Indie band Seringai are boys who wanna have fun

Hera Diani The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Indie rock quartet Seringai acknowledges 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, what 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 enjoy 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 productions, 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.

Puppen (the name is Dutch for human excrement) was the typical teenage indie band with a pretentious name, 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.

Still a long way from making it to the international scene, Seringai even had trouble in recording their own songs.

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 organizer 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.