LISTEN: Adam Kasturi’s Amok

By JUICE Malaysia • 28 Aug 2015 in News

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“The cyberspace is such a strange and lonely place to be sometimes.”

At 27 tracks long, Adam Kasturi’s third album Amok is closer to the musical equivalent of a tome than a traditional LP – its length is good for a triple album! – and the literary reference to make is obvious: With electronic recordings of this nature, the immediate allusion is that of cyberpunk. But that’s being reductive. Adam’s vision of Amok is as an imaginary score to a linear narrative surrounding a “Kafka-esque life in Kolumpo,” as he put it. This isn’t future Kuala Lumpur, mind you, instead he posited that the city is already dystopian in its “[saturation of] hyperreality bullshit and faux-futuristic buildings, malls, and concepts that only serve the rich and privileged.” In that regard, Amok is not concerned about the future, like the low-key Dystopias of the Now seen in Channel 4’s Utopia (featuring similarly masterful softsynths-dominated score) and USA’s Mr. Robot, the hypothetical movie – or TV series – envisioned by Adam isn’t epic sci-fi, it’s the isolated experience of modern life in the urban sprawl; the digital ennui of 9-to-5ers.

Cover art (by frequent collaborator Zulamran Hilmi) and player below: