Pure Wrath - Hymn to the Woeful Hearts (2022)

Country: Indonesia
Style: Atmospheric Black Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 18 Feb 2022
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I had an absolute blast with The Forlorn Soldier, technically an EP by Pure Wrath but one that was long enough to think of as an album. It was my runner up for Album of the Month in March of that year, nudging out the excellent Ghost Toast and My Dying Bride albums but losing out to the new Harem Scarem. Well, Januaryo Hardy, the man behind this project, is back with an full album, his third such as Pure Wrath, with a live album, that 2020 EP and a split release with Onirism available on Bandcamp too. I haven't heard most of that, but I really should carve out time to dig into it.

Januaryo is responsible for the vast majority of what's here, providing the vocals and most of the instrumentation, including guitar, bass and synths. He's also the songwriter, lyricist and, I expect, producer. He doesn't play the drums, which are, as last time out, the work of Yurii Kononov, an ex-drummer for White Ward. Also returning from that EP is Dice Midyanti to contribute piano, cello and "additional elements", whatever they are. Certainly, there's plenty of atmosphere within this atmospheric black metal, so I expect Midyanti is responsible for some of that.

Both are obvious from the outset, Midyanti's cello there as The Cloak of Disquiet kicks things into motion, an elegant sway in companionship with acoustic guitar, before the electrics take over and take over hard, Kononov's frantic drumming setting the pace. Suddenly, we're in full black metal onslaught, albeit with a slow sweeping melody floating through that wall of sound. There perhaps aren't as many dynamic shifts in this one as I'd have liked, but there are points where everything drops away for a slower section for texture.

Certainly, there's some elegant piano work to wrap up Years of Silence, alongside an odd shaking sound that's both enticing and creepy, like a bundle of rushes being beaten against a stone floor. That piano had already made a major effect in the song, minimal but very noticeable tinkling at a number of points. It's this song that also made the theme clear to me, which is grief, that piano an overt expression of such. Also, while the majority of the vocals phrase black metal shrieks as howls of anguish, there's a slower section midway that's dirge like, an outpouring of grief that wouldn't be out of place in a church, sans the music around it.

It's fair to say that I enjoyed this album through its first three tracks, and more on a second listen, but not as much as I enjoyed The Forlorn Soldier. Years of Silence is my pick from those three, even if Presages from a Restless Soul is a real grower of a song, but the streak of genius that was there last time out seemed to be missing. Well, it shows back up on Footprints of the Lost Child, because this is the Pure Wrath I was so impressed by on that EP.

It's strong from the outset, with an almost Iron Maiden melody under its wall of sound, while the vocals are a neatly creeping layer on top but the midsection is simply magnificent. In a subtle turn of mood, things got almost upbeat a couple of minutes in, as if the choral voices are celebrating a life rather than mourning a loss. It's at the five minute mark that it starts to steal our breath, with piano, cello, slow drums and whatever the other sound is merging into an inviting nest of comfort. The backing vocals as the song wraps are welcoming and comforting too. It's quite the piece and I'd have no hesitation calling it the standout track.

There are a couple more songs to come, Those Who Stand Still having some notable moments and Hymn to the Woeful Hearts being a very different closer, not a black metal song at all, more of a respite from the pain and grief inherent in everything thus far. It's almost like the album up to this point is a musical interpretation of all the heartbreak hidden (or not so hidden) by the attendees at an emotional service for the lost, with the title track the peaceful instrumental played as everyone's filing out to rejoin their lives. There's a guest here, Nick Kushnir on "guitar elements", but I don't know what that really means.

So, more powerful and thoughtful stuff from Januaryo Hardy. I'm not convinced that this is quite up to the standard of The Forlorn Soldier, but it's really good stuff and, when it's at its peak, with Footprints of the Lost Child, it's magnificent.

Mud Spencer - Fuzz Soup (2022)

Country: Indonesia
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 21 Jan 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

The cost of entry to the music industry is lower than ever. Record at home and release online. You don't need an expensive studio, production team or record label any more. Those things may well help, but they're not necessities in 2022, and that makes it a lot easier for personal projects such as this to see the light of day. Mud Spencer is a one man stoner rock project from Indonesia that's so old school that it can't even be called stoner rock. It's heavy psychedelia, because that's what a lot of the comparable bands called themselves back in 1969, man.

