INTERVIEW WITH TREMOR

I already posted about Tremor, great artist from Indonesia. I'm a huge fan of his work , but you should also check out his band, Milisi Kecoa. Lyrics are very interesting, dealing with nationalism, religion, violence, scene etc. and although it's in Indonesian, you get the English explanation with the album, so check it out. 

Milisi Kecoa Myspace

http://tremorizer.blogspot.com/ 

When did you start doing artwork for bands?

-I don't really remember when was the first time I did  artwork for bands. I think it was in 1998 or 1999, I draw something stupid for my first band when I was still in high school.. I've been drawing  since I was a kid, but never really serious about it. I started doing artwork seriously for bands maybe in 2002 or 2003 but not so intensive..just for fun, helping my friends bands..

What was your first project?

-I don't consider the artwork for my first band back in 1999 as my first project.. I think my first "serious" project was an artwork for malaysian fastcore band called D(OLLIE)xPARTON. I mean, they asked me to make something for them, and then I draw it for them, like in real commision :P

What is your main influence? I suppose  horror movies and comics?

-Both! I love horror movies and comics!

How would you describe your style?

- I'm not really sure how to describe it. My style changes/improves everytime I  explore and discover something fun/new when I draw.. But I  love horror so much and I love black ink/pen. So maybe my style is more dark hand-drawing. I don't know, sometimes I have to draw something that isn't really my style because of the commision brief, or by request. For example: when I draw for clothing company, I just draw what people want, and I consider it as a designer job, not as  art-making.

Which artists do you look up to?

-Yes, even maybe not all artists influenced my artworks. I love Jim Phillips' designs for 80s Santa Cruz Skate designs. I also love artworks by Gustave Dore, Florian Bertmers, Ed Repka, french, Laurie Lipton, Justin Barlett, Murdoch Stafford, Edward Gorey, and also artworks by my friends from Indonesia like Morgg, Mayatschism and Riandy.

 With which bands have you worked so far? Are there any artworks which are your favorite?

- Usually for my friend's bands.. but it's also possible to any bands, as long as they like my style.. This far my favorite was the t-shirt design I made for local band called Gladiator. It was based on their tribute song for local DIY punk organiser: Bandung Pyrate Punx. (http://tremorizer.blogspot.com/2010/11/2010-gladiator.html

Why is the Gladiator artwork your favorite?

- Maybe because I didn't  expect  the final result to be like that. It was better than I thought before I started to ink it.. I love the details and the expression of the face on that artwork..

What is your medium? Do you only draw by hand or use the computer too?

-I draw on paper with pen and ink, and then processed it on computer for editing and layout.

What do you love to work the most? T-shirts, cover art, logos?

-I love doing t-shirt designs, but sometimes cover art and logos are challenging too because cover art has a very limited space and logo needs to be strong to be more outstanding..

What music do you listen when you are working?

-Basically I listened to a lot of different kinds of music, it depends  on my mood and everything.. My playlist recently was: Dead Kennedys (Plastic Surgery Disasters), Rotten to The core (Indonesian 90s punk), Asshole Parade (Say Goodbye), Nancy Sinatra (The Very Best of), Government Warning (No Moderation), Regulations (self titled), TSOL (Dance With Me), Hatred Surge (Deconstruct), Terminal State (Sick EP), caustic Christ (Cant Relate), Harda Tider (Gatan Kallar) and many more. Too many to mention all here..

How did you get in touch with Harda Tider for doing the artwork for them?

-Actually Erik from Harda Tider is my friend. I know him through  my another Swedish friend when Erik was going to travel to Asia last year. My friend recommended Erik to contact me before he came here, and Erik contacted me, and I picked him up on the airport and hangout for more than a week. Since that time, me and Erik became friends and hangout together a lot during his stay in my place. By the way, he visited Indonesia again with his brother recently and at the moment of writing this they are still in Indonesia.. They left my house like 2 days ago, and traveled to another city. I will meet them again next week. They are really funny and nice people to hang out with! Oh, Erik also do a lot of cool artworks, you should check his artworks! he doesn't have his online portfolio yet, but his artworks are really cool. 

