{"title":"Elevation","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"indonesian-city-sound-panbers-psychedelic-rock-and-funk-1971-1974","title":"Indonesian City Sound : Panbers’ Psychedelic Rock and Funk 1971-1974","description":"\u003cp\u003eLong-awaited compilation of hard-rocking, psychedelic songs from Indonesia's premiere rock outfit Panbers (Pandjaitan Bersaudara) culled from their most fertile years with Mesra Dimita Records. For those uninitiated on the glory of Panbers, consider this compilation an introduction to some of the earliest and heaviest rock sounds to come out of Indonesia.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Pandjaitan Brothers or Panbers came from the North Sumatra minority Christian group, the Bataks, whose ancestry traces back to an island at the center of Lake Toba. As a minority group within Indonesia's Muslim-dominated society, this ethnic minority has produced top military generals, celebrity lawyers, and a legion of pop and rock superstars.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSuffice to say, some of the biggest names in the country's pop history were Bataks. Panbers fit the bill perfectly.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe band's strong Christianity belief looms heavily in the music they produce. The prominent use of the Hammond organ in their early materials is evocative of church music the band members have been around in their whole life. Bandleader Benny Pandjaitan's fills his characteristic wail with existential dread, with many utterances of the word \"mengapa\" (why).\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGuilt is another central theme Pandjaitan repeatedly comes back to in his lyrics. But they balance it with joy, on songs such as \"Come on You Dance\" \"Let's Dance Together\" or \"Haai\" (a play on the word high), where references to recreational substances are plentiful.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlthough they modeled themselves after the era's rock bands Beatles and fellow countrymen Koes Plus, Panbers had a unique aversion to the electric guitar. In \"Jakarta City Sound,\" a fiery three-note guitar solo is laid so far down in the mix that they are barely audible. In \"Haai\" they modify the guitar to sound like a jungle instrument playing traditional North Sumatran music. In \"Rock and the Sea,\" arguably their most well-known song globally, they decided to ditch electric guitar altogether and replace it with a sitar.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the absence of an electric guitar, Panbers had to rely on Doan's inventive bass playing and Asido's drum works to do the heavy lifting - and boy, do they deliver (Their 1971 debut \"Volume 1\" saw plenty of drum breaks). In this compilation, listeners will hear recordings from Panbers' fertile four-year period - a time that produced some of the grooviest and hardest-sounding psychedelic music in Indonesia's rock history.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Elevation","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":50394899513675,"sku":"2056638","price":19.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"LP","offer_id":50394900201803,"sku":"2056639","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/ELE034B_2d04dcc6_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726449869"},{"product_id":"kafilah-nights-malay-arabic-variations-from-1960s-indonesia","title":"Kafilah Nights: Malay-Arabic Variations From 1960s Indonesia","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Robert Johnson\" of Indonesia's Orkes Melayu music finally comes out from the shadows. Between 1961 and 1964, Kelana Ria recorded 48 songs that were spread over four records, Kafilah, Yam El Shamah, YaMahmud and Ya Hamidah, which became the primary sources for this compilation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the early 1960s, two of the best talents in the Indonesian music scene, songwriter and band leader Adi Karso, known for his hits \"Papaya Cha-Cha-Cha\" and \"Balonku\" and Gambus musician Munif Bahasuan teamed up to form Orkes Melayu (Malay Orchestra) Kelana Ria.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThese four recordings changed the trajectory of Indonesian popular music.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePlay \"Renungkanlah\" (Think About It), included in this compilation, a love song with heavenly melodies and lilting harmonies, to an audience in the Western part of Malaysia or people of Malay ethnicity in Singapore and they would immediately hum along to the tune.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Renungkanlah\" has been covered by many countless other musicians in Indonesia and Malaysia and it has become a hit many times over. The song has become a go-to song in karaoke bars in the region, with fans oblivious to who actually wrote this song or who performed it the first time.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOr take the song \"Ratapan Anak Tiri\" (Lament of a Stepchild), a song that has traversed national boundaries and has become a universal sad song in the Malay world, turning into a shorthand for melancholia that permeates this archipelago of nations.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnother stunner is the melancholia-laden \"Kesunyian Jiwa\" (Silence of the Soul), an operatic tune so majestic that it could open any black and white Kurosawa film from the late 1940s.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Kesunyian Jiwa\" opens with marching percussion and what could pass for a horn section foregrounding an opera finale before settling into a Latin-inspired composition backing one of the most soulful vocal performances from the 1960s.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe songs and the soulful vocal performance belong to Muhamad Mashabi, who despite the popularity of the songs he created is now largely forgotten, whose history was kept alive only in the neighborhood where he grew up in Central Jakarta.