Which ones? Well, Back to Origin sounds like the 13th Floor Elevators starting to evolve into Black Sabbath. The title track features lots of wailing guitar and wild keyboard chords but, under them, there's an older rock 'n' roll framework, so the song sounds like Canned Heat turning into Vanilla Fudge and eventually even into Hawkwind. The Shelter kicks off with down and dirty blues, played slow but with some vicious tambourine, then it grows into a ponderous monster that just wanders off to explore what proto-doom will become.

Remember when Jimi Hendrix decided he was fed up playing his own material on one of Lulu's TV shows and launched into Sunshine for Your Love instead? Quest for Fire feels like the opposite, an initial cover of a Cream track turning into the man behind Mud Spencer, Sergio Garcia, launching himself into the stratosphere instead, like early Hawkwind. The Cheating Mole feels like the same thing but starting from a different place in psychedelic funk. This one sets an infectious funky riff into place and then improvises all over it. It's Sun Ra jamming with the Specials.

Ride the Mammoth hints at ethnic flavour but expands into space rock and proto-doom. This one scoots along gloriously, like an animated Indonesian rocket ship hurtling through the cosmos. I'm reminded of a short film I screened last year at my Apocalypse Later International Fantastic Film Festival called The Prospector. It paired a solo independent space miner with heavy surf rock from an American band called the Shivas. This killer could have had a place on that soundtrack without any hesitation. Tumulus starts out ethnic too and then adds the surf and even spaghetti western soundtrack styling.

Does any of that help? Probably not. Let's just say that this is vibrant music that goes back in time a lot further than we might initially think, into blues, rock 'n' roll and pop, drags them all forward to the psychedelic late sixties and then splits what we know off into a parallel dimension where an imaginative decade of heavy music can grow into new directions. I'm reminded of steampunk as a mindset that thinks that we didn't get what we were promised, so rewinds history back to a point where we can start again and do it right this time. I have a feeling that this album is Sergio Garcia doing that with music. Everything is built on roots we know but it veers away from our timeline in 1969, as if the last half century of history was just an acid trip taken by some hippie at Woodstock.

Of course, regardless of how much surf and space rock there is here, this would have been a heavy album indeed in 1969. Garcia crushes on songs like Ride the Mammoth and Tumulus, and wraps up his album with a heavy plodder in Narcolepsy that out-plods even The Shelter. This one simply ends too, with no direction forward determined, as if it's challenging us to pick up the baton and take it further down the track. Is this heavy psychedelia as mission statement? Screw fame, man. All you have to do is play.

And, if you're Sergio Garcia, you'll record your heavy space jams on your bed, then wander outside and ride your trail motorbike up the Javanese volcano of Ciremai to mix it on your iPad. That's the freedom of invention, dude. I believe I just took the red pill. I'm staying in Wonderland and seeing how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Pure Wrath - The Forlorn Soldier (2020)

Country: Indonesia
Style: Atmospheric Black Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 6 Mar 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

Pure Wrath is another one man project, this time from Indonesia, and the one man is Januaryo Hardy, who does everything here except the drums, which come courtesy of Yurii Kononov, formerly of White Ward and currently of a host of varied bands, and the piano on the opening track, which is by Dice Midyanti. It's Hardy's fourth release as Pure Wrath, following two albums and a split release with French symphonic black metal band Onirism, and it counts as an EP, even though it generously runs almost half an hour.

It's also very good indeed. I've listened through a few times and every time it shocks me by ending so quickly and I realise all over again just how much it sucked me in. There are only three songs on offer, ranging from seven up to ten minutes, but they're so immersive that they feel like five apiece. If I have a complaint, it's in the mix of the drums, which are excellent but a little buried in the mix. The piano works well down there, because it teases and we pay extra attention to hear it. The vocals are buried to exactly the right level too, but I'd have liked a crisper drum sound.

The piano gets overt at the end of When a Great Man Dies, underpinning what I presume is a voice sample of someone who was involved in or affected by the subject of the album, which is the genocide that began in Indonesia in 1965 as an anti-communist purge after a failed coup and became so much more, leaving a million dead and setting up the New Order of Suharto in power for the next three decades. Maybe it's a late recording of Sukarno, the deposed president, who was placed into house arrest until his death.

