Uncanny on Covering Sonic Youth Until You Get It Right

Bandung noise-punks Uncanny's latest 5-track EP Ferris Wheel doesn't attempt to expand the band's lo-fi grunge/punk sound. It celebrates it. The EP, released through Cut Your Ears records, sounds like it was recorded in one go—and it probably was.

Uncanny uses the five songs to lock in their now signature sound. The result is a heavy mix that's equal parts Manchester and Seattle driven by noisy power cords, pummeling drums, and lots and lots of shouting.

"If I can describe Ferris Wheel EP, it would be: 20-something, angry, anxious, and in-crisis," said Indra Suhyar, the band's bassist.

The power trio—vocalist-guitarist R.M. "Suryo" Suryokusumo, bassist Suhyar, and drummer Athif Aiman—says they formed the band because they were "dead bored of just being audience members." Surya and Aiman were veterans of their university's online radio show, where bands like Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and Boris were on heavy rotation.

When the two started to write music, they quickly realized they needed a bassist. Suhyar was a classmate and a fellow fan of noisy, raucous indie rock. But he never even held a bass before.

For Surya and Aiman, it didn't matter. The three had "chemistry," and within a matter of months the band had its first single, the stomping "Battle of the Minds." They also had a name, "Uncanny," which was chosen for no other reason than they like the way it sounds.

The result is a band that can't help but show its influences. Not that any of them care.

"I really don't know how to describe our music," Suryo said. "All I know is that we used to cover Boris, Sonic Youth, and Nirvana songs, and we ended up making music similar to them."

That's not to say that Uncanny sounds exactly like those three bands. They owe much of their aggressive tendencies to modern hardcore acts like Metz and Trash Talk. But while many hardcore bands pick a formula and repeat it ad nauseum, Uncanny takes pains to keep things varied.

"It really bugs me when I hear an album that is so good, but all the songs sound identical," Suryo said. "It's good, but it is as if I'm hearing the same song over and over again, just with different lyrics. That's something I avoid when we create music for Uncanny."

Ferris Wheel runs through influences ranging from pre-grunge to hardcore in five songs. It's not a great range, but the band does it well. "Conform" and "Back and Forth" smack of early Sub Pop releases. "Avalanche" sounds like Sonic Youth and the Melvins formed a punk band. And the re-released "Battle of the Minds" channels 70s punk with the ferocity of a hardcore band.

The lyrics skew toward the personal. The band uses its songs as "a medium to speak our mind, hence the personal lyrics. We try to avoid political songs or [lyrics about] capitalism, industrialism or blah, blah, blah—because we don't want to sound pretentious. We'd like to sing about more personal feelings, something that anyone can relate to."

"We wanted to make the EP not just a collection of songs, but also an experience and a story," said Suryo.