“…a gently vaporous hulk of melancholia.” – The Wire

“…travels across multiple continents, scoring the artist’s often harrowing journeys. Instead of souvenirs, he collects timbres.” – A Closer Listen

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A lot of the music on this album is based loosely in and around the idea of ‘echoes’ – the feeling of a music or sound from the past, not the ‘original’ source, but something that has somehow gotten fainter and fainter.

The tracks are also collated from a few different eras of my life as I traversed eastward to the ‘West’ across the Pacific ocean, Turtle Island and eventually to the home of CTM Festival in Berlin.

A few songs encapsulate the naive optimism of music production’s promise facing towards the sounds of UK electronic music in the mid 90’s, as I traveled further away from my childhood home(s) of Borneo and Hawaii. Within these frenetic compositions, you’ll find ‘echoes’ of Sundanese degung from my mom’s 30-year old cassette tapes from Malaysia – or rage at the injustice and arrogance of racialized U.S. police brutality we experienced in 2022.

‘Balikpapan’ has field recordings from insects I listened to in Margomulyo Mangrove forest, recorded shortly around the time I returned to Borneo (35 years after we were smuggled out) to find my kindergarten school bulldozed and replaced by Pertimina oil company). Some songs were recorded while living with my mom in 2004, nearly 20 years ago.

I hope this album serves as a signal to other artists drawing from their sonic heritage to make sense of the present and develop their own, crucial voice. Our diasporas are vast sources of knowledge and strength, particularly in difficult times…

The artwork centerpiece portrait was done by Dhomas Kampretz Yudhistira during a Soydivision rehearsal at Rumah Budaya Indonesia Berlin for a performance of KIAMAT inspired by Senyawa’s Alkisah. Saphy Vong did the layout. The frame and colors are from a hand-beaded Borneo mantle my mom made, based on motifs from the Iban of Sarawak, my ancestors in West Kalimantan.

It took her over 15 years to complete, but she finally did, just in time for the artwork to be completed.