The Bandung Odyssey: unveiling the city's underground scene & creative vanguard

If you have followed underground music over the last decade, it’s apparent that Indonesia has emerged as a hotspot in Asia, and Bandung is one of its leading lights.

The capital city of West Java, Bandung is known for its high elevation among volcanos, tea plantations, modernist colonial-era architecture, and being a tourist hotspot. Music has long been a part of the city’s DNA, and a quick peruse on the pages of Bandcamp will deliver visitors everything from death metal, drone, breakcore, to screamo punk, electronic, pop and fusions of traditional Indonesian music in all of the above.

In spite of this variety, for many of the city’s producers, inspiration for building this vast underground hailed from the UK, among other influences. Classic rock acts such as the Rolling Stones, and groups including Cocteau Twins, Portishead, and New Order, have made their influence felt on the Bandung scene over the years.

The city is known for its experimental and adventurous spirit, championed by the likes of Bandung Null Emergence (BNE), a collective promoting underground music in the spirit of rebellion. Hary ‘Munir’ Septiandri, is a producer and DJ from Bandung, specialised in highly deft productions of City pop, AOR, and Boogie, edited with danceable and funky nous as the Midnight Runners collective, once a collective and record label but now led by himself.

During high school in Bandung, he became deeply involved in new media and art community Openlabs, after being invited by electronic group Bottlesmoker from Bandung. It wasn’t long before he was learning music production and design, while starting to become a DJ. Creating his own edits and hip hop on Ableton and an MPC, Munir has progressed to become an in-demand selector of disco and boogie covering everything from edits of Indonesian obscurities to Thai, Cantonese dance and more.

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A city that is home to many art and design institutes and universities, Bandung offers a creative vibe and attractive climate to be creative. “Hiking to the mountain when I was stressed out helps! We can consider the challenges in front of us and make critical decisions. This city has always had this creative vibe, essential to us in the early 2000s when nice things were unavailable – we followed a vision to introduce something new,” Munir says.

For music heads, especially those that crave disco and house, it is also a great place to dig for vinyl, with the likes of Bhang Records and D.U.68 MUSIK. “I’m always interested in tunes of different languages, music for me is a tool for communication. These record shops are a gold mine for disco records from all types of cultures. I’ve discovered weird and quirky music from collecting records; why not play different languages as long as the music is good for the club and dance music scene,” says Munir.

The ultimate for many producers and DJs is digging the crates, looking for the obscurities that make them stand out from the crowd. For Munir, Banding offered an opportunity to hunt for rare Indonesian records, many of which he called being in “really bad condition, which I wanted to make playable in a club.”

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This in many ways encapsulates the spirit of Bandung, which has a reputation for building music innovators and mavericks. Harry Roesli, the renowned singer-songwriter, and avant-garde electronic music explorer, hailed from the city. The artist was renowned for techniques such as tape sampling, and he left a long legacy for those who followed. His “bio-sampling” techniques, which involved deriving sound from human sources such as heart beats, became inspirational stuff of legend. Crucially, he laid a path for others to follow.

This included artists such as DXXXT, hip hop artists including Homicide, and their MC Ucok Homicide, along with Kassaf. “Homicide are hip-hop legends, with lyrics that are always on point, showing political expertise and pure honesty,” says Munir.

Meanwhile, Wiwied and Flux Record Music were closely connected to pub culture in the city. These artists formed the early wave of Bandung’s electronic music scene in the 1990s, with genres like industrial, punk, EBM, hip-hop, noise, ambient, pop, and house all vying for attention, with industrial music taking particular prominence.

“This set up the contemporary Bandung scene, with good parties and DJs, along with indie and underground acts able to make high-quality art. My generation, which was born in the 1990s, was inspired to look at music as important and a potential career path to take. Before the mass information flooded social media and the internet, there was a rich ecosystem of local magazines making waves and informing people,” says Munir.

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As part of Midnight Runners, Munir has made his own mark on the scene, and helped place Bandung on both the regional and global maps. When “Midnight Runners – Openlabs” was released by Oregon-based Omega Supreme Records, it placed Bandung firmly on the map for disco, funk and re-edit lovers, and showed that the city was in the present, rather than resting on its laurels.

But Munir believes the battle is uphill. “From my perspective, the future is still cloudy. The government has not supported the creative scene and club scene enough, which also needs more younger people to open their minds and not judge. Maybe there is more room to grow but we need the local community to continue to gather and support each other,” he adds.

[Art Direction by Adrianna Cheung]

Peter Sabine is a Writer for Mixmag Asia and the founder of Holjeng Media. Follow him on LinkedIn here.