Butterfingers comprises (from left) Emmett, Loque, Kadax and Loco, the drummer, whose real name is Mohamad Haffizal Rashid.
By Shannon Teoh
AUG 23 — Patriotism as nationalistic pride is often filtered down to a simplistic form which is nothing more than positive discrimination. Conversely, negative discrimination is often decried as being unpatriotic, perhaps rightfully, but usually without the realisation that any sort of discrimination distorts the truth.
Hence the annoying calls to “support your local X industry”. That it connotes that the local industry is inferior and the expenditure of your resources is some form of charity is usually forgotten in the purple passion of patriotism.
It seems that this is merely a trendy reversal of the pride of the nouveau-middle-class of the Mahathir era who found the stocking of imported goods to be the best way to express your newfound worldliness. That there is now a large lower middle-class that can only afford the Ikeas of the world rather than the Armanis might correlate to this new cultural phenomenon.
Ideally, of course, any product should be judged on pure merit. In the case of the local music scene, there is little, if any, reason why anything but a handful deserve a place on our CD racks.
Have we an R&B diva in the strata of Mariah Carey? Rappers to battle Eminem, Jay-Z or Kanye West? Rockers more amp-ed up than U2 or Coldplay?
It is only when the idea of art and unique individuality comes into play that the argument to buy local music solidifies. Not just because “if we don't, who will?” but because cultural aesthetic and even personal expression are indelibly influenced by where we're from, it is we who best identify with what is ours.
And so it is that rock quartet, Butterfingers, have acquired an importance, of lower stature perhaps, but of similar quality to Tan Sri P. Ramlee and Zainal Abidin.
There is something undeniably Malaysian about the group who, as 18-year-old Nirvana rockists, put out two grunge albums in back-to-back years that earned them nominations in the 1998 Anugerah Industri Muzik awards. The same could be said of several other musicians on the scene today, but it was in 1999, when the aptly named Transcendence appeared and sold over 50,000 copies (by comparison, a Coldplay album does about 60,000) that a genuine expression of Malaysiana could be appreciably heard in their music.
Featuring a number of local instruments and influence from traditional musical forms, it however, reinterpreted them via studio and electronic wizardry, the band, for the first time, employing a fulltime keyboardist on their “live” shows.
It was also the beginnings of the experimental phase of Khairil Ridzwan Anuar’s music. The principal songwriter has been enrolled in the Berklee College of Music in Boston for the past few years.
“I have to think about what it is I’m actually studying. But whatever it is has made its way into our work,” the multi-instrumentalist, who goes by the stage name Loque, had told me in a January interview.
This Aug 28 marks the launch of their latest album, Kembali (Return). Or at least it would’ve had a cock-up by distributors Universal Music not happened.
As it stands, the album has been available in stores since Aug 2, wrecking plans of sneak preview live performances leading up to a Aug 24 showcase by the band in Planet Hollywood, KL.
It’ll probably remind them why they decided to go independent in the first place. Unlike their current peer groups in the fringe music scene, Butterfingers started off as a major label outfit having signed to EMI as 17-year-old prodigies.
But after their contracted five albums plus one greatest hits compilation was done and dusted, a request to finance one more album was met by apprehension from EMI.
For EMI to suddenly doubt one of their best-ever local acquisitions — over 150,000 CDs sold to date — left the Butterfingers preferring to go it alone. To be fair to EMI, Butterfingers have come a long way since the days when Emmett Roslan Ishak still sounded like Kurt Cobain.
Their last effort, 2004’s Selamat Tinggal Dunia, was an exercise in allegorical performance art with improvisational elements using delay effects, samplings, traditional instruments like the gamelan and other electronic studio wizardry that Loque calls “late night overdubs”. Songs that started out pretty could suddenly turn spooky and fractious.
It seemed like a big f***-you to the world, and in fact, a breakup album. It was their first album after a three-year gap and it seemed to put a full stop to matters — questions of whether they would ever release a Malay album had turned to questions of whether they had the ability to do it, questions of whether, in a scene which had birthed other starring acts like Love Me Butch and SevenCollar T-Shirt along with the more commercial and internationally marketed Pop Shuvit, the band could still be relevant.
