Indie band Seringai are boys who just wanna have fun

Indie band Seringai are boys who just wanna have fun

Hera Diani , The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indie rock quartet Seringai acknowledge that their signature
heavy metal inflected sound will have trouble finding its place
in a market dominated by sugar-coated candy pop and dull love
songs.

For it was why they went indie in the first place.

Guitarist Ricardo, meanwhile, holds to the theory that
Indonesians are more "susceptible" to major keys rather than
minor ones.

"I heard it from a friend who's working in a record company.
That explains why the sweet sound of pop is more accepted than
gloomier tunes, or rock," said Ricardo, or Ricky.

His fellow band members argued that mellow rock, which
certainly uses a lot of minor keys, also sells well in the local
market.

"Well, I don't know then. It's just a theory," Ricky said,
hesitatingly.

Despite being in the limited market of sidestream music, the
quartet has already carved its own niche on the underground music
scene.

Even before they had released an album, Seringai (Indonesian
for sneer) had created a buzz, thanks to the fiery sound which
celebrates the heyday of rock 'n roll, when Black Sabbath, Slayer
and Motorhead cranked up the volume.

Their debut EP High Octane Rock, released recently, provides
incendiary songs with in-your-face lyrics.

"We want to bring rock back to its real norm, that is to have
fun. Rock is supposed to be fun ... A bunch of young people
sweating and enjoying themselves. We want to go back to that
era," said drummer Khemod.

The local rock scene today, he added, veered heavily toward
sensitive, mellow stuff that the band doesn't even consider rock.

"Seringai is, like, the antithesis of sweet rock, filled with
cigarette smoke, sweat, gasoline and liquor, and a hell of a fun
time," he said.

It may sound like pretentious machoistic babble, but the music
speaks for itself.

It is not strictly original, but originality is often
overrated; as Khemod jokingly put it, "Originality ended in the
'80s when baggy pants reigned supreme, and God forbid it'll come
back again."

Tracks like Alkohol and Membakar Jakarta (Burning Down
Jakarta) are crowd anthems bursting with the classical formula of
rock with metal influences.

First single Akselerasi Maksimum (Maximum Acceleration) is an
energetic number with catchy singalong parts, maximum distortion
as well as bluesy breaks.

There is no trace of the half-baked stuff commonly found in
indie efforts, with neat production arrangement and mature sound
-- evidence of each member's long musical experience.

In their late 20s and early 30s, each member of Seringai is
already a veteran of the indie music scene.

Vocalist Arian Wardiman was formerly the lead singer of
Bandung-based cult metal band Puppen. It was the typical teenage
indie band with a pretentious name (it means human excrement in
Dutch), earshredding sound and lyrics in English.

After the group disbanded due to internal problems, Arian
recruited three longtime friends to form Seringai two years ago.

Experience and simply growing up led the band to pick a local
name ("It's more exotic" they said, ironically), and also to come
up with a more mature, melodic and accessible sound, and
Indonesian lyrics.

"Many local bands come up with lyrics in broken English. We
don't wanna be like that, while I think it's only the Japanese
who can use broken English well. Indonesian lyrics turned out to
be more suitable for us. Besides, it can be our own trademark if
we want to go international," said Arian, a senior editor at MTV
Trax magazine.

But they are still a long way from making it to the
international scene; Seringai even had trouble in recording their
own songs here at home.

Sure, they had their music, and a solid fan base, but they had
no money to record a full album. That was why they came up with
an EP, with a production cost of only around Rp 15 million
(US$1,666).

"But the financial shortage did us good. Since we had limited
time in the recording studio, we were very focused and
concentrated," said Arian, who with Khemod graduated from the
School of Fine Arts at Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB).

The band produced the album through their own indie label
Parau, and gave the distribution rights to small record company
Resswara.

A full album is in the making, but the band is still opting
for indie distribution.

"We've been in this business for a long time, we know how a
major label works. They always interfered with our creativity,"
said Khemod.

The band admitted that the indie scene was not much better
either, as some indie labels are as authoritarian as the major
ones or even rip off their bands financially.

Still, it's better than it once was.

"The indie scene today is actually much better and healthier
than it was 10 years ago. It's good that now indie bands like
Mocca can go mainstream and sell around 70,000 copies. People
have more choices now," Arian said.

The problem with the indie scene is the lack of
infrastructure, like experienced indie producers with a sharp
sense, competent event organizers and good media to spread
information and give feedback.

Several media have come on the scene, but they have been an
irregular presence, only to vanish.

"We dream of an indie scene abroad, like Washington-based band
Fugazi, for instance. They have their own label Dischord, they
collaborate with event organizer to stage regular concerts with
tickets not more than US$5. Last year, the label reaped a profit
of $98,000. That's huge for a small label," said Arian.

"It may be a utopia for us, but utopia can be pursued."

Right now, they only want to rock, with Arian thrown up on
stage, Khemod kicking and tossing the drum set, or moshing with
the audience. And that's what rock is all about: having fun.