Tell me something more about your band, Milisi Kecoa.

hm, I don't know where to start. Well, it's a hardcore punk band I started with some good friends in 2009. Only two of us actually could play music instruments when we started it in the first place, and I really enjoy being part of this band. We already released "Kami Marah" EP (CD-R) in 2009 and "Kalian Memang Menyedihkan" (CD-R) in 2010. Both are released and distributed by ourselves. But later my friend's label, Alternative records and distribution ( http://alternaivedistribution.blogspot.com/ ) released "Kalian Memang Menyedihkan" on tapes (limited 50 copies). You can download our releases for free here: http://www.mediafire.com/?32nm07vsvlspd45 (for "Kalian Memang Menyedihkan") and http://www.mediafire.com/?1ayr1varro2cb31(for "Kami Marah EP"). We just finished our first tour in December 2010, 10 cities in 2 weeks and hopefully will tour again this year, and also record more songs...

What's the punk and hardcore scene like in Indonesia?

-The hc punk scene in Indonesia is really huge with hundreds or maybe thousands bands! Maybe because indonesia also high in population. Whenever I travel in Java island (small part of Indonesia), I always meet punks in the street. They are like everywhere! hahahaha. And not just bands, some kids also run  zines, and organise shows too, some also run  punk distros. okay, I'm bad at writing and describing things like this haha. Just email me at makanmayat@yahoo.com if you want to know more about it. 

Are there any great bands coming from your area which you would recommend?

-From my area I recommend Krass Kepala (hc punk), Hooded (sxe hardcore), Fukk Bar Culture (hardcore), Krisis Identitas (hc punk), Kontrasocial (d-beat/crust), and some old bands like Rotten To The Core (punkrock), or The Clown (hc punk).. but I can't hold myself to not tell you about  more bands from other cities too, like Grave Dancers (crossover/thrash from Jakarta), Hellowar (crust/black metal from Jakarta), Hantamrata (powerviolence from Kediri), Proletar (mincecore from Jakarta) and many more...

And for the end, what is your favorite horror genre and movie?

- I love most of the horror genre  and it's too hard to mention only one title, so i will write down everything that passes my mind now: I  love The Exorcist; The Birds by Hitchcock; Re-animator and Bride of re-animator; Dawn of the dead (both the original and remake); Basket case; Braindead by Peter Jackson; J-horror like Cure, Ju-on, Kairo and One missed call; Street trash; Nightmare on Elmstreet; Evil dead 1&2; Suspiria and Opera by Dario Argento; Cujo; Hellraiser especially Hellbound; Cemetery man; Creepshow by Romero and Stephen King; Rec; 70's Invasion of the Body Snatchers; and almost all by David Cronenberg. I hate all American remakes of Asian/European movies.

The Strength Inside Photowebzine

The Strength Inside Photowebzine  brings us great photos documenting hardcore scene in Hungary. There are many interesting pics from different hardcore shows in Hungary from 2008 'till now with both Hungarian and other bands. This guy does amazing job capturing bands, crowd and atmosphere in general on a hardcore show and what's the best, he decided to turn it into the webzine...
You should definitely pay attention to this blog, every issue is worth your time for sure!

The Strength Inside

Interview with Michiel Walrave

I've already written something about this amazing artist and singer of The Real Danger and Nothing Done. Now it's time for the interview...

You are designing T shirts, covers, logos, posters, skateboard decks etc. Of all of that, what do you the most enjoy working on?

-Skateboard decks for sure. It's a real challenge to design something that has a lasting impact. I have always been influenced a great deal by old skateboard graphics and I try to design graphics that will be remembered. I enjoy designing posters a lot as well, mostly because of the mixture of illustration and graphic design. Plus, I don't work directly for the bands but for the venues, which makes things a lot easier…I can basically do whatever I want. 

Which mediums do you prefer to use?

-I always start out with a pencil drawing. I then ink it, which sounds fancier than it is, because I use really cheap black pens for my drawings. I then scan the drawing and color it in Photoshop..add lettering, et cetera.

So my stuff starts out analog and then it becomes digital.

 How did you start doing stuff for the bands?

-I guess that started because I was designing shirts for my own band back in the mid 90's…eventually other bands started asking me to design stuff (mainly t-shirts) for them. I think the first shirt I did for No Turning Back really got me a lot of attention because there weren't many people drawing shirt designs like that during that time, but after that it kind of snowballed. A couple years after that I drew a LOT of designs for bands from all over the world.

You designed 3 Mental shirts, tell me something about them. Besides that, did you do anything else for Lockin' Out crew?

