An indie super group of sorts, Bandung-based Mooner is a psychedelic rock band that is heavy on the retro. Vintage sonic flourishes characterize its debut record Tabiat, a 12-song album that is essentially the seventies psych-rock experience in a nutshell.

This means a lot of riffs reminiscent of the Middle East (the Phrygian Dominant and Double Harmonic scale gets plenty of room to exercise itself for those who are technically attentive) and fluid vocals that double up onto those guitar riffs. The pseudo-funk percussion work and smoky organ also find comfort in similar Middle-Eastern and Indian raga tendencies, lending a sense of the exoticness to practically every song. Memories of the Incredible String Band, Soft Machines and Shocking Blue abound.

If that all sounds like something you’d be up for, then Tabiat will meet all your retro-rock needs. At times, it does feel like the synergy of the group’s own style and its seventies rock influence could have amounted to something more than a celebration of yesteryear. Yet Mooner feels very comfortable in its own skin, indulging in musical tendencies that make you believe the band members were operating with a sense of adventurousness they perhaps didn’t find room for within their other musical projects.

Those projects include vocalist Marshella Safira’s quasi-goth Sarasvati, bassist-vocalist Rekti Yoewono’s garage rocking The S.I.G.I.T, drummer Pratama Kusuma’s Sigmun (which comes closest to Mooner’s sound) and guitarist M. Absar Lebeh’s The Slave.

What does make the record easy to listen to is the technical proficiency. While certainly not a prog-rock record of any sort, Tabiat (which roughly means someone’s natural character) serves up constant syncopations between the instruments that fare very strongly because of the balance of it feeling tight yet still “loose” in the rock ‘n’ roll sense.

While the guitars — always wrapped in overdriven-fuzz that rightly sounds like it come out of an overdriven amp instead of an effect pedal — pretty much take the lead in every song, the rhythm section provides constant grooves behind it; never flashy but consistently solid. The result is a back-and-forth that almost feels greasy, giving the record the sense that it was recorded live (with the band playing together at once.) While I’m not sure if that’s how Tabiat was recorded, it adds up to a lot, blanketing the record in “vibes”, for lack of a better word, rather than actual songs. Tabiat will certainly work best for a younger audience for whom psychedelic rock has always existed as something exotic to be researched on Wikipedia.

Tabiat’s immediacy in undeniable, however. “Buruh” is all fired-up guitar riffs and almost country-western rhythms, with a healthy dose of indelibly-confident bass lines running through it; “Takana 1” a death-blues psych-rock experience decorated with tablas; “Ingkar” a Black Sabbath stoner-rocker moving patiently with deadly intent; and stand-out “Lancang”, dosing itself with pre-heavy-metallic riffs that would make Thin Lizzy, U.F.O. and Judas Priest more than proud.

The record’s strongest set comes in the form of its shortest tracks. The one-minute-plus “Serikat” is crunchy, dripping with an almost drunken, circus-style drumming and freeform instrumentation, while the end-credit feel of “Gelar” is crescendo after crescendo, layered with harmonies.

Tabiat is a record that works well with a pint of local beer and preferably a willingness to go down on much-traversed routes. Well aware of history and armed with conviction, it’s a strong debut from a band that could do well to push its arsenal a little more next time.
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https://bhangrecords.bandcamp.com/album/tabiat

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