Strange Fruit

Strange Fruit: Drips EP                                

Tip Top Recordings

12” & Download

Out now

Jakarta four-piece Strange Fruit insulate and excavate with their latest 12” of sublime, melodious intent. Humane robot music for motorways and lazy A-roads alike. MK Bennett finds the centre.

“The music of a whole youth-nation working out their blues. There was a fire burning in the souls of post-war German youth that somehow needed to be, not fanned, not put out, nor added to with petrol – but rather that fire needed to be allowed to burn. And burn it did. With an intensity that could have changed the very fabric of the West had it taken place in Britain or the USA. But that was not the nature of the fire, so it was never to be. Instead, we are left with the legacy of the daring German Youth-dance away from their recent past.”
Krautrocksampler – Julian Cope (1995)

Some styles of music never die, never go out of style. Maybe the music is associated with something at least seemingly revolutionary, or it gets amalgamated into something beyond itself and into culture: punk, for example, riot grrrl, even surf music all exist as reactions. And this stuff finds its way, as is the nature of all revolutionary music, to where it is most needed. Indonesia has the same problem with increasing authoritarianism and militarism as large parts of the West do. A musician’s response is either to write protest music or disappear into oneself and make your freedom its own protest. Strange Fruit does the latter, though given the etymology of that name, they are almost certainly aware of and alive to the politics of it too.

Krautrock, the Kosmische, the motorik, is part escape and part invigoration, and the band understand this completely, as evidenced by this EP and its attendant remixes. Track one, Pouvoir Moteur (the extremely apt Motoric Power), is an exemplary slice of modern-day mechanical wonder, driven by a delicious groove and a Tangerine Dream-esque hover through several desertscapes, the bird-like swooping of the keyboards almost three-dimensional in their arrangement. A glorious start to the EP, it also sets out the band’s stall nicely. Iridescent is next, a more restrained bass-led thing with a glorious breakdown that sounds like space shuttles docking. It is effectively onomatopoeic, a great shimmering beauty that settles into a Leftfield-adjacent sound from the Afro Left era, eventually landing in full 90s Weatherall regalia, part Screamadelica, part Sabres of Paradise. A distinctly Pavlovian rush for those of a certain age, it is forward-thinking nostalgia with a modernist edge.

Monopolar continues with this excellence, reminiscent of William Orbit but with that Y2K ethereal vocal laid on top, the drums sloping at angles and maintaining motion at all times until the synths take over completely. The wonderfully melancholy solo has more echoes of that imagined space age, but again doesn’t sound dated, just joyous. The last song on the EP proper is Drips itself, as close to an electronic version of shoegaze as one could reasonably ask for. As the band themselves put it:

“Our early influences came through a mix of record collecting, online discovery and conversations with other musicians,” says vocalist Baldi Calvianca. “Jakarta has a close-knit network of people who are deeply engaged with music, and that constant exchange of ideas has been invaluable. As the years have passed, those reference points have gradually transformed into something more personal and reflective of our own experiences.”

It travels inner space and outer in less than three minutes, an exercise that would take lesser bands half an album. It sounds sublime, a swooning and arching move through and beyond its influences.

There are several remixes next, a brave and unusual move to put them on the same record, allowing people to closely compare and contrast. It says something for their own confidence in the material, undoubtedly. The Jonathan Kusuma Hypnodubmix of Iridescent is first up, a more consciously dancefloor-friendly version with gorgeous drums and glorious rhythmic propulsion, just a little twitch in the funk that gives it a lovely early Daft Punk vibe while maintaining its up-to-date plug-in credentials. Loose like Underworld too, another touchstone that meets its seeming inspiration head-on. Handsome indeed.

The Tom Furse mix of Monopolar is a different beast, starting like a DJ Shadow deep cut before the keyboards and vocals break through; it’s a more obviously referential mix than the previous one, adding instrumentation as opposed to completely remaking the sounds. It inevitably nods more towards trip hop and Mo Wax, but that’s not a criticism; it’s not like Mo Wax make beats anymore. There then follow three separate mixes of Monopolar by the Hardway Bros, a mini-album of 90s references (Leftfield, Chemical Brothers) and modern classicism intertwined. As the three tracks move forward, they become more experimental and dub-like, cavernous and mysterious.

Taken as a whole, including the remixes, it works remarkably well as a coherent album, albeit one that travels a considerable distance from its beginning. That might well be the point, as it keeps its aesthetic narrative as tight as a drum. Frankly excellent from end to end, it is a midnight smoker’s dream.

Strange Fruit’s Instagram | Bandcamp

All words by MK Bennett, you can find his author’s archive here plus his Twitter and Instagram