-I think Greg emailed me after he saw a flyer I drew for an Amsterdam show with Mental and my old band, Nothing Done. I drew 3 designs, and I guess a lot of people have 1 or 2 of those shirts, seeing how they were sold during their first European tour. It was cool because I loved Mental and they were a band that did something unlike all the other bands back then (even though it's not that long ago)..But yeah, that was fun to do and it got me a lot of attention. Never did anything else for the LO label though.

How would you describe Antistrot to someone who maybe haven't heard of it?

-Antistrot was an art collective from Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Essentially we were a group of painters who made art together - mostly paintings, drawings and murals. We got kind of popular eventually, resulting  in exhibitions all over the world…New York, Miami, Tokyo..all over Europe.

 What's going on with Antistrot at the moment? It's not active anymore, right?

-Antistrot broke up a while ago…it's kind of like the same as when a band breaks up, some members couldn't work together anymore, so the collective fell apart. However, a bunch of us remained friends and we decided to just start again, paint together and have fun. As of now we don't have a new name, but we are working on new paintings for upcoming exhibitions. For most people, the difference between the new group and the old Antistrot won't be that obvious, but we think we took our style of painting to a new level.

You did some amazing designs for skate decks. How did you get involved with that? Do you skate?

-I started skating when I was about 12 years old, and got my first real deck a couple years later..1989..after that I got really into it and I have never really stopped doing it - meaning that I always had a skateboard, even if I went months  without actually skating, haha. I am just a skateboarder, simple as that. In the early 2000's I started actively collecting old, vintage skateboards for the art and the memmories. Right now I have a decent collection.

The old skateboard artists had a really deep impact on me, so my style of drawing always looked a bit like that. So it only made sense that I would try to get into that whole scene, trying to be able to make deck graphics. Through  the collector scene I met some people who asked me to do graphics for them, and I also designed 2 decks (new one will be out in march 2011) for my band, The Real Danger.

 What's going on with The Real Danger and Nothing Done at the moment?

-TRD are out playing shows and writing songs for a 3rd LP..our guitarplayer just got home from a tour with The Apers in the US, so we haven't done too much for a couple months, but we played a show yesterday  and more will follow. Like I said, a new deck will be out soon, so that's pretty cool. Nothing Done played 1 show a couple weeks ago, after not having played for 2,5 years. That band is as good as done, we might play a last show  soon, but nothing's certain yet.

 Can we expect to see The Real Danger somewhere in Southeastern Europe?

-I think so…I'm not sure when we'll do a new tour, but I'm sure we'll make it there eventually!

 And for the end, your favorite Descendents song would be?

-Haha, that's a hard question…I'll probably gor for a later song, and by later I mean from the Enjoy/All era - maybe Clean Sheets or something.

Check out the rest of his work on:
 www.michielwalrave.com

Jacob Bannon

You all know Jacob Bannon  from Converge, Deathwish Inc, Supermachiner and Irons, so there's absolutely no need to bother people with introducing him. Besides all his music projects, he's been doing art and design work for the bands since 1997 on his own or in the name of his art company Atomic! ID.
As Fight! magazine described, Jacob Bannon "is often credited with inventing the so-called skull with wings aesthetic that became so popular in the punk underground and mixed martial arts scenes that today knockoffs are available in stores like Target and Marshalls".

His unique style became truly recognized in the scene after he did legendary Jane Doe cover design for Converge.

Of dozens of album covers which Bannon did, you can see some I find the most interesting here, and for others, visit his website:
www.jacobbannon.com

Tremor

Tremor is an outstanding artist from Indonesia who does artwork for bands and clothing companies. I'll post some more stuff about him soon, along with some interview hopefully. Until then, enjoy couple of works from Tremor and check him out on DeviantArt.

http://tremorizer.deviantart.com/


This is definitely my favorite, the artwork for the split CD of two thrash/powerviolence bands, Bleuaaarrgh!!! from Borneo and HantamRata from Java.

A tribute to ghost stories:

Possessed to skate:

And some other great stuff:

check it out!

lions and cheetahs

you can find some cool hardcore posters and flyers from eighties on this blog and there are some pics from the shows too. interesting.

straight edge artwork

Here are some mostly old artwork of straight edge bands. Of course, there are many more to post, but I chose these which mostly have X'd up fists as the main theme. Enjoy.