A collection of field notes from Les Village, North Bali recorded during Dinacon Digital Naturalism Conference, 22 June– 23 July 2025 with Sea Communities. It features voices and contributions from Pak Garri Bernal (Sea Communities), Jro Pasek (Les village leader), Bajra Suara Girilestari Desa Les (Rindik group) recorded by Dinoj M. Local divers Gombal (Nyoman Teriada), Gombal’s father known as Kakek (grandfather) and Pak Eka (Made Merta) were interviewed by Tessa Zettel. From Sea Communities we hear from Wira, Pippin (Luh), Putu, Naya, Wilan, Rangga, Komang, Pak Komangwi and Luh in collaboration with Lucinda Dayhew. The song “Bali Ayu” was written and produced by Dinoj M in collaboration with Wira Artawan, using samples from a recording of Bajra Suara Girilestari Desa Les.
Many thanks to all from Dinacon 2025, especially Andy, Lee, Paula, Sid for all the work they put into making it happen. It was like a dream!
Palestinians call for the boycott of Sónar festival
The Barcelona festival has failed to drop all of its complicit partnerships with BDS priority targets pic.twitter.com/rYZ0VtrLrg — PACBI – BDS movement (@PACBI) June 2, 2025
A significant number of artists have signed an open letter and are boycotting the major summer festival due to its associations with KKR, a major investment and equity company with interests in the Israeli military and illegal settlements in Palestine. KKR is a major shareholder in Superstruct, the parent company of numerous major music industry platforms and festivals including: Boiler Room, Field Day, DGTL, Flow Festival among others.
Responding to an article published by Shawn Reynaldo on First Floor and a similar campaign to have UK desi platform Dialled In [Instagram] break its partnership with Boiler Room, I asked Berlin-based journalist, DJ and music industry professional Andra Amber Nikolayi [Instagram] to help me unpack this issue of BDS rising in the clubbing industry and its implications for Berlin, a major clubbing “mecca”.
Already in May 2019 Germany’s parliament passed a motion declaring the BDS movement to be antisemitic and that any indivduals or organisations associated with the movement would be ineligible for funding. This was met with some resistance by its cultural and intellectual sector. Following Hamas’ 7 October operation in 2023 and Israel’s ongoing retaliatory actions, there has been a campaign to Strike Germany, applying BDS tactics to the Bundestag for its commitment to supplying arms and political support for Israel. This affected festivals such as Transmediale and CTM, Berlin Biennale and the city’s legendary Berghain club and was acutely felt after concerns about Israel’s genocidal intentions and Hamas’ possible war crimes were raised in the International Court of Justice, the Hague, January 2024. Then in November 2024 the Bundestag passed resolution adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which has been widely criticised, including by one of its lead authors, Kenneth Stern.
Boiler Room have consulted with PACBI who released a statement approving of their adopting of BDS guidelines and Dialled In also announced their intention to follow suite. It remains to be seen if Boiler Room will still participate in Sónar after PACBI’s recent announcement. Ravers for Palestine [Instagram] are the other authorities on this matter, offering advice to artists and organisations seeking to withdraw from Superstruct owned events and platforms.
Over tea, Amber and I think aloud together and she recalls episodes such as Berlin’s about_blank’s cancelling of the regular Room 4 Resistance [Instagram] club night following this post circa 2019.
We also touch on the “proximity clauses” that major clubs, such as Berghain include in their contracts, preventing artists from performing in the city for periods of time before and after their bookings, affecting their capacity to earn.
We reflect on how clubbing culture has become fungible even as certain festivals and platforms seek to intellectualise and politicise their activities. As a once “underground” scene goes mainstream there is also burgeoning counterculture. In Berlin there has been a proliferation of smaller venues and crews producing events to raise money for Gazans—Amber mentions the upcoming Sad Prompts for Palestine at Panke—but we are still left wondering: “How are artists getting paid?”
Arabian Panther, a French-Lebanese DJ and producer who spoke out about their experience dealing with Berghain early in 2024, prompting many to reconsider their patronage of this clubbing institution.
Anticipating an upcoming trip to Indonesia and Malaysia, this mix features artists from or connected to so-called “South East Asia.” Recorded live at fugitive radio’s safe house in Berlin, it digs into labels including [Bandcamp]: CHINABOT, DIVISI62, Yes No Wave Music, SVBKVLT, Post World Industries and more, conjuring up a kind of fantasy club for a diasporic imagined community.
A bunch of songs exhumed from the hard drives that document novel moments of singing, music, musicking and of course karaoke recorded across numerous projects over the last five years!
08. Clara Nune’s “Canto das Três Raças” , recorded during a rally held in the lead up to the Brazillian Presidential Elections, 29 October 2022, São José do Vale do Rio Preto, while in residence at Residencia São João.
