Enchanting, dark, heavy Indonesian music blending traditional and experimental modes

Rully Shabara and Wukir Suryadi are Jogjakarta, Indonesia-based musicians melding the ancient, traditional sounds of their region with a very contemporary mode of heavy experimentalism. The duo, known as Senyawa, have just released a new album, Sujud, on the always-compelling Sublime Frequencies label, distributed by Forced Exposure. This is music that is best enjoyed at night, in the darkness, where the expansive, transgenre magick can wash over and through you. Listen below. From Sublime Frequencies:

The basic theme of the record can be summed up with one extremely powerful Bahasa Indonesian word, Tanah, which translates to 'soil-ground-land-earth'. Shabara's vocals are an expressive force, conjuring spirits from the soil with a deep humility and respect for the land and their existence in the universe. Suryadi has built a new guitar for these tracks and pushes the Senyawa sound into new territory, utilizing delay, loops, and other effects creating grounded backdrops of folk metal, punk attitudinal, and droning earthscapes - providing Shabara the perfect context to explore his whispering poetry and jagged, sharp-as-a-kris animistic powers.

Sujud by Senyawa