After starting as a fluid group of Jakarta cool kids fooling around with reverberating psychedelia, Crayola Eyes finally released their debut studio album, Gushing, on Feb. 23. The album followed a string of singles on Jakarta label LaMunai Records more than a decade after the band’s inception.

For those who are familiar with the now-sextet’s early days, the completion of Gushing might come across as quite a feat, as the group of friends was, and still is, pretty much a jumble of complex ideas.

Under the velvet sun

The band owes a lot to 1990s psychedelic revivalists such as English rock band Spacemen 3, whom Reno Nismara, the band’s vocalist and tambourine player, often refers to as one of the group’s major influences, alongside American multi-instrumentalist Anton Newcombe’s The Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Crayola Eyes’ tendency to reference their inspirations in their music – “Spectrum (for Sonic Boom)”, for example, is a tribute to Spacemen 3’s Peter Kember/Sonic Boom – sometimes brings the group dangerously close to the realm of overt homage.

“This might just be me, but I never expected or hoped to invent anything new. I mean, what else is new these days?” Reno said on March 2.

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