I've read that this bloody period is little talked about in Indonesia, due to being suppressed by the government, so it's good for it to see a little light on this album, even if I have no idea what the lyrics happen to be. I did catch odd bits here and there, enough to believe that they're delivered in English but not enough to have a clue about what they cover. I'd like to read those lyrics, just as I'd like to know who's speaking in that sample.

Atmospheric black metal is a fantastic genre to explore this sort of subject matter. hardy and Kononov create a powerful wall of sound that's impossible to ignore, just like the mass murder of one per cent of the population would be. It's hard and mostly fast until, at certain key moments like one midway through With Their Names Engraved, it all suddenly stops and we're calm in the eye of the storm wondering what's still going on out there while it's so peaceful here inside. After that moment of peace, the last couple of minutes are melancholy, with an almost choral dirge, as we come to terms with what's just happened.

What impressed me most, beyond this structuring, is how the guitars retain a melodic line even at ludicrous speed. One of the benefits of being a one man band is that every part you play has to be recorded separately and, once you get into that mindset, it's no great stretch to add further layers. As this album has such a dense sound, I can't say how many guitar layers Hardy added but much of the album obviously features a backing layer to maintain density and a lead layer for surprisingly patient melodic riffing.

I liked this a lot on a first listen and I liked it all the more after a few times through. I look forward to seeing what else Hardy has done, whether as Pure Wrath or one of his many other bands. He also provides everything for a brutal death project called Perverted Dexterity and a post-black one called Lament, among a host of others. He shows a lot of versatility here and that is never a bad thing when you play in multiple genres.

Jangar - Jelang Malam (2019)

Country: Indonesia
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Oct 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram

Last time I reviewed a psychedelic rock album from Indonesia, it ended up as my album of the month runner up for February. That was O.M. by Mooner and it featured much more delicate pop-flavoured music than this, the debut from a stoner rock band called Jangar, who hail from Denpasar on the island of Bali.

Their Facebook page is named Jangar Doom and there's certainly a lot of doom in the heavy riffs on offer. Just check out the one a couple of minutes into Proklamator, which Black Sabbath would be proud of. However, they're not the sort of doom metal band that wallows in sonic mud. They're happier, livelier and more energetic than any doom metal band I can think of, so I think they fit better into the heavy stoner rock category.

A couple of other things back that up. One is that there's a lot of blues in their sound, especially the guitar of Adi Sanjaya, who feels like he's leapt forward in time from the late sixties where he would have fit in well with a band like Blue Cheer. I'm loving these psychedelic albums lately that could easily have been recorded years ago, if only the technology in use back then could pump up the bass and bass drums the way that we can now.

The other is that the production is most notable for its apparent complete absence. What I mean by that is that I'm sure that nailing this particular sound was the result of careful configuration in the studio, but the whole album sounds urgent and in our face. It's as if this four piece band set up their instruments in a garage and jammed for an hour after someone pressed record. Jangar often sound like a garage band.

A lot of that has to do with the vocals of Gusten Keniten, which are raw in a punk way, where attitude is as important as style. There are points where I wondered if he was singing through a megaphone, like Rudy Vallée. The trio behind him do a lot to maintain that attitude too, whether they're throwing out doomladen riffs in the Sabbath style on songs like Negeri Nego and Proklamator or more Zeppelin-esque classic rock lines on others like MSG and Sangkala.

I have little to no idea what he's singing about because the song titles I'm getting through Google Translate are pretty generic. Konstan unsurprisingly means Constant and Proklamator means Proclaimer. Kami Tahu translates to We Know, Kesurupan means Trance and Sangkala is Trumpet. That's not much to go on and there's no translation given at all for Aum Cilengkrang and Haerath. I'm particularly interested in the former, because Pasek Darmawaysya keeps excellent time on the drums while seemingly going completely outside of it on the cymbals.

All I know from an interview I found at Unite Asia is that Jelang Malam is apparently about the twilight time between day and night when the worlds of life and death merge and what might have been black or white becomes simply grey. The material doesn't feel that sort of spiritual, except perhaps early in Proklamator when the music takes a back seat to a shared singalong or in Haerath, Pt. 1 when there's a deep spoken voice alongside the singing one, but I'd love to see the lyrics, if only I could trust Google Translate to give me a solid English equivalent.

