The world is a battlefield. The apocalypse is imminent. And soon, the earth will be the land of the dead.

It may not be most people’s idea of fun, but doom and gloom is all in day’s work for Khuruksetra.

“We want to be the soundtrack to death,” said group member Danif Pradana on Monday at the Salihara arts complex in South Jakarta. “At the same time, we are seeking artistic satisfaction through sounds, movements and visuals.”

Khuruksetra is an all-male Indonesian experimental noise quartet, formed in Sydney in 2007, which eschews standard notions of music in favor of raw sounds.

The vocalist, Andra Fembriarto, doesn’t sing, but shrieks, squeaks, laughs and cries into the microphone.

“I create my own lyrics,” he said. “But the words are filtered by my vocal cords, and when they come out, the audience cannot understand what I’m trying to say.”

Meanwhile, Mikael Mirdad, Enrico Gobel and Danif — on bass, guitar, tin flute, kolintang xylophone (the list goes on) — manipulate their instruments to create their “soundtrack to the apocalypse,” which naturally isn’t pretty, but features distorted tones, scratchy whirs and droning wails.

“The guitar is a basic instrument,” Danif said. “But we treat it as an instrument that produces a variety of sound textures.”

Mikael said they added a twist to their guitars by wedging objects like screwdrivers, knives or forks along the fretboard, shortening the strings, and correspondingly altering the pitch.

Enrico confessed he often “abused” his bass to make noise. “I hit it with my hands, with a screwdriver and even with a hammer,” he said.

But on closer inspection, all this noise seems to tell a story. Khuruksetra is the name of a battlefield in the Hindu epic “Mahabarata.” And at the quartet’s first performance, in Sydney in 2008, the group recounted the story of the Khuruksetra war.

Another performance, inspired by the Balinese ritual Bela Pati, told of how a warrior’s widow committed suicide by setting herself on fire.

Though each of Khuruksetra’s performances features a narrative voice, the border between composition and improvisation is typically blurred.

“Once on stage, there’s no planning or preparation,” Danif said.

“I usually listen to the first sound that comes out and take it from there.”

Mikael said he makes sounds in accordance with his current location.

“When we play in places that are bright, my musical mood will be bright,” he said. “But when we play in dark places, I will play something dark.”

“Each time I play, I never know what and how I’m going to play. I just follow whatever happens,” he added. “Every time we perform, it’s a new experience for us.”

Sri Dean works for Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service, better-known as SBS. She saw Khuruksetra perform in Melbourne last year.

Screams, suggestions of violence, haunting speeches, weird makeup and spaced-out electronica are the things that constitute Sri’s first impression of Khuruksetra.

She said, “The band seems to want to create a sense of horror, but somehow produces beauty.”

Sri describes the vocals as frightening, while the instrumentation produces a pleasing mixture of beauty and sadness.

“The most frightening about the group’s music is the sense of isolation and loneliness it often conveys,” she said.

Adil Yamani, an Indonesian studying in Australia, has also seen Khuruksetra perform live.

During the performance, he said, one of them painted his body in black and crawled around the stage like a ghost.

“That was very creepy, but they were very into it and performed it professionally,” he said. “I shivered in the middle of their performance.”

Earlier this year, the quartet performed a theatrical noise piece at a cultural exhibition at the Indonesian Embassy in Singapore.

The group introduced a creature it called Lehak — an incarnation of the evil spirit that emanates in times of war.

Vocalist Andra depicted the Lehak, first masking his face with a conical straw hat, then taking off the hat to reveal his face, which was painted in black.

Yurika Gani, who was the head of the cultural exhibition committee in Singapore, said that Khuruksetra offered an extremely different kind of experience, one that she referred to as “terrifying.”

On Sept. 12, Khuruksetra will perform for the first time in Indonesia, at the Salihara arts complex.

Mikael describes the planned work as an illustration of the dead in the modern era. And the title? “Bliss, Plague and Damnation.”

