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.

Reno is one of the two remaining original members of Crayola Eyes’ early, unnamed days, alongside guitarist Kendra Ahimsa.

Reno noted that it was only natural for him and the band to stick to what they knew best.

“And what we know best is the music that we like. Not only music, even, maybe other mediums of art that we like as well,” he said. “The outcome, at the end, will be something that might not be new, but fresh.”

He paused.

“Not fresh, but something that really represents us. That sense of authenticity and not the sense of newness that we were looking for.”

Sonic tapestry

“It’s true what Reno said, nothing else is new,” Kendra added. “I think, ultimately, every band is a melting pot of its members’ input, how each of them build on their roles within the band.”

Bayu Andrianto, the band’s guitarist, noted the eclectic nature of its creative process.

“It’s like doing a collage of inspirations. It could start from a guitar line, in which I imbue a particular reference, and the others will build upon it like gluing things together.”

“Maybe if Ferry was a drummer that listened to metal songs instead of soul, there’d be a bit more chaos to it. It’d be a different band altogether,” Kendra added, referring to the band’s drummer Ferry Prakarsa.

Ferry was recruited by Reno through a stiffly formal email, something that the two have only recently managed to joke about.

“I didn’t know him personally back then,” Reno said with a chuckle.

Reno deployed a similar formality when meeting the person who would later become their producer, Bernardus Fritz (Sunmantra), online. Reno made a presentation deck containing all the references that the band considered relevant.

“Here are the songs that we have, and here is the mood that we want and then the references that we used when we worked on the songs and so on,” Reno said. “We presented everything online.”

Nearly everything leading to Fritz's involvement in the album was guided by the band. 

“So that the songs would sound new, despite the fact that we already played some of them live, we needed to figure out a way for people to still be surprised when we released the album. And Fritz delivered. He knew exactly what we wanted,” Reno said. “He even worked on two songs in a day at one point.”

 

Esoteric crayon-worshiping cult?

Kendra also noted that having a producer around was an indication that the band was steadily maturing. He said that in the early days, the band did not have “a concrete goal in mind and we were in a band merely for the sake of having fun”. 

“I think it was also because we didn’t have the right formation at that time. But then we met Adi, who plays the bass. ‘Hey now this is getting good.’ Then he became a permanent member,” Kendra added, referring to Aditya Hadisusanto, the band’s bassist.

The band reinvented itself a number of times. In July 2011, it performed as The Brian Slade Stardust as an octet at Mystery Kitchen II, a small show held in a personal apartment above a Japanese restaurant just off Jl. M.H. Thamrin in Jakarta. That incarnation of the group included Amanda Stamboel, Jojo Tirayoh, Nico Gozali (Jirapah), Sawi Lieu (Future Collective), Billy Saleh (Alahad) and Xandega Tahajuansya (Polka Wars).

“When we met Bayu, everything suddenly fell into place. What we were lacking all those times was Bayu, I reckon,” said Kendra.

“I never really felt that we had the right rhythm section back then,” Reno recalled. “That’s why when Adi and Ferry joined the band, I thought that we were finally starting to find the right groove.”

It was only then that the band started looking for a manager. Reno reached out to Pramedya Nataprawira, the current manager, on a whim. 

Such whims were a big part of the band’s process, such as when they asked Aghnia Azka, Bayu's wife, to provide a vocal track for one of the album’s songs.

“It was at that point that I realized that the band had something that needed to be pursued,” Reno said.

Gushing is an evocative album that asks listeners to relish every second of its lingering, engrossing psychedelia, yet is still decisively melodic. Despite all the subtle, sometimes esoteric, references, it is an album that can be savored almost effortlessly by anyone, a kind of gateway into the world of psychedelic music.