Kuntari

The Bandung-based duo Kuntari dismantle traditional centuries-old ceremonial music, reconstructing it into brutal primal-core. Horns shriek death agonies, bamboo flutes groan in pain, field-recorded Indonesian soundscapes flutter and morph into hellish teeth that gnaw your bones. The physical intensity of ritual is channeled through colossal percussion, mangled timbres, and dense layers of distortion, with fragments of Indonesian environments seeping into the compositions, distant animal calls and tropical atmospheres chittering like ghosts. Prepared instruments further deform the acoustic palette, modified guitar, cornet, hulusi and percussion producing strange metallic, breathy and percussive mutations. A deeply communal and evisceratory purging.