Source: http://thejakartaglobe.com/artsandentertainment/khurukestra-the-four-noisemen-of-the-apocalypse/327596

IFmedia | Indonesia’s Finest Media.

http://www.theifmedia.com/

• I’m currently conceptualizing and co-produced a television program about the Indonesian Presidential Election, as well as producing several reality & variety TV Shows.
• I’ll be guest lecturing at Digital Studio College, providing 2 hours lecture about “Sound Design”. I’m currently researching the material as well as providing the outline and the content of the lecture.
• I’m going to direct a music video for Indonesia’s first and finest post-metal band. So far we already had a clear idea about how the music video is going to look. We just need a little bit more of meeting and that’s it, we’re ready for shooting.
• As soon as I finished with the post-metal music video, i’ll be directing another music video for a Bandung based Shoegaze band.
• Finalizing the sound design for a stop motion short film, “Mereka Sudah Sampai di Jawa”, directed by Andra Fembriarto.
• Organizing the most expensive-shocking-theatrical-epical-and subsonic performing art of the year in Jakarta. (Soon….Very Soon)
• Start a new extreme electronics/sound design/metal project with two fellow noise-mate.
• Writing a script treatment for a transcendental horror A/V production.

This is my sister Ruci Ameria. She reminds me a bit of my mom when she was at Uni.

© 2009 DANIF PRADANA

Berdasarkan survey yang dilakukan oleh perusahaan multinasional Internet World Stats, pengguna internet di Indonesia mengalami pertumbuhan yang sangat tinggi. Hanya dalam periode waktu 10 tahun terakhir pengguna internet di negara ini tumbuh lebih dari 1.000 persen. Dan untuk tahun 2008, tercatat sudah 25 juta orang Indonesia yang mengakses internet setiap harinya.

Kami dari IFmedia menyadari akan kehausan warga Indonesia akan informasi, dan kami menawarkan sebuah pengalaman baru dalam mengakses informasi tersebut yaitu dengan membawa konsep majalah online ke tahap berikutnya. Kami menawarkan pengalaman multimedia yang menggabungkan teks, video, foto, dan audio hingga membawa pembaca untuk lebih aktif berinteraksi dengan apa yang ditawarkan.

Content IFmedia akan mengangkat isu-isu seputar pop culture, arts, dan current affairs yang ditujukan bagi kalangan muda Indonesia, baik yang berada di dalam negri maupun yang tinggal di luar Indonesia.

http://www.theifmedia.com

With my mom.

© 2009 DANIF PRADANA

My sister Ruci Ameria forwarded me an e-mail from her friend who wrote her 1st time experience of watching KHURUKSETRA’s performance at Singapore. Since this is only an opinion written on facebook.com by my sister’s friend, the name of the author will be kept anonymous.  Enjoy!

I went to Indoverse 2009, an event by PPI Singapura. It was an event of Indonesian cultural performances, although mostly the performances were pop band performances. Then came one rather unforgettable show of “art”—the Khuruksetra (gosh, I had to look through my gmail to get the spelling right).

I guess you can google the group to find out more about it (which I am too lazy to do). But basically, from the one performance I saw, the group seems to be a modern art group that strives to cross traditional boundary and bring performing art to a different level. Different, uh huh. Before the performance started, the MCs introduced the performance as one on “the conflict of love”. Love. Right.

The lights were off. The stage was partly covered with black cloth. Three performers sat on stage. Their heads down. I think they were playing with guitars and a bass. Two screens on the wall showed the black and white video; what the video was about I’m not so sure either. The performers on stage, still heads down, started playing. Dum dum dum (I know a guitar doesn’t sound like that, but the whole thing sounds like that).

Then there was a man whose head was hidden under farmer’s triangular-shaped straw hat, holding sapu lidi in each hand, came silently from one side of the stage. To me, this guy resembled a barong. Though his head was hidden, I felt like I could see his eyes wide open. Dum dum dum.

A shriek broke out of that triangular-shaped straw hat. The creature went into spasms. More shrieks. My ears were hurt. The video on the screens continued playing a black-and-white montage of incomprehensible things. Then the video showed the creature, with sapu lidi on each hand, running through the woods. And approached a cow. Yes, a cow. I was thinking, is the love conflict between this creature and the cow? What the…

So the rest of the show just continued with shrieks, more shrieks, more spasms, an effort of gymnastic talent showcase, and the video that continued to show the love story of this creature and a cow (haha, I’m joking). The creature finally took off the straw hat only to show black-painted face. More shrieks. The video showed someone wrapped in long cloths, and a cow, I think the cow’s insides. Morbid. Yeah.

And it ended. Clap clap clap.

I just sat there. I told my friend who sat besides me, “I can’t appreciate that show.” He said the same thing earlier, and went off to the restroom in the middle of the show. I lingered on my seat, still watching this art performance that I could not comprehend.

A screenshot preview from an upcoming documentary about my photography project “Black Veil”. Documented by filmmaker Andra Fembriarto. Natalie Veronica is my very first model. She is also going to appear in the video version called “ALTER”.