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith only a short musical career and only nine recorded songs from almost 40 compositions, Mashabi fell by the wayside in the early 1970s, especially with the rise of pop and rock from bands like Koes Plus, Panbers and God Bless.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYet his songs, inspired by Malay traditional songs but performed in the modern studio setting, lay the foundations for what would become the biggest musical genre in the country, dangdut, especially the kind that was popularized by the self-styled king of the genre, Rhoma Irama.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Mashabi's distinctive vocal style and soul-searching lyrics helped give rise to dangdut, Indonesia's most popular music genre,\" University of Pittsburgh music professor Andrew N. Weintraub writes in the liner notes.  \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Elevation","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50529732165963,"sku":"2057465","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/ELE035_56c1fbbd_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1728065486"},{"product_id":"begadang-soneta-group-best-songs-1975-1980","title":"Begadang: Soneta Group Best Songs, 1975-1980","description":"\u003cp\u003eRemastered audio, pressed and printed in Indonesia.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe 13 tracks contained in this compilation \u003ci\u003eBegadang: Soneta Group Best Songs, 1975-1980\u003c\/i\u003e are some of the most innovative music that came out of Indonesia’s music scene in the 1970s, tunes that have cemented Rhoma Irama’s status as the king of the genre.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDang dut is the biggest musical genre in Indonesia. And in this genre of dang dut, the name Rhoma Irama looms large. He is the undisputed king of dang dut and his role as pioneer of the music is already in the history books. In fact, there's one book documenting the outsized role of Rhoma in establishing dang dut as the father of this music. The book is aptly titled Dangdut Story, written by Pittsburgh University music professor Andrew N. Weintraub.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom a technical point of view, Rhoma not only replaced the acoustic elements from Melayu Music with electric instruments but also created new synthetic sounds that have never been attempted before in Indonesia’s music industry. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNotice how Rhoma reproduced funk, which was all the rage in early 1970s, in the song “Santai” (Relax), this album’s closer or “Credit Title (Instrumentalia)” which opens this Darah Muda (Young Blood) soundtrack. The rubbery bass lines that open both songs can easily find home in any Sly and the Family Stone’s or Isaac Hayes’ tunes from that era. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Elevation","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":51121264132427,"sku":"2240105","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/CS1059455-01A-BIG_464ea3c1_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1737208508"},{"product_id":"vengeance-is-mine-all-others-pay-cash-original-music-score-and-soundtrack","title":"Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash: Original Music Score and Soundtrack","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe award-winning film \u003ci\u003eVengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash\u003c\/i\u003e (2021) is romantic drama set in a working-class neighbourhood of Indonesia's West Java. Although the story was set in the 1980s, the film's music director Dave Lumenta doesn't really want to use music from that period. He doesn't want to automatically go with dangdut, the musical genre, a mix of Malay, Indian and modern pop music, the music of choice for the majority of Indonesia's working class. He simply doesn't want the film to be stuck in the time setting and the social class. The scoring is richer, not only was it inspired by dangdut, but it was also inspired by rock as well. In order for his imagination to be free of that time and social context, he decided to make music that was based on the characters, otherwise known as leitmotif.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLumenta is interested in vulnerability, because it is something that the audience can find in the main character Ajo Kawir, an impotent who is unable to have an erection. Another main character Iteung is someone who is very liberal in terms of her sexuality, but she also struggles with an issue as well, which is their issues, a traumatic past. The film successfully portrays the clash of these two characters. And from identifying these two characters, the composer creates a melody or leitmotif that represents each character. The use of analogue instruments is also consistent with the film's spirit, which is also shot using an analogue camera. Lumenta created the music using acoustic instruments, such as the recorder, along with other sounds from an analogue synthesizer.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe sound produced may not be perfect, just like the are grainy quality of an analogue film, due to limitation of the medium. But it is precisely due to that limitation that the eyes and ears are compelled to watch and listen actively; we must squint to catch something more perfect, or listen closely to filter out imperfections in the sound. Consuming art created with analogue tools requires a different method of listening, watching, and working process.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Elevation","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":51121307976011,"sku":"2240106","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/CS1061438-01A-BIG_5b047cfe_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1737208712"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/de\/collections\/elevation.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}