Butterfingers are now at ease simply being themselves, singing in either Malay or English, doing whatever they want.
“With
Selamat Tinggal Dunia we wanted to leave, leave our bodies but now we're floating back down to earth. The band’s back, we’re playing together, it’s a return to forever. It doesn’t necessarily mean we’re returning to make a mark. We’re returning as people, as musicians,” said Emmett.
This reluctance to call Kembali a statement of intent when the band were so ready to do so with their prior efforts is as much down to a new, relaxed state of mind as it is to the circumstances they find themselves in. At a recent 20-minute slot on the promotional tour for the upcoming TV-to-film adaptation of Kami, the crowd cheered louder for the band when they were taking the stage than when they were performing except for when Emmett rendered old-school favourite Nicc O' Tynne acoustically.
The obvious reason was that the new stuff wasn’t resonating with a younger crowd — the gig was free, hence — who, while they knew Butterfingers as a legendary band, wanted to mosh and stage-dive. As Loque once joked, “Yes, the scene has progressed. Now you see more chicks at gigs.”
“Kembali is more precise yet varied,” Loque explained. “Zero power rock chords. More open, not just trial and error but more deliberate and harmonic.”
"As we continued to record more albums, we realised they’re all with different ideologies," offerred bassist Mohd Fakharudin Mohd Bahar, who has since changed his nickname from Kadak to Kadax, with any ironic intentions of being more extreme best explained by the man himself.
"Yeah, Loque’s writing all the stuff now and our direction is very dependent on him. But all our albums have been different because a lot of external stuff affects our music. Even things like inflation and the price of goods. I think our albums will continue to be one percent Butterfingers and 99 per cent Malaysia."
When you think about it, that actually makes sense. Their musical journey seems to have been more a case of driftwood floating on the water rather than that of a sailboat. They had once defiantly said they would never record in Malay and that’s obviously changed and the socially observant may perhaps understand the whys of this.
The ‘96 and ‘97 albums, 1.2 Milligrams and Butter Worth Pushful, were exercises in grunge impersonation, befitting an industry that was still finding its footing. Transcendence interpreted pre-millennial and post-Reformasi tensions by jacking up on electronics.
It was 2001’s Malayneum that saw them finally stepping up as a bastion of Malaysian music and even got them a slot to perform on the normally conservative and uhh, “patriotic” AIM awards. The album commented on the social state of affairs in Malaysia layered over an orchestral arrangement.
Selamat Tinggal Dunia’s themes are not dissimilar to Malayneum, but more biting and uncompromising. And in Malay.
With Emmett deliberately accenting his Malay with Western-esque diction (he is after all, half Caucasian himself), songs like Daulat Tuanku (Long Live The King) were an obvious challenge to the status quo.
And if Selamat Tinggal Dunia touched on the confusing state of being Malaysian, Kembali is perhaps a discussion on the confusing state of being Malay. Both albums use Malay folk rhymes but while the prior mashes it up and spews forth acidly, the latter seems more polite, thoughtful and advisory.
Pantun yang sopan-santun (poems which are polite), so to speak. In Bebas (Free), Emmett opens with “Enjit enjit semut, siapa sakit naik atas” (Ants biting, whoever’s in pain go on top), a rhyme sung by children playing a kampung game, before offering his own couplet of “Arus pemodenan kian deras, pastikan kita tak lemas” (The current of modernisation gets stronger, make sure we don't drown), a very Malay practice of using a natural analogy, in this case a river.
They’ve even appropriated a rather rare musical form called keroncong, and instead of distorting it as they would’ve in the past, they’ve simply embraced it and made it theirs. The song is called Merdeka (Independence), which is perhaps the most apt way to describe where the band is right now.
Independence is usually described as a state of being free, but is then exercised as a compulsion to move away from the norm. Butterfingers are now, 12 years down the road, in a place where they are doing whatever they want. At ease singing in either Malay or English, writing whimsically and simply being themselves.
Malaysian.
*Info on procuring a copy of Kembali and future performances at www.butterfingers.com.my.
