He goes inside your soul with funeral dreampop keys and his sombre voice singing about love. Ben Rammsier a.k.a. Agura Matra comes from Indonesia and brings colours to your bedroom pop. I was able to ask him about those colours, working a night and the loved ones. Terima kasih, Ben!
ŁŚ: Your dark music is contradicted by lively, saturated colours you use as a part of your image. Is it intentional? Which one is your true nature?
AM: I've always liked psychedelic colours, and there's always many things going on inside my head, some different ideas, just like the many colours I put on the image. But it all always become something dark, sometimes darker than I intended to. So I think my true nature is grey. Dark and grey.
When describing your previous album, “Riverland”, you wrote that this is the kind of music you create when you can’t sleep. Is it the way you work? Is working at night what influenced your funeral dreampop?
The album, it's repetitive pattern is heavily influenced by Burzum. The hypnotic nature that I tried to achieve. How it can exhaust the energy of the listener without making them stop listening, and finally put them to sleep. Before I released it, I always listened to it at night. to see its effect. I mostly work at night or when it's quiet around me.
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| The Cure |
What are your favourite artists that influenced you the most? Are there any Indonesian projects you could recommend to us?
Burzum and The Cure. I like the monotonous hypnotic nature of their music. Especially their early albums. It actually saddened me that I can't recommend any band from my country because I'm too introverted to go out and search for something in my surroundings.
You describe “Die With You”, the album, as funeral dreampop and I find this label extremely fitting. Where did this mix of gothic mood and electronic melodies come from?
The songs from "Die With You" are actually some of the old material I wrote in my younger years. It's a mix of different styles that I attempted to harmonize and I am quite satisfied with the dark and lo-fi sounds on it.
I love the way you have your style but you can make every song unique with its own pace and melody. Is it something you focus on or is the overall atmosphere more important for you?
The overall atmosphere is important to me. Also what's the right way to begin and end the album. It came from old materials over the years so it got mixed styles. Each is different.
“Die With You” is such a beautiful song. How was it created? Was it meant for someone in particular?
It came to my mind after I was thinking of the loved ones. How we always want to be with them, taking care of them until the end of our lives. Rather possessive, really.
Almost forgot about the name of your project. Does it mean anything in Indonesian?
It's an abbreviation of my name, Agung Rama Putra. "Agura" also means meditating, deep thinking. "Matra" is material, the world we live in, our lives. So it can mean to be aware, awaken, always think before do. Well, sort of. At least that's what's came to my mind when I chose the name.