Even with four prior Indonesian albums under my belt this year, I still know next to nothing about what's happening over there. I don't even know how new Jangar are. Sure, this is their debut album, but that doesn't mean that they haven't been playing together for years. They sound like they have. They've also brought in a couple of guests: Rian Pelor, who sang for Auman and sings for Detention, and Doddy Hamson, the singer for Komunal. Of course, that has little meaning for me at this point.

Right now, all I really know is that I'm enjoying what I'm hearing thus far from Indonesia. It seems that music there tends to include psychedelic and progressive angles, whatever the genre a particular band happen to play in. Jangar aren't Mooner, just as Circlet aren't Razorblades Terror. And elder statesman of the scene, Dewa Budjana doesn't sound like any of them. That's healthy. I'm interested to see if other similarities show up as I dive into more Indonesian music.

Razorblades Terror - Return of the Crown (2019)

Country: Indonesia
Style: Technical Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 2 Jul 2019
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives | Twitter

I have a love/hate relationship with the brutal end of death metal, finding that a lot of it finds an interesting tone but does little more than drag it out for however many tracks are on any particular album or even a career. It might sound great on a first listen but it gets old really quickly for me, unlike melodic death metal which can change up from track to track if need be and add in all sorts of textures as it does so.

The closest I've got of late to brutal death metal that I really like is an Indonesian band by the name of Razorblades Terror, who play technical death metal. What that means is that they play with a brutal back end that's fast and downtuned but with a front end that's dominated by shredding guitarwork. The vocals are deep and growly, but are surprisingly versatile.

Most of this album is done at great speed. Fafa sets a relentless pace on the drums for Borky's bass to track. Whenever Tom pauses his growls, Dwy's fingers go dancing and we have frantic melody over frantic backing. On its own, that's pretty cool and I dig the sound.

But that isn't all that Razorblades Terror do and it's the rest that makes them special. For one thing, even though they're more brutal than melodic in tone, they construct their songs like melodeath bands. They introduce some variety on the opener, Binary of Gold, which follows a minute of blitzkrieg with a spoken word section and ends with a sort of choral crescendo that I presume is really done with keyboards.

Suckcial Media is what caught my attention. It's frantic, like most of this band's songs, but it gets much more varied than I expected. There are parts in the middle that transform into heavy power metal, with a slower approach, melodic riffing and more of that choral thing. And, as always, whatever goes on with the band, as fast and deep and brutal as they get, you can be sure that the guitarist is noodling along at high speed on his fretboard.

Dwy does this so much that there are points where he's still going as one song shuts down on him, so that he has to immediately carry on on the next one from where he left off. If there wasn't a pause between Suckcial Media and Racism Culture, I'd have thought they were the same song. This approach could easily have led to the album becoming one long repetitive track, but little touches of variety elevate the material.

The onslaught pauses in Racism Culture, for instance, for a lovely creeping bass run, something that happens in Death Prophercy too, among other points. Another is during a staccato section in Corps of Robot that highlights how capable each band member is, including whoever's handling the keyboards. If we doubted that there were keyboards, they get more obvious on Particle of Throne because there's clearly a piano in play and handled classically too. That returns for Death Prophercy and especially for Outro the Crown, which is an instrumental outro.

I enjoyed Return of the Crown a lot, finding that it energised me with its speed and brutality but kept my attention with its guitarwork and variety. It's probably important that Tom's voice didn't annoy me the way that a lot of brutal death metal vocalists do. He doesn't do anything new or ambitious, but he mixes things up a little by setting the tempo as effectively as the drummer.

The most obvious downside, for those who don't find this style repetitive, is the fact that the band's command of the English language, in which they sing, isn't particularly great. Of course, I have the same problem here in Phoenix, because most people can't conjure up coherent sentences any more, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to make of song titles like Particle of Throne, Binary of Gold or Corps of Robot. What's a Saliva Dealer and what's Candle Philosophy? I'm not sure that these things mean what they think they mean.

It really doesn't matter much, because Tom's vocals are not designed to be particularly intelligible, so confusedly looking over the track listing is about as problematic as it gets. No, that's not how Death Prophercy should be spelled. The catch is that, when Tom does appear to get intelligible, it doesn't work. The chorus on Suckcial Media sounds very much like "Everyone is daughter". I presume it isn't.

