Finally. It was in 2012 when I saw Bekasi-based band The Trees and the Wild (TTATW) play a show in my high school. After 20 minutes setting their gear up, impatience had spread through the crowd; who did this band, cloaked in the darkness of the night, think they were?

According to the people shouting song requests, they were the band who made the song “Irish Girl”, a folk song off their 2009 debut LP, Rasuk (Possessed). It’s some of the politest music that you could sing along to. And after the first notes were played by the band — vocalist/guitarist Remedi, guitarist Andra, drummer Inu, vocalist Tami and bassist Tyo — a subdued tone blanketed the stage, giving off an air of mystery as the music made an intense ascent. Asking for “Irish Girl” suddenly was one way to deliver a crass insult.

Then they went on to play a set of new songs. Imagine this: Choral music from a traditional dance was sampled as a prelude to a post-rock anthem. Vocalist Remedi went on to solemnly sing the line, “Saija remuk/dan dia ‘kan sadar/yang tak diam dengannya/hanya waktu” (Saija crushed/and he’ll realize/that the only thing still/is time).

They played vamp notes when they were expected to play linear songs; riffs persisted as the drums sounded as if they were part of a marching band. This went on for nine minutes, and as it ended, I felt overwhelmed, entranced.

That they waited seven years before committing this song — “Saija” — and six others to tape is anyone’s guess. Years before, people anticipated the new record, titled Zaman, Zaman (Era, Era) with no sign of release. The sporadic shows they played only added to the gleeful anticipation; the line of demarcation between what was on Rasuk and what could be on Zaman, Zaman had blurred by that point.

And boy did they deliver. Zaman, Zaman is an album that’ll overwhelm you in the best possible ways. Musically, its music that Steve Reich (the renowned minimalist composer) would play if he decided to nut up and listen to a bunch of records from Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the Canadian post-rock giants. From its seven-minute title-track opener, the vocals are significantly buried in the enveloping wall-of-sounds, and an eerie synth runs repetitively before crashing to an abrupt halt and seguing into a 14-minute thumping reverie “Empati Tamako” (Tamako’s Empathy).

You might notice that I wrote nine, seven and 14 minutes in this piece. With seven songs that run for 53 minutes, Zaman, Zaman treats length as a well-placed strength.

But detailing the length of each song is an outlier, as the other weapon that TTATW has is its ear for continuity; this is an album that is best heard as one piece. It rightly demands (and will get) your fullest attention if listened to in this way. The music gets richer as it dovetails and swerves but retains the basic sounds.

Take “Empati Tamako”, for instance. Remedi and Tami sing the line “Terang yang kau dambakan/hilanglah semua yang kau tanya” (the light that you crave/gone is everything that you ask) for, like, 20 times and after they fade away, the line lingers in your head.

Zaman, Zaman also benefits from two strong three-minute tracks — “Srangan” and “Roulements” — that function as, to me at least, breaks from the record’s intensity.

“Saija” ends the record and, by that extension, the familiar descending riffs close Zaman, Zaman. At that point after I first listened to it, I had to look up, making sure that I hadn’t been making some strange motions.

I knew that I’d just listened to one of the greatest records of Indonesian music; to call it a classic would not be a misnomer. TTATW didn’t just make a perfect record in seven years where two full decades would do. They lived up to their ambition and, in doing so, both answered and shattered our expectations.

— Stanley Widianto

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