Forget Berlin, fly to Bali
(Image: Oktavian Adhiek Putra)
> Original article on Welt.de read
Like a mixture of an archaic master of ceremonies and Keith Flint from Prodigy, Ican Harem slaps his thighs with the microphone in time with the hyperfast techno beats, while his homemade headdress twitches like an electric shock to the hypnotic scales of the music. In the strobe light, the crowd in front of him pulsates as if in slow motion. Young men headbang with motorcycle helmets on their heads. Women roll their eyes until you can only see the whites. Others snake their arms through the air as if they were following invisible energy lines. The scenery seems futuristic, apocalyptic, but in its intricate ecstasy it also seems as if it has sprung from an ancient temple frieze.
We Europeans like to think of our club culture as progressive and casual. A show by the Indonesian DJ duo Gabber Modus Operandi can be a real sobering experience. "We want to make dance music that is close to us, that is modern, but still draws on the culture of our homeland," says Kasyim, the musical head of Gabber Modus Operandi, in a small restaurant on the outskirts of the Balinese town of Ubud. The tourist island is the home of Gabber Modus Operandi. Not exactly a place for avant-gardists like them. There is no room for an experimental underground between the ubiquitous beach cocktail parties and backpacker bars of their homeland, confirms Harem, who squints from behind his sunglasses, bleary-eyed. "Here, culture is above all an economic commodity."
“Every club in Bali is run by some white guy,” Kasyim agrees. “It’s almost like colonization, I’m sorry.”
Although the two only founded their project in 2017, their reputation has long since reached the global techno underground. The duo has already played twice at Berghain, and this year they will appear at the CTM Festival in Berlin and the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona, among others. But you shouldn't expect gentle Balinese wellness beats or gong baths from the temple from Gabber Modus Operandi. The last thing they want is to use world music clichés. "You can make techno or house and put traditional music like gamelan on top in the form of samples. That then results in ethnic dance music. But we don't want to be a cultural remix. We want to create something new," says Kasyim.
Barong's Revenge
Their music is an acoustic hell ride that transfers the repetitive scales of gamelan to synthetic rave sounds. The basic structure consists, as the band name suggests, of forward-rushing, almost overturning gabber beats, the hyper-fast thunderdome techno that had a large following in the early 1990s, especially in the Netherlands.
The fact that the Dutch once subjugated Indonesia as a colonial power is a historical paradigm that Gabber's modus operandi consciously plays with. Indonesian underground culture is now either in the hands of foreigners or people who have studied abroad, explains Kasyim. "They come back and talk about 'real house music', 'real club culture', but they are just another copy of some Western act. I think it's more important to see what's happening around you - and then bring those things together."
GMO's ecstatic live shows are also a homage to the cultural traditions of their homeland, tailored to the spirit of the times. The two cite the Javanese trance dance Jathilan, in which the spirits of animals are said to enter the dancers, as their main influence. The ritual can be seen impressively in the music video for the track "Dosar Besar", which Harem and Kasiym edited together from smartphone videos from the internet.
There, young amateur Jathilan dancers crawl across the floor with devilishly distorted faces, baring their teeth or flapping imaginary wings. Harem, who grew up in the strictly Muslim province of Aceh, which has been governed by Sharia law since 2005, remembers how the custom fascinated him as a child. "Because it is so close to animistic folk religions, the dance was forbidden in Muslim families like mine. As children, however, we were obsessed with it. Even if we didn't really feel the trance, we secretly acted out the whole thing and pretended, for example, that a tiger had taken possession of us."
Kasyim, who grew up in Indonesia's capital Jakarta, explains that Jathilan is something like "proto-rave" for him: "People from all walks of life come together and get carried away by repetitive music." At the same time, however, it also has something of a punk feel to it, he says. "The dances often take place in some backyard. There is no guest list, often people don't even wear shoes. They are cool because they don't care about being cool. They push the limits and just improvise. As club kids who have to contend with so many conventions, we are jealous of them." It is the "rough animal energy" of such traditions that have become part of everyday life that Gabber Modus Operandi want to transfer to their concerts.
Sometimes they even bring traditionally trained dancers onto the stage to perform the Barong dance, which is popular with Bali tourists. However, the costume of the Barong, a mystical spirit king from Balinese mythology, is not made from traditional materials such as wood and horsehair in Gabber Modus Operandi, but is soldered together from cables and motorcycle parts. Flashing red headlights form the lion's head of the two-meter beast, while its flanks are made up of aerodynamic, neon-colored fenders.
"Every show is an open space where things can happen," says Harem, who puts the costumes together himself. Off stage, he works as a fashion designer. In his own collections, he sews heavy motorcycle jackets with T-shirts from obscure metal bands to create oversized models, a strangely hip mix of sporty and morbid, which he also presented at Fashion Week in Paris this year. The search for a language of their own and the refusal to accept global trends can be seen as a harbinger of the fact that the subculture in Asia is slowly emancipating itself from the West. This is also supported by the fact that, despite offers from Europe, Gabber Modus Operandi have signed a contract with the Chinese label Svbkvlt - one of the hottest addresses for futuristic electronic music among connoisseurs. "The nice thing about China is that the artists there don't try to ingratiate themselves so much," says Kasyim. "Most of them don't care what's going on in Berlin. They do what they want to do. That's why we like working with them."
The two have already staged a trance performance with the Chinese art collective Asian Dope Boys at Hamburg's Kampnagel and have already performed at the Documenta. "It's also nice to go on tour with musicians with whom you can search for rice in Europe," says the producer with a mischievous grin. "We Asians have to eat rice, that's just the way it is."