But hey, if that's all I can raise as a negative here, you know this is an impressive album! It's well written, well produced and well performed and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

Circlet - Circlet (2019)

Country: Indonesia
Style: Instrumental Progressive Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 2 Mar 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

I've talked at points about instrumental metal albums being a particular interest of mine and this one man album from Indonesia is precisely why. It's a wild mixture of sounds which only include vocals midway through Come and See, a short opening track. Even there, they show up in both harsh male and clean female form, entirely for texture. I have no idea what is being sung or even what language it's in.

The average track, if such a term can be used, comprises a standard core of instruments. The rhythm guitar is a vicious creature, while the lead soars and explores. The bass is especially prominent and I don't mean the entire bottom end of the equaliser, like the neighbours' cars at two in the morning, but the actual bass guitar, which is very distinctive in the mix. It gets a delightful showcase in Retrograde. The drums, which I have to believe are programmed rather than played, aren't keeping the beat so much as adding their own lead contribution.

And then there are keyboards, which provide a host of textures. They're particularly versatile here. There's a piano at the end of Come and See and it floats behind The Reminder too. They provide a sort of atmospheric background swell on Alter Ego. And there's an overtly electronic sound at points, starting on the opener, that wouldn't be out of place in chiptune music, though it's mostly enfolded by other instruments here rather than running solo. The violin may well be a violin but other instruments heard here, like the 'bells' on Alter Ego and Retrograde, are presumably the product of keyboard work.

What surprised me most here is that Robert Rayvid, who created everything on this album, except for one explosive sound effect that he borrowed for Vanity of Vanities, is a guitarist first and foremost but, however much he dances his fingers over his fretboard, this never sounds like shred. What it does sound like is open to question. He calls it progressive metal and that's as close as any description I can come up with.

However, it's notably varied progressive metal. There's a point on Alter Ego where it gets so fast that it's almost progressive thrash. Yet, there are all those overt electronic sounds and a drum machine that betrays its programmed nature more on some tracks than others. There's that violin on a number of tracks and a softer piano. It very much explores the map in search of its own sound.

The standout track here has to be Retrograde because it features most of those elements within five and a half minutes and does it with style. I'm stunned at how much Rayvid manages to cram into here without it seeming, well, crammed. Alter Ego is another track that finds its groove and riffs around that really well over six and a half minutes, making it the longest piece of music here; while Rayvid crams a lot into his songs, he doesn't need them to run forever.

This appears to be the first Circlet album, but it's not the first project that Rayvid has put together. I'm seeing three from Dramatic Lunacy over the last two years that are all him too. Why he changed the name, I have no idea, because it looks like similar material though I haven't heard it yet. After this, clearly I should seek it out.

Mooner - O.M. (2019)

Country: Indonesia
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 8 Feb 2019
Sites: Facebook | Instagram

The term 'supergroup' is one of the most overused in rock music. It's got to the point where any band who can claim that every member used to play in a different band is a supergroup and that's nonsense. However, it's always been a relative thing, not just speaking to the importance of the musicians to the world at large but to a particular scene too.

Case in point: Mooner. I hadn't heard of them until now but they have at least one prior album out, called Tabiat. Apparently they're a supergroup, because they number members of The Slave, The SIGIT, Signum and Sarasvati amongst their line up. Now, I haven't heard of any of those bands either and I can't help noticing that every one of their names begins with an S—hey, just like supergroup!—so it all seems a little fishy. The underlying point, though, is that my knowledge about psychedelia in Indonesia is so shallow that I'd struggle to even name another band, so I have absolutely no reason to deny that this is a supergroup.

I should add that The SIGIT, a band co-founded by Mooner's bass player, Rekti Yoewono, is apparently an acronym standing for The Super Insurgent Group of Intemperance Talent, so this isn't the first supergroup for some of them. That's such a supergroup that it says it in its very name!

Mooner, supergroup or not, almost lost me at the very beginning because the brief opening track, Indo, sounds rather like a sitar being tuned up and little more. When Kelana threatened to start in a similar way, I was about to give up on O.M. and try another album in the hopes of finding something interesting, but then they shifted into gear and hooked me just like that. Ten songs later and I felt happy and weird and energised. I can't claim to know much here, but I do know that I like it a lot.

