Java Blues

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Sun, 07/08/2007 11:03 AM  |  Life

Artist: Adrian Adioetomo
Album : Delta Indonesia
Label : Myseeds Records
Rating : *** out of *****
Standout Tracks : Telegram, Blues Iblis (Devil's Blues)

It seems that the same devil that tricked blues guitar legend Robert Johnson into trading his soul for guitar-playing prowess has recently landed in West Java and possessed a young man named Adrian Adioetomo.

So powerful was the spell that this young man believes that delta blues, a sub-genre born in the Mississippi delta in the late 1920s, made inroads to the country at about the same period.

""What if by some freak accident, the rural blues of the 1930s Mississippi delta found its way to pre-Independence Indonesia?"" Adrian toyingly asks in the liner notes of his debut album Delta Indonesia.

Delta is the answer to that question. His guitar-playing skill is may just be a matter of technique and a pact with the devil; otherwise, years of practicing could produce just that.

Skill aside, the album's biggest attraction is Adrian's meticulous efforts to produce the authentic sound of delta blues as it was heard in the 1930s.

All songs in this album were treated to replicate the sounds of dust and scratches of 1930s 78 rpm vinyl records (even the physical CD is engraved to replicate the surface of vinyl records).

The songs, predictably, are standard blues tunes that no one from the blues community would have any problem adjusting to; the same songs that made members of Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and Cream form bands in the first place.

Telegram sounds like Howlin' Wolf's Killing Floor before it was covered by Jimmy Page for Led Zeppelin II.

Theme-wise, Adrian talks a lot about what original delta blues performer rants, oppression, longing for unknown roots, front-porch musings and -- well -- pacts with the devil.

In Blues Iblis (Devil's Blues), Adrian sings about trading his soul with the same devil that took his woman, a paean to Johnson in Bahasa Indonesia that sounds like a translation from the English.

Delta is more a mission statement than a work of art. In plain language it is the sound of young man's fixation toward Robert Johnson, early-era vinyl and blues poetry -- nothing more.

-- M. Taufiqurrahman

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