SVANAPAPER » Folk

Local Vocal (No. 17): Tigapagi

Andriani N Pratiwi — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 09:57:25 +0000

After we created a post on Buzzfeed people keep asking us why we didn’t put Tigapagi on that list. Well, this time we featured Tigapagi for this week’s Local Vocal. Tigapagi is a Bandung-based band consists of Sigit Pramudita, Eko Sakti, and Promadian Febrianto.

According to a biography on their website, they describe their band’s name Tigapagi was taken from such a view of one single point in time, when everything is about to begin in the moment when everything comes to an end. Tigapagi was born into the world after Sigit invited Eko and Prima to form a band in 2006. Seven years later, Tigapagi finally released their debut album ‘Roekmana’s Repertoire’ in 2013.

Roekmana’s Repertoire is a mix of classic and modern styles. Tigapagi is successfully partying Sundanese-keroncong with some touch of western. Sigit’s voice really suits the gentle strains of the guitars in ‘Alang-alang’, a single which released a week before the album. Some big names like Cholil Machmud from Efek Rumah Kaca, Ade Paloh from Sore, and Ajie from The Milo also helped Tigapagi to wrap this album. Not like any other indie bands that need process and time to adapt their music, Roekmana’s Repertoire will give you an amazing experience right when you listen the tracks.

Yes, we absolutely agree with you guys, Tigapagi is an incredible band that you should listen to.

Catch their performance at Joyland Festival 2013!

The Next Big Thing (No.19) : Half Moon Run

Alcander Alonzo — Sat, 22 Jun 2013 07:48:30 +0000

As we all know, when you are asked about the music in Canada, the first thing that will cross your mind might be Justin Bieber. That could be such a first world problem or first canadian’s problem, because Canada has so many great musicians like Arcade Fire, Feist, Purity Ring or the quirk Grimes. To enrich the list, that’s why we are about to bring up this week’s The Next Big Thing! We’ve got Half Moon Run, they are a Canadian folk trio from Montreal. The band consist of Devon Portielje (vocals, guitar, and percussion), Conner Molander (vocals, guitar, and keyboard), and Dylan Phillips (vocals, drums, and keyboard).

The band have been making music for about two years and the name ‘Half Moon Run’ was inspired by the name that represent the three of them, “The name means different things to us all the time, and we hope that our fans feel the same way. On the most basic level, ‘half moon run’ is of three words that we like hearing next to each other.”said Devon on the band’s name. Half Moon Run have released their debut album, titled ‘Dark Eyes’. The debut received great critics from magazines like NME and Spin. And the same thing also went to their debut single, ‘Full Circle’. Eventhough the band are mostly inspired by folk and electronic music, the band themselves describe them more into indie pop as well. In creating the album, the songwriting process is a collective way, where the bands bounce off some ideas and try to harmonize each other. One of the most interesting critics to Half Moon Run is, their music is compared to Radiohead, on this matter, Dylan responded “We feel that for sure that our influences come through in our sound, but we have many influences and I think we are all conscious that our sound is something unique. That has always kind of been the requirement for ourselves, we never write to imitate something”. And another interesting fact about the band is eventhough they don’t sound like they’ll clash off your speaker, they are a huge fan of Sepultura!

Half Moon Run’s work in harmonizing their music should be given an ‘A’. The balance that they produce is such a great satisfy to the music listeners, especially if you’re a fan of Fleet Foxes or Local Natives. The trio’s music displays a great virtue of how an indie rock-folk almost done amazingly. They have opened for Metric and Mumford and Sons, soon or later, they’ll get their own spotlight and blow up the catchiness harmony.

Local Vocal (No.1) : Mr.Sonjaya

Michael Reily — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 05:39:20 +0000

As we know (or some of you don’t know), folk music in Indonesia has started to take the attention. Especially when it comes to music scene in Bandung. There are lots of Bandung-based musicians who go with the traditional and typically anonymous music that is an expression of the life of people in a community. We are trying to capture this moment and highlight one of its mover. Mr. Sonjaya, one of the promising acts from the capital city of West Java. If it was not promising enough, we wouldn’t write it into this article, would we? From the name itself, we might think that this is a solo artist with Indian-Hindu-or-whatever heritage influence. But, they are not! Mr. Sonjaya is a 5-piece band with poppy sound, folky rhyme, and traditional bagpipe trying to make a harmony for our ears. This band consists of Dimas Wijaksana on vocal, Ridha Kurnia on guitar, James on another guitar, Andry Cahyadi on bass, and Yaya Risbaya on percussion. They are also accompanied by Stefi Vania as backing vocal. Frankly, they are not moored by one music instrument to each member. “We try to make every member on this band to get involved on every song we made,” Dimas said. That is the answer to the question ‘How could the music this band created is very unique?’. We can listen to the sound of glockenspiel, melodica, or toy piano on their songs.

Mr. Sonjaya was formed in 2009 by Dimas and former member, Ridha Suhendar. Started with Dimas by writing preference and Suhe liking on music, they insisted to make music. Ridha Suhendar, gave the idea to the band name. His father name is Sonjaya, so they just decided to use it and added Mister before it. In 2009, they launched their first Extended Play, Paket Musik 2009 Detik. This EP mostly talked about Indonesia’s political system. Without massive promotion and less media awareness, the band just didn’t go far. Nonetheless, the arrival of Ridha Kurnia and other members on 2011 put them into more colorful tones. Sweet and love lyrics, ballads vocal, pop-acoustic rhythm, and swing-jazz-blues musical preference came to produce their second EP, Perjumpaan, in the end of 2012. Contains of ‘Perjumpaan’ as the highlight. Next track are ‘Fajar Nadi’, ‘Putri Hujan’ and ‘Djingga’. And then a song in English ‘Would You Be My November?’. Painted the encounter in their own perspective, this EP was a huge success. My explanation to previous statement is they played on Java Jazz Festival a month ago! Though they were not so jazzy but that was their vindication for this ‘Vocal Local’ page.

‘Perjumpaan’ is… like being a lover that always want to do an encounter with our lover. And sure they wrote this kind of love songs that make you want to pack up and move to Bandung.

They are currently on progress on their first full album. Expecting it to finish and will be launched sometime in 2013 since they are not in hurry to give us another harmony. They want to make it a perfect album.

You can see and listen their official video of ‘Musim Penghujan’ here: