The Ricecooker Fanzine: What’s Up!
These past weeks we (the Ricecooker shitworkers) have been quite busy with the RICECOOKER ZINE project. Collaborators such as Shah (Mindless Show), Hatta and others have been in the shop often to do instant reviews! Choose a CD/tape/7″, put it on and immediately do a review on Arip’s notebook. Voila!
We interviewed a hell lot of bands too. Lemme see… CONQUEST FOR DEATH, THE BLOODY REJECTS (Singapore) and 97-SHIKI; all done at the shop.
Then we interviewed a band from Jakarta, DENIAL, which was really pleasant since it was done over some drinks at the English fish’n’chips pub near my house called The Magnificent (run by an old friend Paul, who would put on great UK indie-pop & post-punk music – from The Stone Roses to Madness to The Smiths to The Jam and Joy Division – instead of some stupid “doof-doof” inanity).
I didn’t know nothing about DENIAL. It was Pijan who told me about this “indon indie” band and that I should check them out. I was heading there anyway, as the new place Cloth & Clef (which is just beside The Magnificent) was holding a release party gig for FREE LOVE‘s first album and I wanted to get a few copies to sell in the shop.
Anyway, besides FREE LOVE and KILLEUR CALCULATEUR performing, there was also DENIAL, a new band featuring some guys from THE BRANDALS, members of which are our friends. I didn’t managed to get inside Cloth & Clef to see the bands but RC zine editor No Beat & the zine’s photographer Fahmi FSF did. I heard they had to pay RM10 when it advertised FREE though. Hmmm.
When I got there, I immediately went to the table at Magnificent where Pijan and DENIAL were seating and did the interview. And what a pleasant interview it was. First of all, DENIAL mentioned Velvet Underground as one of their main influences and that’s pretty exciting! I mean where in the world can you find a bunch of young guys expressing love for Stirling Morrison, Mo Tucker and Lou Reed?
Furthermore the conversation was peppered with mentions of Suicide, Spacemen 3, Jesus & The Mary Chain, Soeharto, Sukarno, Iwan Fals, Marjinal, Bunga Hitam, CIA, the domino effect (the spread of communism in Southeast Asia back in the 60s) etc. etc. I mean, these guys influences, knowledge and comments really made me think about the local scene.
Where in Malaysia can you find an indie-rock band who knows enough political and pop-culture histories to present confident ideas of their own? This conversation with DENIAL really made 90% of the local bands seems pretty inadequate, to say the least!
Apparently, from the guys who saw DENIAL play, the band is a mixture of dirty noisy guitar feedback, Kraut-rock-style “motorik” drumbeat and swaggering rock’n’roll. I also heard the owner of Cloth & Clef was not too amused by their earwax removing guitar wail. There’s one song on their myspace and it’s totally Darklands-era Jesus & The Mary Chain (when Bobby Gillespie was playing the stand-up drum kit)! Anyway, I missed the show, so I’m kicking myself.
DENIAL was brought over here by a guy from Serdang. If I’m not mistaken his name is Amar and he took care of the band well, with hotel rooms and van rides etc. The last time THE BRANDALS came over they were fucked-over by a bad deal with the promoter (a certain person with “T” in his name lah).
So what are in store next? We also interviewed 44-year-old German punk Rudy of the TEENAGE REBEL RECORDS, that was fun! I know that WAR ALL THE TIME is coming soon, so we are gonna grill them too.
Today (Saturday, Nov 14th) ex-bass player of OI POLLOI, Calum McKenzie is coming over from Thailand and he’ll be hanging out with us. According to the Wikipedia entry on OI POLLOI, Calum has been a part of NYC based thrash/punk band Death Mold a few years ago. We’ll know more if we can interview him!
Hang on! Looking at all those band names above I believe we need to have more LOCAL bands interviewed. I mean, the zine is supposed to be “more about the Southeast Asia” and NOT the big, bad utterly evil godless WEST! Guys! Get cracking!!!
Since Amat /Asas will never appeared himself here, me Pijan on behalf of him as the Chief-of-Audio-Reviewer for RC zine would like to call you up all of you -the audio reviewers for the RC zine to show up at the shop more often and finish your reviews section before end of this month. Please inform us early if you can’t come over so we should talk for other options or else you’ll be screwed by Amat!
Thanks to all our friends who always hang out inside /outside the shop pretty regularly and cheer-up the place!(they’re too punk to get their names here). Thank you.
Dead’s not punks. Kill poseurs.
end of this monthhh??? i tot next month?
fuck work. more power audio reviewing!
marking students’ works: due end of this month.
audio reviewing in KL: due end of this month.
need to divide my time properly.
I love Denials…. they were noisy, the crowd didn’t get them, the bartenders gave nasty looks… it was beautiful….
http://juice.catcha.com/2008/11/17/road-trippin-free-lovin/
I never watched DENIAL at both show though Tony(their guitarist) keep asking me to show up more earlier but I was just stuck upon the booze in Noisy Studio’s Girls Fest featuring 97-Shiki from Chicago on Saturday then kind of late on Sunday(yeah Ricecooker Shop matters, it’s very busy on Sunday) to catch them at Cloth&Clef. I don’t wanna sound greedy, I’ rather see a live band that such punkrock attitude as Crimpshrine /Screeching Weasel /Sweet Children / Generator/ Stikky /Your’fukin’mother /Shotwell /Pinhead Gunpowder /FYP /Toys That Kill etc but no such scene ever happened in this country.
Yeah, that’s what happened to the local indie pop scene that doesn’t meet up people like Joe’s highly expectation. I’m sorry I’m not proficiently grew up with stuff like Jesus&the Mary Chain or My Bloody Valentine though I really love Out Of My Hair (does anybody listen to them?) and I’m more Velvet Underground than Beatles, more Pixies than Nirvana! Apparently there’s these kind of huge gaps between i.e Kuala Lumpur & Jakarta indie-pop /indie-rock /shoegaze scene. When I talked to indie-musician from Indonesia especially the guy from The Brandals, they seem to know everything from metal to 77′ punk to pop punk to rap to sXe HC to glam rock damn crazy! Rully from The Brandals even labeled me as ‘pussy’ when I mentioned to him I used to like The Postal Services, Arcade Fire and Belle&Sebastian etc hehe..shit on u Rully..Apart from the population comparison between these two countries, I think the Indonesian people are more open-minded. it’s clearly this kind of mental blocked by the society (especially people who always regard on Islamic value extremely) in this country and give us no freedom at all at any seconds to think for ourselves and let’s ignorance on race /religious issue leading their way of living..
Ohh no way, I won’t write anymore longer…fuk I never realized that! Chow!
Pijan
New in Sireh Dan Cengkeh. Interview with Art Fazil of Rausyanfikir. Click here for more
http://sirehdancengkeh.com/?p=647
Sweeet-maybe you can interview us to help promote ‘Fall of America’ or our upcoming split with Necrocannibalistic Vomitorium (www.myspace.com/necrocannibalisticvomitorium)!
sy nak denali!
hopefully we’re entering the ‘ricecooker zine era’, an era that will give a big impact to the local scene (and beyond). like how the ‘blasting concept era’ gave a very big impact and changed many kids’ lifes 13 years ago. hopefully it’s open-minded (in music genres) like BC too. it’s hard to turn the clock back and make the scene happening like how ‘The Bollocks ‘revoultion’ ep gave a big impact towards the local scene 10 years ago until got pirated versions of it for rm9.90 to rm15 while the original version is only RM3.
probably i’ve been thinking too much about ‘impact to the scene’ lately while those glorious days are long gone and will never come back