Catriona Richards

Jakarta Globe, March 16, 2012

A young woman in a white dress steps out into the growling traffic on one of Jakarta’s main thoroughfares. She is holding a megaphone.

Behind her, a man follows holding a boombox over his head, his mouth covered to stop him from choking on the toxic fumes. The woman sings in Javanese, drawing on an old parable about doing too little, too late: “If we want to be honest/The earth is coming to an end/No one can control humans/The rice has now become porridge.”

This is a scene from the video clip for “Colony Collapse,” the title track of an EP released last month by international music label Post World Industries, and recorded by Barcelona bass producer Grey Filastine and vocalist Nova Ruth from Malang, East Java.

“Colony Collapse” is intended as a wake-up call for Indonesia to take a look at the state of its environment. In the words of the producer, it explores “sites of ecological friction” in the archipelago and “the fault lines of conflict between humanity and [the rest of] nature.”

Artists like Beats Antique, Squeaky Lobster and L’Oeuf Raide have contributed solid remixes of the title track.

The title itself is taken from the mysterious phenomenon found among beehives called colony collapse disorder, where a colony of bees suddenly and inexplicably disappears.

Like the disappearing colonies, humans could also be at risk of dying off, though the process is likely to happen at such a slow pace that we won’t see it coming. This “slow-motion apocalypse,” as Filastine puts it, is happening around us every day, especially in big cities like Jakarta. But with the boundaries blurred between what humans can and can’t control, the “colony” simply continues on its path to devastation.

Aside from the claustrophobic streets of Jakarta’s city center, the video clip takes viewers on a tour of some of Indonesia’s other disaster areas, from the lava-ravaged slopes of Mount Merapi in Central Java to the site of the Lapindo mud volcano in Sidoarjo, near Nova’s home in East Java.

Introduced by a mutual friend in Australia, Nova and Filastine decided to work together after they met in Jakarta in 2009. Filastine had previously worked with Indonesian music samples and featured Indonesian lyrics on one of his previous albums, performed by US singer Jessika Skeletalia Kenney. He was interested in working more closely with the country’s musicians.

“Nova and I have a similar philosophy about music, politics and life, so it’s a natural fit,” Filastine said.

Nova is an established figure in Indonesia’s indie music scene. She rose to popular acclaim as one half of the hip-hop act Twin Sista.

She said that for girls, “not so many can be a leader in hip-hop,” as they are usually asked to provide backing vocals instead. “But I know some powerful [female] rappers, like Yacko and Lady Gan.”

When Nova joined Filastine on a European tour in 2009, the pair recorded a rough version of “Colony Collapse” in Barcelona. Nova supplied a strong chorus, with English lyrics and a haunting melody, which she later realized was subconsciously inspired by the folk tune “Perahu Layar” (“Sailboat”). The rest of her vocals were a mix of English, Javanese and Indonesian.

Filastine then got to work composing the gamelan-inspired backing track, tapping out the tune on electronic drum pads. But it was not until 2011 that he had the chance to visit Indonesia again, so that he and Nova could complete the recording.

The final vocals were recorded deep in a forest near Salatiga, Central Java.

“I discovered there is no place free of motorbike sounds on the island of Java,” Filastine said. “The best we could do was a remote house in Salatiga, but even there the motorbikes were too much. So we walked deep into the forest, in a brief moment between two rainstorms, to record the final vocals.”

“We wanted to get the ambience of nature when recording,” Nova said. “This is not a chauvinist statement, but this country has more feminine energy. We call the earth Ibu Pertiwi [Mother Nature], not Bapak [Father]. So we took our concept into the forest.”

With the vocals complete, they brought Filastine’s gamelan track from Barcelona to Sanur, Bali, where the world’s biggest gamelan collection is stored at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI). Filastine tried out each set until he found one with a similar tuning to his draft backing track. Mixed with elements of dubstep and layers of polyrhythmic beats, the finished product is an intricate mesh of bright, brassy sounds and scratched up distortion, complementing Nova’s vocals.

Then came the journey of making the video. Filastine and Nova ventured onto the fields of the notorious Sidoarjo mud volcano, alleged by some to have been triggered by the drilling activities of Lapindo Brantas, an Indonesian oil and gas exploration company. Since 2006, the mud volcano has displaced more than 30,000 people, and is expected to keep expanding for the next 25 years.

Lapindo claims it is a natural disaster, but several studies have shown that the company’s drilling safety standards were to blame. The video for “Colony Collapse” features shots of the destruction caused by the constant flow of volcanic mud spilling across the land.

From there, the pair visited Muntilan, a village in Central Java where a river was filled with volcanic mud and boulders after the eruption of Mount Merapi in 2010. In contrast to the disaster at Sidoarjo, Nova said the people there blamed themselves for the disaster.

“The local shaman said, ‘Humans take too much from the river, now the river wants it back,’ ” she said. “It’s sad to think of humans blaming themselves when there’s a natural disaster, or blaming nature when they’re doing total damage, like in Lapindo.”

Outside of Jakarta came another shock: the enormous eyesore of the Bantar Gebang landfill.

“Bantar Gebang is a landscape of trash,” Filastine said. “Garbage stretches farther than the eye can see. Mountains, rivers and even villages [are there], where the trash-pickers live. [It is] not something easy to summarize in words.”

Viewers of the video clip don’t need words, as they can see the immensity of the problem for themselves. The waste is spread far and deep, forming peaks and valleys of trash. “No one knows that the trash they throw away every day is becoming another landscape in Bantar Gebang,” Nova said.

After seeing the impact for themselves, Nova and Filastine wanted to share their knowledge with others. In the middle of a traffic jam near the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle in Central Jakarta, they turned the track up loud so every passing vehicle could hear it, even over the rumbling engines, as Nova sang the lyrics through a megaphone.

“When we damage nature, we damage ourselves,” Nova said. “Colony collapse can happen to us too if we don’t stop what we are doing.”

Colony Collapse (EP)
Filastine feat. Nova Ruth
http://www.postworldindustries.com