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Rekah rocks with emotive diverse roots
Jakarta band Rekah plays the kind of emotive rock that is certain to get the adolescent heart ceremoniously beating.
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Jakarta band Rekah plays the kind of emotive rock that is certain to get the adolescent heart ceremoniously beating. (Cakti Prawirabishma/File)
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alancing the dark romanticism of modern black metal, the earnest evocative quality of present-day emo core (“emo” is short for emotional) and the aggressive machismo of post-hardcore, Rekah embodies all the qualities that make it a live act guaranteed to sweep the mind as well as the body. Its songs are as easy to mosh to as they are to weep along to. Though the band has only released a few tracks online, its fan base quickly grew to its live sets.
Rekah is currently recording material for its debut album, which it hopes to release sometime in the middle of this year. For a band that has garnered steady momentum in the three years since its inception, things seem to be on the up and up.
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“We formed the band when I was still in the band Amukredam, singing for that band,” says Tomo Hartono, Rekah’s guitarist. “The idea was to form a side project where I could dig deep into exploring my aggressive musical tendencies — something I couldn’t do in my previous band.”
Tomo wanted a band that could execute his newly written tracks well. He wanted musicians from different musical backgrounds. First, Tomo asked his buddy, Johan Junior, to play drums, because of their shared passion for black metal. Then he approached bass player Yoan Christian, who was into Japanese math rock, and guitarist Marvin Viryananda, whose band The Colour Mellow played a kind of textural rock Tomo hoped would differentiate his new project from all the other aggressive metal bands out there. Lastly, he asked Faiz Alfaresi to front the band with his vocals.
The band picked the name Rekah, Indonesian for “cracked”, because they wanted something that evoked a sense of “blowing up or blossoming slowly”, says Tomo, explaining that the name perfectly captures that musical and live essence.
Though the band realizes that its sound reveals their influences – Tomo mentions Japanese post-hardcore bands and atmospheric black metal as the main ones — the goal, he says, is to “not do anything that we’ve done in any of our other bands.”
“When we arrange our songs, we try to stray as far away from the clichés [of rock music] as we possibly can. We don’t want to be stuck in a ‘prison of genres’,” Tomo says.
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“When originality is something that has become a scarcity, we realize that this won’t be an easy goal, but we still want to try. We don’t know whether it will work, but what we do know is that history has a place for those who seek possibilities in a space of impossibilities.”
The band’s emo influence shines particularly through Rekah’s lyrics. Mostly written by Tomo, they deal with personal turmoil and humanity.
“All the lyrics I’ve written so far are very personal,” admitted Tomo. Though he grew up around metal and hardcore punk, Tomo says he has a hard time relating to the general lyrics associated with those genres. For him, the politically conscious lyricism of many punk bands has begun to feel generic in its homogeneity.
“Of course, I care about those issues, but I feel that lyrics with big narrative tendencies sometimes fail to capture the complexity of humanity and are stuck in instances of mere sloganeering.”
Tomo wants to write lyrics from a personal perspective. A process he said was an important step for artists to take before they start to tackle big issues.
“Talking about personal things like your feelings is in its own way a political act that is important to do to fight against a world that is designed only for productivity that values something only if it adds to things economically,” he says.
The band is busy recording its album at Kandang Studio in South Jakarta. The aim is to capture the energy the band evokes on stage — “noisy and explosive,” says Tomo.
The album will be a concept album, where songs are tied to one another. The plot is a simple one, the guitarist says, focusing on friendship, farewells, “and everything in between”. The album is being recorded by the band’s friend, engineer Haryo Widi Adhikaputra.
The record is tentatively titled Berbagi Kamar (Sharing Bedrooms) and will be released by independent label Royal Yawns.
Tomo says he can’t wait to bring the album on stage. He praises the interaction the audience has given his band — “whether they take the mic and sing along, scream along, or cy with us. We want them to be one with the explosion that is occurring on stage. No performer, no audience. We are all one. Let us explode together.”
