We Asked Rully to Rank Senyawa's Four Albums

Jogja noisemakers Senyawa aren't slowing down. The duo released four albums since their 2010 debut "mini-album," recording and releasing new music at a steady clip. The band's sound has evolved since they first began to experiment with homemade instruments and unique vocal styles under the name "Rully Shabara and Wukir Suryadi."

Their latest album, 2016's Bronshoj (Puncak), is a heavy, droning, otherworldly collection of avant-garde noise folk that was almost an accident. The album brought the band international acclaim, but is it the band's favorite? VICE's Marcel Thee reached out to Rully Shabara to find out.

"I'm actually perplexed," he told us. "To be honest, it's really awkward. Not only because we have so many albums, but also because it's so normal for a musician to like their most-current work the best and barely listen to the earlier stuff."

So how did it shake out? Here's the list.

VICE: Why is this your least-favorite album?
Rully Shabara: This mini-album came out before Senyawa even 'existed.' Only four days after my first encounter with Wukir, these songs were recorded. The initial goal was only to experiment. We didn't have any long-term plans. That's why we didn't even specifically name this duet. That's also why we released this for free through Yes No Wave. Back then it was just called 'Rully Shabara and Wukir Suryadi.' But with this release, Wok the Rock—the founder of Yes No Wave—played an important role in molding our collaboration into something more concrete and serious. He not only brought me and Wukir together, he also designed the album cover and named it Senyawa.

Eventually, show posters stopped referring to us as 'Rully Shabara and Wukir Suryadi' and started calling us 'Senyawa.' So you might say that the name devoured our individual names and replaced it with one simple word that was initially only meant to be an album title.

You guys were still searching for a sound here.
Material-wise, the songs on this are very basic. We were still trying to learn each other's sounds and colors. Personally, I didn't know the potential of my own voice yet and whether I could counterbalance Wukir's dynamic instrument [the homemade 'Bambuwukir']. On one song I even played drums since I wasn't confident my vocals alone would be enough. The basic notes on the Bambuwukir on this album have evolved by themselves as we've grown musically and we still perform them on stage, but with different arrangements, sounds, and energy.

Why is this third?
It's different from other Senyawa albums. All songs on this are lyrically dense and the arrangements were done before recording. That's why this is Senyawa's most accessible album. The song compositions didn't come entirely from improvisation but from an awareness to write something normative. We even rearranged popular children songs like 'Naik Kereta Api' and 'Jaranan' and included them in the album. For a live setlist, jotting down songs from this album is one of our tricks since the dynamics and calculated compositions guarantee energy.

Wok the Rock was still very much involved in this album. Acaraki was your first chance to 'go international' with Senyawa, right?
Wok the Rock was still involved with the cover design and title selection of this album. The artwork, which is of jamu cooking, and the name 'Acaraki' was the perfect way to represent Senyawa at this point in time.

How did you get this on Morphine Records?
When we were performing at a music festival in Denmark in 2013 we met Rabih Beaini, a musician, producer, and the owner of the highly respectable electronic experimental label Morphine. After our show, he shared with us his vision of introducing Senyawa to the techno and electronic scenes. It was foreign territory for us at the time. Wukir and I naively said yes to the offer since Rabih came through with only one condition: he had to organize a Senyawa concert in Berlin.

At the time, even through we had been to Europe three times, we never played Berlin—a benchmark city for Europe's experimental music scene. A year later, during our 2014 European tour, the concert happened. Even now I still meet people who have been following us since seeing us at that concert. Basically the success of that one concert got us the support of fans, media, and experimental music scenes in Europe in time for our next album: Menjadi.

You recorded this album in Berlin?
This album was recorded in one week. As a producer, Rabih provided space and vision for the material on this album. If Senyawa was known for playing with a wide range of compositional dynamics in the past, we were more patient and monotonous on this album. We were forced to be. The percussive element was also brought to the front in the mix. The goal was to create an album that could penetrate the electronic scene, even though Senyawa's music is very 'primitive' and far from electronic, let alone techno.

After this release, we finally realized how—on this album—our music had a very similar energy to techno music and it was regarded as a breath of fresh air in that scene. It's this album that allowed Senyawa to plant our feet in a new scene that was previously unthinkable to us.

Ok, so this is your favorite album? Do you think people would be surprised to hear that this album started out as an accidental jam session?
Wukir and I usually don't do anything during our days off on tour. But during our 2015 fall tour, we had about three days off in Copenhagen. We were staying at the house of Cajero's owner Thomas Buhl-Wiggers. In his basement there was this awesome well-equipped recording studio. Instead of just lazing around or walking around town, we decided to spend the entire day jamming on whatever he had in the studio. Wukir rearranged his pedal sequence using the pedals that were available and I was busy fiddling with my vocals using this beautiful Shure S55, controlling the mix and the delay myself.

We didn't have any lyrics or compositions ready. We were just enjoying ourselves; just playing music without an operator's presence. The studio's owner purposely didn't turn off the equipment there so we were free to jam anytime we wanted. He, of course, recorded everything, even when we weren't playing or we were just tuning our instruments.

What happened to those recordings?
The day before we left he listened to the recording. He had already picked some parts and turned them into songs. No mixing was needed since the mixer was on during the recoding. The results were surprising. The songs were mostly droney. They were slow and heavy. The sound was so different compared to what we were playing at that point. The vocals were minimal and blending into the atmosphere. There was none of the pretension, none of the explosive all-over-the-place energy that Senyawa usually produced. The sound was no longer 'raw' thanks to the delay and other pedals When Thomas offered to release the recording on his label, we were like, why not?

So what's next for Senyawa?
We're off from touring for two months to prepare a new album.