•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   
•    EYEWITNESS   

Some of the best music ever released has been written by those content to wallow in melancholy for the sake of their art. The musical genre known as shoegaze is the epitome of such glumness — so much so, in fact, that its name is a reference to the performers’ tendency of singing while looking down at their shoes.

Never mind the fact that the gazing down part is to ensure that the numerous effect pedals, necessary to achieve shoegaze’s unique sound, are working properly. The idea that these musicians are so despondent that they can barely muster the enthusiasm to look up at their audience makes for a better story.

While shoegaze originated in England in the late 1980s, Indonesia has its own batch of ostensibly depressed rockers — a stigma the bands work hard to refute — eager to sing gorgeous melodies atop a blizzard of extremely loud guitars filtered through layers of noise-making stomp boxes.

Like their European peers, our very own shoegazers have perfected the art of combining dreamy vocals and loud instruments into crushing live performances. The only difference may be that while most of the older, European shoegaze groups rejected that particular genre tag, Indonesian shoegazers happily admit to their love of bands influential to the genre, such as My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Moose and Catherine Wheel.

Some of the country’s current shoegazing talents include Mellon Yellow, Friday, The Milo and Strawberry Wine. While some of these groups are still in the process of developing their own sound — frequently resorting to mimicking other groups — they show promise in terms of blending melodies, mournful ambience and ear-splitting noise.

Aldy Kusumah is a music journalist who used to write for the prominent independent magazine Ripple and now runs a Web site, Thebastardsofyoung.com, which chronicles the local art scene. According to Aldy, the local shoegaze scene was spearheaded by Bandung acts such as Polyester Embassy, Pure Saturday and Cherry Bombshell.

Aldy said bands and music fans should take the genre’s name with a grain of salt, though he acknowledged that it does identify a distinct sound.

“Repetitive melodies, droning guitars, noisy layers and introverted looks are always a reference to shoegaze bands,” he said. “I’ve read somewhere that the term shoegaze was used in a Sounds magazine review of an early Moose show where the singer read from lyrics he’d taped to the floor. The term is a joke, really.”

The best thing about local shoegaze bands is their different takes on that distinct sound. Some highlight its wistful qualities, while others take its wall of noise aspect and propel it to new heights. The only common thread is the subdued vocals and cavernous echoing guitars, both of which have become signatures of the genre.

The local shoegaze band that comes closest to reproducing the aesthetics of its international counterparts is The Milo, whose sound could be characterized as slow-building noise-pop. The Bandung band is, not coincidentally, regarded as the country’s shoegaze pioneer.

Led by the pensive Ajie Gergaji, also known as Ajie Saw, the band was formed as a side project in 1996 during Ajie’s days as a guitar player in the modestly successful pop group Cherry Bombshell.

It didn’t take The Milo long to become the forerunner of the local shoegaze scene, thanks to their still-novel-at-the-time brand of music as well as their introspective live shows.

The band didn’t capitalize on the momentum, however, and it took them seven years to finally release their first full-length album. Up until then, the group’s releases consisted only of singles and songs on compilation records.

“Romantic Purple” was well received by the public and gathered some rave reviews, but in 2003 it was not the juggernaut that it could have been in the mid-’90s. But its contemplative melodies and lyrics certainly won the band plenty of new fans.

Their follow-up album, unfortunately, has been delayed indefinitely, due to what Ajie calls “a constant process of taking apart a finished mix we already have and rearranging it to our standards.”

Strawberry Wine’s psychedelic rock approach stands in direct contrast to The Milo’s brooding songs. Not that the Jakarta-based foursome lacks the cerebral touch — they just want to pound you with their psychedelic rock version of shoegaze first.

Formed in 2005, the group’s frontman, Bernard, surrounds himself with a variety of musicians during the band’s live shows.

While the group has yet to release anything official, they’ve recorded a whole batch of songs, which they plan on releasing independently.

Their song “Taste Me” sounds like a cascading mix of My Bloody Valentine’s aural assaults and The Smashing Pumpkins’ most aggressive moments — with a tasty guitar solo to boot. “Sour Angus” features similar sounds but in a more subdued manner, though the crashing cymbals maintain a level of chaos throughout.

The band Friday, from Surabaya, hits the sweet spot with a mixture of stadium-ready rock and dramatic vocals. With only three steady members, the group’s mid-era Radiohead-infused sound is complete, though lacking in distinctiveness.

The title track from their independently released debut album, “Sitting on Anything Cold,” is a ready-made crowd pleaser filled with guitar vibrato and pounding rhythms.

LA music newspaper The Rockit published a glowing review of the album, for which it gave the band the “Most Likely to Succeed From the Least Likely Place Award, thanks to their consistently beautiful and haunting debut album.”

Perhaps the most established of the local shoegazers is Mellon Yellow. Formed in Jakarta a mere three years ago, the group first gained the attention of the record-downloading public with their radio-ready noisy rock. Their instruments are simultaneously wistful and strident, yet controlled. It also doesn’t hurt that their songs are direct and mosh-worthy.

Their song “Milk Calcium” owes as much a debt to the shoegazer gods as it does to 1990s alternative rock. It is what Oasis would have sounded like had they taken even more drugs, tried to sound like an American punk group (Husker Du in this case) and never had to sing ballads to a stadium full of football fans. Another one of their hits, “The Longest Yard,” adheres to the classic shoegazing sound but still packs in a good amount of blissful pop to bounce your head against.

The group’s drummer, Arief Bramantyo, said many local bands with loud guitar sounds weren’t exactly happy to be tagged as shoegaze, thought they admit to being influenced by the genre’s biggest names — in particular, My Bloody Valentine.

Arief laughed at the thought that bands like his could be considered a part of the scene.

“Bernard from Strawberry Wine often says that we are the minors of the minor, the underdog of the underdogs,” he said.

“For us [in Mellon Yellow], the wall of sound is just a way to cover up the fact that we can’t play our instruments that well. We also don’t intellectualize sound and production as much as someone like My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields does, for instance.”

While the local shoegaze scene will probably not blow up anytime soon, it has the potential to be more consistent than any other musical trend precisely because of its unpopularity. It will never have to resort to popular formulas, nor will it need to pander to the mainstream. It’s the best kind of art — made by and for the people who love it.