Langkah Suruik by Sipaningkah

Sipaningkah creates dense, trance-like compositions that are steeped in the Minangkabau culture of his home province of West Sumatra, Indonesia. Fusing elements of folk and avant- garde noise, his new Chinabot-released record Langkah Suruik calls on ancient musical traditions to create a new world, one that has a teeming, hypnotic energy, rich with textural depth.


Lagkah Suruik, which translates as “step back” in the Minangkabau language, comes from a concept in the Silat Harimau martial arts philosophy. “The Langkah Suruik is the wisest step, choosing to step back and not fight,” says Sipaningkah. “However, I interpret Langkah Suruik as a way to see, search for and relearn the roots of our personal traditions, so that we can then use them in reading the current world situation.”


On Langkah Suruik, the multi-instrumentalist Sipaningkah draws deeply from Minangkabau tradition while forging his own experimental path. It features an instrument he created himself, a “Tasauff” percussion instrument inspired by three traditional Minangkabau musical instruments: the Tasa drum, Talempong gong and Rabab string instrument.


He also plays traditional Minangkabau instruments on Langkah Suruik, including a pupuik soroang, a wind instrument inspired by the sound of elephants, as well as the Canang gong, a serunai flute, and a sampleong pipe. Sipaningkah uses this traditional repertoire in an eclectic and unexpected way, creating pummelling rhythms in non-traditional song structures.

The album is deeply concerned with the contemporary as well as the past. Dantuang, which translates as “boom” or “explosion,” is Sipaningkah’s response to the current situation in Gaza. It opens with a riot of flute sounds before a complex, hammering beat kicks in, insistent and dangerous, roiling the music up into a howl of pain. Folk meats raw noise again on Ranuang, a dirge that builds into a shimmering cataclysm of frenetic energy.


We don’t hear Sipaningkah’s voice until the final two tracks, which exorcise the tension of the rest of the record. Pangkaba, the peaceful album closer, reaches towards dreampop in its wistful loveliness, while remaining true to West Sumatera rhythm and improvisation. This remarkable record paradoxically uses a step back towards tradition to move forwards into new territory, creating something truly fresh and idiosyncratic.

About the “Ranuang” video:

Deep in a pine forest in Batu Ampo, West Sumatra, two teenage girls fight alone in the wilderness. Wearing black and red, the colours of birth and death in the matriarchal Minangkabau tradition, each measures out the precise steps of the Silat martial art, motions that their forebears enacted over centuries. “Silat in Minangkabau is a learning medium for young people to get to know themselves, other people and their culture,” says Sipaningkah.

“Silat implies that the martial artist recognizes the steps as basic things, which can be in a literal sense, even if they are manifested in everyday life as conceptual things. It takes a long process for martial artists to recognize the concepts of life and culture.”

About Sipaningkah:

Aldo Ahmad, a.k.a Sipaningkah, is a improviser, sound artist and instrument builder from Minangkabau, Based in Jakarta. His compositions draw from both Indonesian and Western traditions, producing a wide variety of works including electro-acoustic pieces, sound installations, scores for film, theatre, dance, and multi-disciplinary projects. Aldo studied Percussion at Yogyakarta State University and Music Composition at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts Surakarta. Currently, he is a member of the collective Total Perkusi. He is also the Program Director and Co Founder of Pasamoan Art Initiated, a DIY Platform of Sumatran Sound Artist and Experimental music,  and sits on the board of Kombo Improvisation Lab, a platform supporting improvisation and the spirit of experimentation in music and arts education.

Chinabot is a platform and collective created to change the dialogue surrounding Asian music.

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