The void

“After that […] we’re just […] gone,” said the band’s bassist, Haryo Widi Adhikaputra, when he spoke to The Jakarta Post on May 12. Rahmad Sumantri, who is the vocalist, gave a mischievous chuckle at Haryo’s remarks. “Yeah,” Rahmad then followed with a sigh.

Expectations were quite high after the band’s emergence in 2015. The bar’s height, however, was unintentionally set by the band itself. 

That year it debuted an EP, Transcend Massive Culture, and followed it up, in mere seven months, with another EP that it released as a split (a format that is common among punk bands in which they share costs of doing a release) with Depok punk band Total Jerks. Both of the releases were sonic powerhouses.

The band was not really “gone,” however. It continued to devour (destroy, even) every stage that the then-quartet was invited to. Haryo took it strictly in a figurative way as, from the 2015 split EP, the band did not release new, major, musical works until they broke their “silence” in October 2022. 

In 2020, they released a single, “Wanita Ekstasi” (Woman of Ecstacy) with Jakarta label Berita Angkasa as part of an anniversary compilation dubbed Adiksi Adaptasi (Adaptation Addiction), yet a new, proper studio album was still yet in sight.

“Rejoice! Tarrkam fans!” I said, when I happened across the band’s Instagram post for “Kameleon.” It released a music video prior to the digital release, premiering Oct. 31, 2022. It was finally being realized.

The princes in the tower

The album, at one point, became a running joke within the band’s immediate circles. Some would jeer at the members when they were out attending gigs in their hometown. “Hey, where’s the album?” was one of the jabs that the members used to take, back in the days.

In my perspective, the album even reached the status of a myth, at least for myself. Once, when Rahmad was visiting Bandung sometime just before the pandemic in late 2019, he meekly told me that “we just finished recording an album.” But they had yet to release it. The album existed, but at the same time, it did not. And words got around really fast back then.

First class honors: The cover art for Tarrkam's debut studio album Fresh Grad, by Rachmad Sumantri. (Courtesy of Tarrkam) (Archive/Courtesy of Tarrkam)

Jakarta label Lamunai Records, who now releases Fresh Grad, approached the band in 2018. Like princes that were carefully probing their suitors, Tarrkam was approached by a total of three record labels over the years. “We only said yes in 2021,” remembered Haryo. But it was not pomp that drove them; the band was simply riddled by unsureness.

When the band finished recording the album in 2019, the post-production (involving the mixing and the mastering process) went off-schedule for some time before it then plunged into an indefinite deadline at Haryo’s hands. Rahmad would chime that Haryo was “really busy” every time the topic of the Tarrkam’s album popped up, then Haryo would come out in plain sight and shoot himself by saying that working post-production for his own band was ridiculously different.

Stuck with being constantly unsure, Haryo even redid the process of both mixing and mastering Fresh Grad for a total of “two times, at least,” he said. From the perspective of a label, that would mean losing a significant chunk of production costs down the drain if not for the band’s bassist undertaking the process himself at his studio, Kandang Studio.

When the label became jittery from waiting a tad too long, the post-production was ultimately handed to Jakarta based musician/producer Alfath Arya. Alfath then really “wrecked” the album, in a wonderful way, stripping it bare to expose its rawest form in order to portray the band’s blistering energy that longtime fans would expect from its live performances.

Decayed to perfection

Tarrkam’s live performances are akin to being sonically (and physically) pummeled from all sides, with each of the personnel in perfect command of their elements. Chaos would always ensue every time the quintet set foot on stage.

In Fresh Grad, the band’s signature malignant, sinister hooks, jerky grooves and its aggressively articulate vocals (in which Rahmad would effortlessly switch between playful suaveness into coarse yells) are presented differently. On my first run of listening to the album, the overall sound of the album came across as quite “crumpled,” and it was rather frustrating in the beginning. But the album immediately grew on me, and by the time I reached “Chainsmoker,” I could think of no better way to emulate the band’s intensity.

“I just embraced its rawness and its energy,” said Alfath. 

He recalled that Rahmad only gave him an album to be taken as a reference. “[It was] Parquet Courts, he was being really specific,” Alfath continued. 

“The 2013 album, I think,” added Rahmad, laughing. 

“But the recording tracks that I received would be a bit too energetic if we were to approach Parquet Courts,” Alfath mused. “So I ‘destroyed’ it instead. That’s why I dirtied the vocals and even crushed the drum tracks. [...] It’s about conserving the raw power of the band.”

Alfath referred to such audio recordings that came across as “dirty” and would, most of the time, make people uncomfortable. “Like being punched in the face,” he continued. 

That is exactly how I felt when I listened through the tracks of Fresh Grad. 

While some, like myself, applauded the record’s direction as a brave move, others would argue that it is too unconventional. Tarrkam’s Fresh Grad is an album that is divisive as much as it is brilliant.