reach that same experience of getting goosebumps.”

“It isn’t fair to burden a piece of art with saving a country or its people” – Cholil Mahmud

Drummer Akbar credits Poppie infusing ERK with his “groove” and backing vocals for moving Efek Rumah Kaca on from their previous, straightforward sound – though it’s their newest member, Reza, who Cholil, Akbar, and Poppie credit most for driving the band towards new sonic landscapes.

“The complexity of ‘Rimpang’ is largely thanks to the mind of Reza,” explains Cholil. In their original form, the songs on ‘Rimpant’ harkened back to the simplicity of their first two albums, 2007’s self-titled and 2008’s ‘Kamar Gelap’ (‘Dark Room’). “Reza has made those simple songs sound ‘wide’ and helped us delve into musical areas we haven’t explored on previous albums.”

Reza’s flourishes give particular life to the song ‘Fun Kaya Fun’, where retro-futurist synthesizer chords add a prog-rock feel to its slightly stuttering composition, which nods to the ’90s-2000s sound of British bands Doves, Elbow and ‘The Bends’-era Radiohead. Similarly, the lurching ‘Heroik’ becomes more unpredictable for Reza’s synth work and shimmering, Johnny Marr-ish guitar counter-rhythms.

For his part, Akbar points to the “special” part in ‘Manifesto,’ where the bass, instead of following all the other instruments, holds a chord down for eight bars. “It has a very emotional but sweet atmosphere. ERK has never done something like that before, and it could not have happened if there wasn’t the figure of Reza Ryan as the originator of that approach. There are many more new ideas from Reza regarding composition, choir, and sound, which have never existed in ERK before.”

“Civilisation is built on the accumulation of political developments, and the artistic evolution of its people colours civilisation” – Reza Ryan

On ‘Rimpang’, Efek Rumah Kaca continue to embrace artistic growth and political expression. That ethos is evident in their extra-musical activities, as the band grows more active within the activist ecosystem that inspired the album: taking part in protests, hosting seminars on socio-political issues, seeing their song ‘Mosi Tidak Percaya’ (‘Vote of No Confidence’) turn into an anthem for civil demonstrations in Indonesia, writing the theme song for Mata Najwa, the socio-politically focused TV show hosted by journalist Najwa Shihab. Whether in the studio or out on the street, Efek Rumah Kaca still want to keep things as real as possible.

“Art and politics have one thing in common, namely a human way of achieving goals and needs,” Reza opines. “Every artistic issue is a human-related issue. Every political issue is a citizen-related issue. By default, humans are creatures of art and creatures of politics. Civilisation is built on the accumulation of political developments, and the artistic evolution of its people colours civilisation.”

This way of thinking is no doubt why some quarters of music fans in Indonesia dismiss ERK as a resoundingly “serious” band. Not that they care.

“We don’t think about those things,” says Cholil. “We believe that music can start a discourse about anything, including [socio-political] issues, but not necessarily as a solution to problems. It isn’t fair to burden a piece of art with saving a country or its people.

“Those problems must be faced and solved by those tired of those issues.”

Efek Rumah Kaca’s album ‘Rimpang’ is out now. The band will perform in Singapore for the first time in 13 years on May 21 and at Tau Tau Festival in Bandung on May 28

The post Efek Rumah Kaca are trying to keep the fire alive appeared first on NME.


Reader's opinions

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *



Current track

Title

Artist