What leaps out first with Mooner is the sweetness of Marshella Safira's vocals. They're soft and cuddly, almost at the level of twee pop but with odd little reminders of other genres. I couldn't be sure halfway through Umara whether her voice was transported in from an Ennio Morricone soundtrack or a Martin Denny album. There's some glorious use of sustain in her voice here whatever influences guided her.

However, the softness of Safara's voice never takes the band down a road like the Cardigans, because the musicians behind her play a lot heavier music. That sweet to heavy bounce is most evident in Ilat, with a return for the sitar, which is wonderful texture in front of a wall of fuzz. It reaches Black Sabbath riffing towards the end, but the interplay between sweet vocals and harsh guitar is almost a conversation.

I'm sure there are Indonesian sounds all over the place here, but I don't have any depth in the local scene to identify them. It's easier for me to groove with the vibrant vocals on Menenggala, soar with the flute and then join in on the joyous scramble towards the end, not knowing whether that's entirely original or a nod to a local style.

I can speak to more general variance. The guitar gets fuzzy on Gasang and ends up duelling with another towards the end above a staccato backing. How does that work with only one guitarist? Maybe they have two now or a guest showed up. Aram gets funky while Renjana is slower and more bluesy. Everything is psychedelic but that trawls in everything from the Beatles to Iron Butterfly and there's definitely range here.

What's odd is that the songs are all short until we get to the last two, which are much longer. Lamun Ombak is almost twice as long as any of the previous nine tracks and it's a peach. M. Absar Lebeh's guitar ventures into the honeyed territory of Safira's voice and it's laid back bliss for a while. Halfway, Safira gets adamant and the track becomes a ritualistic piece, as if commanding us to do something or other. Umara is almost as long and, again there's a lot of depth in there to explore.

This is happy stuff, folks, even when it takes a journey into the sandbox of the blues. It's a frolic into exotic psychedelic territory, presumably best taken after a tab of acid. I highly recommend it and I'm now eager to track down their first album, Tabiat.

Dewa Budjana - Mahindini (2018)

Country: Indonesia
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 10 Dec 2018
Sites: Facebook | Official Website

I love the fact that the world of rock music has expanded since the eighties (or its globe has shrunk). Back then, everyone was from the UK or the USA, maybe Germany, and it was a rare band from further afield who made us pay attention. Sure, some of them existed and we just didn't know about it, but it's not just the internet shrinking those miles that's making rock and metal such an international force nowadays.

Case in point, here's Dewa Budjana from Waikabubak in Indonesia, who started out as a jazz guitarist but couldn't resist rocking it up. He formed Gigi in 1994, with whom he's recorded at least twenty albums, including 1997's 2x2 (featuring Billy Sheehan), even though he's also been releasing solo albums since the late nineties.

Mahindini is, I believe, his tenth solo album and it's ostensibly progressive rock, even though it frequently diverges from that in multiple directions. The end of Crowded veers into experimental jazz territory and Queen Kanya kicks off like a rock guitar virtuoso instrumental, a road that a Vai or a Satriani might travel down, but, by halfway, we find ourselves in a cocktail lounge wondering how those legends would look in tuxes. Just as we realise how weird that thought is, Budjana starts shredding again before launching into a bizarre attempt to merge staccato Sheila Chandra style vocals to a jazz backing.

Presumably this is an Indonesian equivalent to Chandra's Indian roots and it's what makes this album particularly fascinating. Hyang Giri is more obviously Indonesian as I recognise sounds I know from singers like Detty Kurnia, courtesy of guest vocalist Soimah Pancawati. Hearing those sounds in a prog rock setting is wild and enticing and I'd love to hear a whole album of material like this. Unfortunately that isn't what we get.

For three tracks, this is a wonderful album, full of imagination in ways that we don't tend to hear very often here in the west. Unfortunately, it loses its way somewhat at that point. That's not to say that the rest of the album is bad, as it isn't, but it seems to forget what its strengths are and so quickly descends into relatively routine noodly jazz, exemplified by the 8:17 title track, that forces the album into the background. It does pick up a little at the end with Zone when vocals (courtesy of John Frusciante from the Red Hot Chili Peppers) return but only for a while.

This album will certainly prompt me to seek out more Dewa Budjana and there's a lot of it to find, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the Indonesian flavour and the innovation of the first three tracks rather than the more forgettable last four.