Cotswolds are Windrata Faizal (vocal/guitar), Farras Fauzi (drum), Dwiki “Gruwok” Putra (guitar) and Wing Wisesa (bass). An EP titled as selftitled containing their four songs was officially released in the beginning of March, available for free download from a netlabel channel called Yes/No Wave.
Windrata and friends said that they were first introduced to Yes/No Wave by one of their friends, who also happened to be a vocalist from a cult band in Surabaya. Even though they have showed their commitment and potentials through their EP release, but initially the thought of properly releasing an EP didn’t even cross their minds.
“We actually weren’t planning to make an EP, we just wanted to record one of our songs. But, well I guess while we were at it, might as well recorded all of our songs indeed,” Gruwok a.k.a. Diki said in our interview with Praoto in a café in the center of Surabaya.
“And that was really sudden and unanticipated. Because Farras had to go back to Bandung for his college. Rather than waiting for another six months for the recording, we recklessly recorded them all,” Faizal, also known as Tedy, added. The interview at that time was practically without the presence of their drummer, Farras, who currently lived in Bandung.
“Moreover, we had only played once and it was just a private gig [laughs],” said Gruwok, further confirming that this band wasn’t too concerned about industry in the beginning.
Asked more about the name of Cotswolds itself, Sesa said that the name was discovered by an accident through the almighty, omniscient search enginge, Google. After doing some searches on Google, they found out that Cotswolds is one of the touris places in the United Kingdom, a barren cottage. “And the name itself feels very appropiate with our concept too.”
In their song-making process, Cotswolds admitted that they were influenced by post punk bands that were released by two labels during the indiepop movement era between 70’s and 80’s, Sarah Record (England) and Postcard Record (Scotland). “So Cotswolds presents songs with dark atmosphere, but not too galau (anxious) too,” said Gruwok.
There were no special messages that they wanted to deliver in their music. Cotswolds lyrics were written without specific meanings, they were abstract, and adjusted with the atmosphere of their songs. Like the single “Plasticity” which tells the story of them when they consumed some mushrooms.
This band initially was formed as an unintended aftereffect of a football game in Play Station console titled “FIFA 2012”. But they said that that they wanted to develop their musical concept in future.
”We already have some ideas for our next projects. We would remain within the path of shoegaze, but in a more consistent way. From our last EP, we detected lack of synchronicity—many said that our genre was post-punk, shoegaze, and some of them even said that we played “post-rock. So, from these, we wanted to develop our concept,” told Gruwok
“We have a lot of offers to perform too. Unfortunately many of them come from other cities—even other countries have made us some offers. But, we think that we have to show our existence first in our city, so that when we perform in other cities we don’t end in smokes,” so they stated their hopes for their next shows.
“A virtual band, really, that’s what we are. Rare physical appearance in real live music gigs. We would be like Gorillaz. Our personal presence would never be seen [laughs],” Gruwok joked. (abr/zaq)
English translation by Atthur Razaki, vocal at Taman Nada.
This album uses a Creative Commons license BY-NC-SA. You are free to download, process and re-distribute it, as long as you give attribution to the original source of this material, do not use it for commercial purposes, and must use the same license. Download from YES NO WAVE MUSIC.
This article was first published in Praotozine, Surabaya’s DIY Music Zine
Translated into English for Ayorek.org by Atthur Razaki from Taman Nada.
Photo: Last.fm Cotswolds
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