Indonesian progressive music presents :----------------------------------------- ----------------------------------Discus---------------------------------------- Discus was formed in Jakarta, Indonesia in 1996, continuing the musical tradition which originated in the British counterculture movement of the early 70's, where rock meets jazz meets classical meets pop meets avant garde. From their beginnings, Discus wanted to create original music, fusing all the above influences, adding traditional Indonesian elements and ethnic instruments, The result in a high-energy progressive musical mix reminiscent of John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, but with Indonesian, instead of Indian, styling. Attracted to their original eclectic mix of rock, jazz, contemporary classical, electronic, ambience and traditional Indonesian music. In 1999 the Italian Label Mellow Records release their debut album, 'Discus lst, which received Critical acclaim in various progressive music media in the USA, Germany, Italy, Brazil and Belgium. October 2000 Discus toured the United States, playing in several cities including the international progressive music festival ProgDay 2000 in North Carolina and the Knitting Factory in New York city. Their performance at ProgDay 2000 has earned them votes as the 2nd best performance in the festival by the rec. music. progressive newsgroup internet poll. The members have also received votes for outstanding performances on guitar, keyboards, drums, bass and miscellaneous (other) instruments. The personnel of the band is as follows: Iwan Hasan: Eclectic & classical guitar, 21-string harp guitar, Balinese and Electronic percussion & Lead vocals. Anto Praboe: Clarinet, Bass clarinet, Flutes & Saxophones, Suling (indonesian bamboo flutes) Eko Partitur: Violin & Electronics Fadhil Indra: Keyboards, Vocals, Electronic percussion, Gongs, Kempič, Rindik Hayunaji: Drums Kiki Catoh: 5-string & Fretless bass Kflsna Prameswara: Keyboards Nonnie: Lead Vocals The members of the band has had various experiences in many different styles of music their individual music careers, which is reflected in Discus music. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Interview "Psyche van het Folk" with Discus : What kind of jazz names did have an influence on your music ? Wow, that's difficult to say. Everything from Chick Corea to John Coltrane to Keith Jarrett to the Mahavishnu Orchestra the more pop variety such as the New York Voices, to Allan Holdsworth and Frank Gambale. Can you tell me in short what is going on a musical level in Indonesia, what are possibilities. Does there exist many fusions ? Well, no not really. It's the same everywhere in the world, even worse probably. See, like Discus, we seem to be more successful in other countries. At least we had been invited and did perform at two international progressive rock festivals, ProgDay 2000 in the USA and Baja Prog 2001 in Mexico. Only AFTER we performed there can we play here in our home country. Before we played ProgDay, in four years we only played 5 times in Jakarta! And that's because no promotor, not even small clubs, would let us play. Nobody would let us play. They think our music is "giving the audience a hard time". But after we played in the US now we play more here because suddenly people realize, "hey, who are these guys, nobody knows them but they played in the USA???". Then they start to find out. Of course half the band are professional musicians and I'm a composer so we always play our instruments. But we always rehearse once a week even if there's nothing going on. We have to be very disciplined. There are, however, other bands who do fusions with traditional Indonesian music, most notably Krakatau. They are bigger than us here because they started as a jazzy pop band with hit singles, video clips etc and then they changed direction. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Web page about Discus at http://www.matonline.com/discus/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Go back to "Indonesian and similar influences in progressive music" page at http://progressive.homestead.com/INDOPROGRESSIVE.html or by using the return button if you were there before. (At that page you can also read my review about the Discus item, with links to other review pages).