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The Battlebeats: From a Bandung bedroom to Europe and the United States
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What's in a name: The Battlebeats’ name was given by Fifi from TEENGENERATE, Andresa Nugraha's friend, in 2018. Both of them hung out at Fifi’s bar, Poor Cow, in Kitazawa, Tokyo, when Fifi suggested 'Battle Beat' and Adresa made adjustments. (Courtesy of Ibrahim Partogi) (Courtesy of Ibrahim Partogi/Courtesy of Ibrahim Partogi)
The story of how a ramshackle bedroom musician from Bandung ended up working with four different labels in the West.
In 2019, Bandung-based Andresa Nugraha was self-releasing his debut extended play (EP), or mini-album, on rewritable compact discs (CDRs) for his band The Battlebeats. He had ordered them through a friend in Bekasi, West Java, who does small-run duplication for Rp 3,500 (24 US cents) apiece. Today, The Battlebeats has released four vinyl records – one of them a long play (LP) and the rest 45s EP – with four different labels in Germany, France and the United States.
“I think I should go record some songs”, Andresa said to his wife back in 2019.
“I didn’t know you have any songs to record,” his wife replied.
“I don’t,” Andresa responded.
The 28-year-old proceeded to book a shift at a small home-recording studio just off Jl. Ahmad Yani in Cicadas, Bandung, West Java, for the coming Monday. “It cost me Rp 350,000”, Andresa said with a grin as he slapped his palms on his knees. The studio operator asked how many songs he was going to record, to which he paused before answering that he would write the songs before coming in. It was only five days before the recording shift.
Andresa’s approach to songwriting and also his impulsive recording decision, at that point, were mainly inspired by US Memphis-New Orleans supergroup Bad Times. “...one day of practice, one day of recording/mixing, one show [opening for Guitar Wolf in Normal, IL], one record", Eric Oblivian wrote in the band’s only record’s liner notes.
“My curiosity was satiated, I was thinking of disbanding [the musical project]”, said Andresa upon the release of his debut EP, which he released digitally on music platform Bandcamp the very next day after recording. Unlike Bad Times, Andresa decided to take The Battlebeats further.
Ramshackle beginnings
Andresa left the studio with seven songs — six of which he wrote himself in five days and one cover song from Japanese punk rock band TEENGENERATE — recorded with a LINE6 brand bedroom combo solid-state amp and an insignificant selection of cheap guitar effects. The bass guitar was left out of the equation and Andresa only used a floor tom and a snare drum along with a single tambourine. He played all the instruments himself.
This seemingly-brutal simplicity was a nod to his influences: American garage rock bands The Gories and Oblivians.
“They showed me that we can make do with what little equipment that we have. Also, most of the garage-punk records that I came across online sounded very lo-fi, it kind of made me more confident to come up with my own stuff and form a band.”
Andresa posted his EP to garage rock fan groups on Facebook and found that it sold quite well. “A lot of [people] were asking for physical copies,” he said. So, he made 50 CDR copies and spammed the groups again.
“That was the first time I went into a post office to send something abroad. I sold maybe 20 copies on Bandcamp.”
At one point, someone sent him a message on Facebook telling him to join a budget rock group page, saying, “They’re going to love your songs”. Andresa joined the group and sold the last copy of the EP.
“I used the money from Bandcamp to record Search and Destroy,” he continued. Compared with the EP, Search and Destroy was more well-thought-through — he wrote the songs over the span of six months.
“I didn’t want it to be as unbearable as the EP. It still sounded like trash, but not that trashy.”
Reaching out
After finishing recording 21 songs in 14 hours, Andresa immediately set out to find a label and made a who’s who map of labels in the garage punk scene. After facing his fifth rejection, he asked to borrow some money from his mother for tape duplication at the record label Lokananta in Surakarta, Central Java.
“I borrowed Rp 2 million for 100 cassette tapes, if I’m not mistaken”, he reminisced, as his mother ushered us to move inside from the porch. He broke even on Bandcamp and started making the CD format.
“Someone in Austin reached out asking to press a vinyl version of my EP.” Said Andresa, referring to Eloy Aguilar of Post Party Depression, a label in Austin, Texas, the US. “But we might only be able to do four songs in a seven-inch [vinyl]”, Andresa rephrased Eloy.
Out of the seven songs that he recorded before, he saved one for his then-still-imaginary scenario of pressing vinyl. “So, I kept three songs from the EP and added that one song that I saved.” Post Party Depression gave the EP a remaster and pressed 300 copies of seven-inch vinyl records.
His streak of vinyl releases started after that. Over Post Party Depression’s small-label distribution channel and network, the seven-inch made its way to Daniel from Alien Snatch! Records in Germany and Noah Drumright from Otitis Media in Texas, the United States. Both of them offered a vinyl press for Search and Destroy. Andresa described his experience of being contacted by both Daniel and Noah as “some miracle” as he swore that he was just thinking of the labels when the offers came in.
“I had goosebumps when Eloy said Daniel from Alien Snatch! Records bought 20 copies of the seven-inch”, Andresa said. “The label was on the top of my list, but I never got the courage to send the demo after five rejections.” He woke up the next morning to an offer from Daniel.
He told a similar story for Otitis Media Records, “I swear I was just talking to my wife about this label.” He was sitting in a cafe in Burangrang, West Java, when he noticed that Noah from Otitis had been re-sharing updates from The Battlebeats’ Facebook page.
“Hey, this guy Noah, I think he’s interested in releasing The Battlebeats,” said Andresa to his wife back then. And the offer came, according to Andresa, “not a minute after I thought about it! He sent me a message through Facebook.” Otitis Media Records then scheduled a seven-inch EP titled Killed by Boredom, released in May in the US.
“I think that the most interesting thing about The Battlebeats is how Andresa networks his way into releases with labels abroad,” noted Dally Anbar from fellow Bandung band Muchos Libre.
The Facebook way
“Unlike most Indonesian bands right now, I do most of my networking through Facebook,” said Andresa, although he did “meet” Fifi from TEENGENERATE through Instagram and came to be friends in real life. In fact, The Battlebeats’ name was created by Fifi in 2018, almost a year before Andresa toured Japan with Saturday Night Karaoke. Both of them hung out at Fifi’s bar, Poor Cow, in Kitazawa, Tokyo. “Fifi gave me ‘Battle Beat’. I thought it would be cool to remove the space and add ‘The’ [and] ‘s’ aesthetics to the name, hence The Battlebeats”.
Andresa is currently busy, as he phrased it, “laying around at home, promoting my releases through my phone”, and is in the process of releasing two other EPs on vinyl with Post Party Depression and Washington D.C.-based Big Neck Records who released one of Jay Reatard’s most prolific projects, Lost Sounds.
“I’m planning on doing a showcase, having it recorded live and trying to have it released on vinyl, maybe in 2023. Let’s see if any of the labels are interested in releasing it.”
The Battlebeats is also set to release a split EP with a French band through a New York-based label in 2023.
