Strange Fruit Gets a Bit More Grounded With Second EP

Strange Fruit is one of those bands whose sound can't easily be defined. They started out as a garage rock act with a sound that didn't vary much from their contemporaries. But the band quickly evolved into something altogether different: an avant-garde act more concerned with sonic experimentation than conventional rock structures.

Today, Strange Fruit is a band that would sound at home in the American indie scene. But here in Indonesia, they are bravely original—the band's focus on playing with noise above all else is a bold step for a young band who could've easily ridden the garage rock sound to popularity.

It also means the band has suffered a noticeable number of lineup changes. Strange Fruit's singer/guitarist/keyboardist Baldi Calvianca is the only surviving member. He now is in charge of pushing the band's sound in new directions. Calvianca is backed up by Irza Aryadiaz on drums, Aryanda Kareem on guitar, and backing vocals, and Nabil Favian on bass.

A lot of Strange Fruit's experimentation comes from Calvianca's deep knowledge of underground music. He name-checks a slew of obscure Indonesian and Western artists, and he regularly spins Indonesian underground dance acts from the 70s during his regular gig as a DJ.

It's unclear how much of these influences seeped into Strange Fruit's upcoming EP The Second Tendency. The band's first EP The Dolphin Leap, was an instrumental record that mixed French-influenced sound experimentation with American avant-garde acts like Deerhunter. But after that period of experimentation, the band seems to be dialing it back. The Second Tendency has verses, and choruses, something missing from Strange Fruit's earlier work.

"The mood of these songs are mercurial, blue—fuzzing manically, stripping it down to a single minimalist 4/4 motorik beat but still vastly melancholic," Calvianca said. "I wrote three songs for this EP. 'Astral Locomotive' has the anxious atmosphere of a train station in space. I found this very short section in one of our jam tapes where two pianos were playing melodic lines that interlocked in an interesting way. So the instruments sounded very soft and the whole movement was very slow.

"'Further East' is a song about moving further away to the East. It conjures up epic, sad, sand dunes. One of the notes repeats every 8 seconds, and the strings like are cloudbusting.

"And then there is the last track, 'Monopolar,' which is just about driving your car to the end of the tunnel."

The decision to release a more "conventional" album after fans were left confused by the experimentation on The Dolphin Leap. But Calvianca doesn't regret the decision to release The Dolphin Leap first. It's meandering, jammy qualities represented a clean break from Strange Fruit's start as a garage rock band. The Second Tendency is also the first EP to feature the whole band's input in the songwriting process.

The entire EP was recorded at home—both a cost-saving measure and one that allowed Strange Fruit to take their time and collaborate with other musicians. Calvianca said the band was influenced by "French food and German beer," during the recorded process—a statement that perhaps undermines the whole cost-cutting argument for recording at home.

"It sounds very homey," Calvianca said. "It's a laid-back, day to day jam kind of EP."

But never one to leave things too "conventional," Calvianca then free-associated words he felt best-described the album's sound.

"Happiness, sadness, dream, reality, wound, sadness," he said. "And happiness."