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Yearender: 2022’s best music albums
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Album of the year: The Jansen's third album “Banal Semakin Binal“ finds a more polished and mature-sounding collection of punk bops. (Courtesy of The Jansen) (Courtesy of The Jansen)
F
rom genres as diverse as punk revival and genre fusions, to apocalyptic doom, The Jakarta Post picks the best albums of 2022 by local musicians.
Are we out of the woods yet? Maybe not. The year 2022 was definitely a turning point for the Indonesian music industry, filled by the return of festivals and micro gigs. This year was still somewhat-strange with an aural landscape that felt a bit unfamiliar, but the collective outlook seemed to be a bit “brighter”, maybe?
To celebrate, The Jakarta Post has put together 10 brilliant albums by local acts released in 2022 along with a few honorable mentions on the side.
#10 Leipzig, Garbage Disposal Communique
At just 13 minutes, Bandung-based Leipzig blows past every track with instant catchiness in debut album Garbage Disposal Communique. Rambles of social malaise are spread in the most chaotic ways in a mix of the English, Indonesian and Sundanese languages. Its devil-may-care attitude brings in short, hard-hitting punk tunes reminiscent of the Dead Kennedys’ funky riffs and beats.
Tracks like “Gazelle [Noam Chomsky’s Unanswered Question]” find the fun melodies The Cure usually produce coalesce with dark, spacey drums of Joy Division in a song. “There are hundreds of used tea bags and cigarette butts in my head,” frontman Mario Prasetya thinks out loud in an impressionistic manner, the very best a post-punk outfit can offer.
