Recent Releases and Updates.

Satu tahun belakangan, pasca rilis album Reloop dan single "Mass Deception", dalam fase yang kelewat lamban karena tidak ada deadline, saya menulis dan merekam demo yang jumlahnya lumayan banyak, baik yang masih raw maupun yang sudah matang. Demo-demo tersebut tadinya saya tujukan untuk arsip. Namun seiring waktu, saya melihat dan mendengar adanya progres di tiap demo yang saya tulis. Tidak begitu terdengar baru dan segar secara aransemen karena saya masih menggunakan metode yang sama saat mengerjakan album perdana.

Rangkuman kecil demo-demo tersebut saya rilis di bulan April 2016 kemarin dengan judul Derivations: Demo 2016. Alasannya tidak lebih dari sekedar "perkenalan" akan sound-sound baru Maverick hasil eksperimen dan eksplorasi.

Dua bulan setelahnya, saya merilis single berjudul "Non-Fiction". Single ini juga merupakan hasil eksperimentasi. Tidak banyak cerita dibaliknya, namun belakangan ini, pesatnya perkembangan musik elektronik, hip-hop dan subgenresnya membuat saya tergugah untuk membuat sesuatu.

Further Agendas, album kedua yang rencananya saya rilis akhir tahun kemarin, masih dalam proses pengerjaan sembari mencari record label yang kira-kira cocok. 

Dengarkan dan unduh Derivations: 2016 Demos dan "Non-Fiction" disini.

  

Mass Deception - Single

We dance to all the wrong songs. We enjoy all the wrong moves.

Refused, "New Noise" 

"Musik terasa lebih bermakna bila diiringi dengan kata-kata yang berbunga. Nyatanya, yang ada saat ini adalah para musisi, pelaku “skena” dan infrastruktur belantika musik lantang berteriak tanpa isi dan kritisi akan lingkungan sekitar. Mereka terlalu lama sibuk dalam lingkarannya sendiri."

Unduh single "Mass Deception" disini.

About "The Interference"

This is the sole non-instrumental track in RELOOP. It is also the only one created with a collaborator—namely Haikal Azizi under his moniker, Bin Idris. At first, I only requested a guitar track, but considering that he is also a talented lyricist, I thought I should include a vocal track of his as well. Adopting André Breton's technique of 'automatism' (which was largely influenced by the impending deadline), Haikal said, "I tend to use this technique to write lyrics. One or two words, or even random ramblings are usually enough to trigger the creative process. But in the case of 'The Interference', the inspiration came in an instant because of the deadline. The main theme of this song is existentialism."

Oh what have you done to yourself sweet dear friend of mine

You have turned yourself into a pale horse, a stale pose, a small doze of poison

No longer you walk tall like a man you used to be,

A leaf without a tree, a caged bird that would never be free

A small boat in an angry sea

Enemy is a friend, a friend is an enemy

A glass of remedy, wine and comedy, pleasure and agony

And i see this landscape of green

There is blood all over your screen

Don't take it the wrong way i'm not trying to be mean

But all of these i've seen, a taste for my spleen,

A dust in the wind, a king and a queen, oh where have you been

And your little house is burning down, the pugilist's ready for another round

Is that silent or sound i'm hearing?

I get nervous around this woods, try to get this done as fast as i could

So why don't you just do everything that you should?

Because the hounds are shouting, and the clocks, are counting

The lights are blinding, forever enchanting

Forever we're moving, forever we're grieving

Forever we lose, forever in truce, forever we choose

Forever abused, forever enthuse

Forever confuse

And once we're dead, forever we float no we can't refuse

RELOOP Liner Notes by Moustapha Spliff

“No words, only a feeling.”

I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to start off by talking about desolation. Or perhaps desolation isn’t the right word, I’m probably thinking of morbidity. Or is it despair? Darkness perhaps? Anger? Anguish? Fear? Hatred? Or maybe that often discussed no-man’s land between love and hate, agony and pleasure?

Scratch that.

It’s Jakarta.

It’s my feelings towards this complex and contradictory city that immediately pop into my head every time Maverick’s Reloop is glaring out of my speakers. Not a surprising thing really, considering its silhouette adorns the cover art.

But it’s the sounds...

As I sit in a taxi travelling through the city on a wet Sunday evening with Reloop echoing in my head, all the different (mostly despondent) aspects of this city are reflected through the album’s dark dingy crevasses.

The melancholia inducing sax solos, the sinister synthesizers, the eerie vocal samples, the bass and sub-bass that hint at impending doom and the hard-hitting funk drum breaks all seem to paint a vivid picture of the city’s laughable levels of corruption, its thug-like police force, the non-existent infrastructure, the tear-inducing traffic all run by a political class adhering to a grotesque crony-capitalism system of government that shows complete and utter disdain for its people.

It might not be a pretty picture, but it’s an accurate one as far as I’m concerned.

So why the doom and gloom you may ask?

Both the liner notes you’re reading right now and the brilliant yet dark music you hear on this tape are mere observations. They’re not condemnations, but statements on how this sometimes-gloomy yet always exhilarating city affects our lives. 

We’ve had brilliant indie pop songs by various local bands all putting on a brave face in reaction to the harsh realities of life in Jakarta. Here’s one that fully embraces its grimy underbelly.

An Introduction

The internet has been a great source of information, and as a musician, its endless provision of references (old and new, obscure and popular, domestic and international) never fails to amaze me. But this abundance also tends to get overwhelming. I absorb, absorb and absorb, but my own thoughts—my own words—are reduced to sets of 140 characters. I have been an avid Tweeter for the past 4 years, and although Twitter and other social media outlets are unquestionably useful for sharing promotional purposes and quick thoughts, the urgency to speak more (in addition to "speaking" through music, as I have been doing for quite some time) has recently become more apparent. 

It is this sense of urgency that triggered me to set up a platform for writings about Maverick's music and personal contemplations. In a sense, this blog will function as a journal of Maverick's progress. 

I will update this blog as frequently as possible, so I hope you'll stick around. Whoever you are.

—W.