Jogjakarta (a.k.a Jogja), a city in Indonesia known as a city of education where many people from around the world come and stay as students. The students in Jogja have their own way to fill their day outside school with creativity, including playing music. Jogja itself is known as one of the center of independent music in Indonesia beside the capital Jakarta and Bandung.
Many bands from Jogja have paved their way in and out the scene, where the members are mostly students from other cities/countries. Most of the time these bands swap their members. This includes NARCHOBEAT, a punk band based on the members of another band, NARCHOLOCOS.
NARCHOLOCOS itself have released their albums via record labels based in other countries such as Singapore (Vanilla Thunder) and Malaysia (1 2 3 Go!). Unfortunately, like other bands from Jogja, NARCHOLOCOS suffered line-up changes due to members moving back to their city or getting a better job in a bigger city. Their guitarist & bassist both moved back to their original cities.
This makes them think about a spin off from their band that plays different music with new vocalist. So, they recruited a new vocalist – Cia – a student from Pontianak (west Borneo island). Then the NARCHOLOCOS’s vocalist (Indra) took the bass duties, Fallah recruited as a new second guitarist, while Yudha and Adam are still on their spots as guitarist & drummer. They named the new band NARCHOBEAT, which means NARCHOLOCOS plays D-Beat.
NARCHOBEAT recorded 5 new D-Beat Hardcore-Punk tunes just within a week after they formed. Think about DISCHARGE or DISCLOSE but with a modern twist and a female vocalist. All the songs are written in Melayu Pontianak language, a native language where Cia comes from. The lyrics itself are from Cia’s perspective as a female living on another island with a different tradition.
The EP is released as a split-tape with NARCHOLOCOS out on Relamati Records. As a promotion, both NARCHOBEAT & NARCHOLOCOS were on tour simultaneously around Java island playing 2 sets back to back covering songs from the split-tape.
On June 1st, 2023, NARCHOBEAT release a music video of their song titled „Betepe“ to promote the split project. The video was recorded during their performance at Jogjarockarta Fest 2022, one of the biggest international rock festivals in Jogja.
Follow NARCHOBEAT on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/narcholocos
