ADS and the ugly truth about noise

Sun, 04/13/2008 12:35 PM | Entertainment

Hello and welcome back to Underground Hum all you indie-grounders out there. I am Ari Ernesto P, filling in for your kinda lovable, kinda cuddly host Paul F. Agusta.

In the next few weeks I plan to take you down into the nooks and crannies of the music scenes of the region.

Main Stage

In this edition of Main Stage, I'd like to introduce you to Aneka Digital Safari. Although the name Aneka Digital Safari is inspired by 80s TVRI show Aneka Ria Safari, their music is not in the slightest bit related to the origin of their name. Harsh noise is what this Bandung-based duo calls their music, and that, my friends, is an understatement.

Starting out as a hobby project in late 2005, ADS never morphed into a larger unit. Heickel Al-Katiri and Ricky Rhavasia are the brains behind this musical mayhem, and even though there are just two of them, they make enough noise for 10!

Noise, to a lot of conventional music enthusiasts, is not music. Heickel Alkatiri confirms this conception: "We don't describe noise as music, but as a spiritual reaction to what you believe and what you hate. It's an unknown orgasm".

Instead of playing "regular" musical instruments such as guitars, bass guitars and drums, Aneka Digital Safari uses a series of stompboxes (effect pedals for guitar and bass).

Heickel and Ricky scream and shout, producing a distorted wall of sound that is unleashed onto their unsuspecting audience during their less than 30 minute sets.

The concept of "the stage" is pretty much nonexistent in an ADS live setting. They prefer to play off stage and surrounded by their audience.

One might conclude that ADS only produces gibberish and nonsensical mumbo-jumbo but read their liner notes and you'll discover an array of offbeat themes. It's noise with meaning, so to speak.

An obsession with human waste and other dirty things seems to lie at the base of their lyrical content. As Heickel explains, their lyrics are an expression and analogy of the musical soundscape they create and the extremity of their arrangements. They are not merely there for the shock value.

The creative process takes place in their in-home rehearsal/recording space, which doubles as Heickel's bedroom.

Heickel explains: "We set up our stompboxes and mixers, and we use a compressor to distort sounds. Then we record it and scrutinize it. We use sonic home recording, that's it! No cool recording software whatsoever because my computer sound card is pretty awful -- but, hey, who cares."

The spontaneity of this process is the most powerful ingredient of their in-your-face ear-damaging home brew.

In Indonesia, noise is not really even considered a genre. Heickel says: "The ugly truth about noise is that it doesn't really pay, especially in Indonesia. We don't really care about what the audience thinks about us when we're screaming and banging our heads up and down!"

It's this boldness that has catapulted them into the international noise scene with three releases on an Australian-Indonesian label, Death Tiwikrama Productions. Their latest output on CD is entitled Mohel, released in 2007, and their upcoming release will be on an international compilation curated by a Belgian label, Sphyre Records.

ADS may not be suitable background music for your first date, in fact people's initial reaction to ADS might be far from enthusiastic. Nevertheless, ADS will just continue to play, whether you like it or not, since they don't play to please in the first place. A spiritual explosion and cathartic climax, as Heickel mentioned, are the two things ADS is after.

I dare you to check ADS out, especially if you are into outside-of-the-box music -- even though ADS themselves might consider the term "music" inappropriate.

You can find out more about ADS on their Myspace page: www.myspace.com/anekadigitalsafari. Be sure to give them feedback on their stuff by leaving comments on their page or contact them at anekadigitalsafari@yahoo.com.

That's me, Ari Ernesto, signing off on this week's Underground Hum. Blame the earache on me, but be sure to come back for next week's edition of Reverb.

If you have any questions or suggestions for this column please contact JP's in house music geek at undergroundhum@yahoo.com.

For all of you indie bands or artists out there, let us know if you have a gig coming up so we can include it in Reverb. Be sure to include the name of the event you're playing, what other acts are billed, time, place, date and entry fee if any.

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