09. Hari Raya at Geylang Serai Market, Singapore (2024)
Dham Dham began as a three day workshop, “Thalaam Riddim Reapers” to introduce free digital music productions tools at DreamSpace Academy during Dinacon 3, 2022. In 2024, it evolved into a 10 day “bootcamp”, Dham Dham Riddim and in June 2025 it will rejoin Dinacon at Sea Communities and Les Village to lead a research Node, “Sonified Plastics”. This episode revisits conversations, field recordings and music made in Batticaloa to tease out some of the ideas and context that gave rise to the “Dham Dham Method”. Featuring the voices of: Dinoj M., Lucinda Dayhew, SajaS, Kishoth Navaretnarajah, Andrew Quitmeyer and Hannen Wolfe. Music is from the Dham Dham Riddim EP (2024) [Bandcamp], alongside recordings made in Batticaloa during Dinacon 3 and Dham Dham Riddim.
As suggested by Kishoth Navaretnarajah, co-founder of DreamSpace Academy, the “Dham Dham Method” is somewhat elusive. It is shaped by the role of music, (digital music) skill-sharing and cultural exchange in “peace-building” post-war, post-genocide Sri Lanka. It is a culture of commoning, making use of free/libre and open source tools and informal processes of collective learning. This was necessary for the circumstances in Batticaloa. Sri Lanka had already declared itself bankrupt by the time Dinacon convened there in July 2022, and was in the midst of a fuel, energy and political crisis, as President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was usurped just days after we arrived. Indeed, I propose that making technology accessible and malleable and developing digital literacy via music is foundational to the Dham Dham Method. It is inherently collaborative, open to differing skill sets and is all for having fun—which is crucial to the learning process. And as Dinoj and SajaS discuss, it promotes reciprocity—once you have learnt something you are encouraged to pass it on.
An important aspect arose from the enthusiasm of participants in Dham Dham Riddim. This might simply be due to making time and space and finding a legitimate reason to pursue people’s passion in making music. This is something that Dinacon co-founder Andy Quitmeyer touched on during a address delivered at DreamSpace, where he expressed his frustrations with academia because it put up so many obstacles to simply pursuing one’s curiousity.
Passion, enthusiasm and curiousity are also ideas that DreamSpace invests in, as it encourages and facilitates a post-war generation to pursue their interests in order to become “change-makers”, empowering themselves and their communities. For DreamSpace and Batticaloa, this is inherently entrepreneurial as there is a need for youth to make an income and local opportunities are slim. So, leveraging the affinity between people who share similar interests is crucial to developing friendships, networks and opportunities, and underscores the Dham Dham Method. “A bunch of weirdos hanging out together” is how Luci phrases it, or as Dinoj M. puts it: “working together to get things done.”
“A Close Listen” is an audio fanzine documenting Rojak Radio Rojak made for SAM Residencies “Out of Office” programme during Singapore Art Week, 17–26 January 2025. It features excerpts from two live broadcasts: “What’s in A Voice?” with Suvani Suri [Instagram] and “Learning Together – Alternative Pedagogy and Art Schools” with Engy Mohsen [Instagram], both supported by Angela Pinto and Seline Teo from SAM Residencies. The centrefold is a sound piece “Do you have in mind someone else, or do you sometimes think of them as yourself” (2024) by Huijun Lu [Instagram].
We were all SAM residents in 2024, but we didn’t all meet, so radio became a third space to connect. Both Suvani and Engy produced “scripts” that were the basis of these live broadcasts, which remain accessible on GoogleDocs. Suvani’s is here and Engy’s is available here. With radio as the stage we uncovered some interesting resonances and overlaps in our interests in sound, voice, pedagogy and ephemeral spaces.
A live mix of selections source from legendary free music label Yes No Wave Music, founded in 2007 by Woto “Wok the Rock” Wibowo in Yogjakarta. It spans genres including punk, metal, mash-ups, club music, electro-acoustic improvisation and folk forms, over one hundred releases. All are free to download at 320Kbps with a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Share Alike license with lossless versions for sale on Bandcamp.
Wok came of age during the collapse of Indonesia’s Soharto regime known as the Reformasi, 1998, and became involved in punk collectives in Yogja, including the activist art group Taring Padi, embedded in an anti-capitalist, share culture. As Wok recalls in an informative interview by artist/curator Aki Onda from 2023:
In Indonesia at that time, underground music scenes such as punk, indie-rock, death metal, industrial music, hip-hop, and electronic music were developing. We learned how to organize these subculture movements with very minimal resources — how to produce albums and release them, organizing gigs, publishing zines, building and expanding networks et cetera. Some of our friends brought zines, books, bootleg tapes, and VHS from abroad, and those were great inspiration.
Senyawa are probably the label’s most well known artists, a collaboration between vocalist Rully Shabara and musician and instrument builder Wukir Suryadi that Wok fostered. Their album Alkisah (2021) was released simultaneously on 44 labels during the Covid pandemic, with each label producing its own formats, arwork and a varied selection of tracks, further pushing the idea of what decentralized music publishing could be. Stems of the album’s songs were made available for remix, encouraging a deeper engagement and further disseminating Senyawa’s music. Another notable release following on from these ideas is Latent Sonorities (2023), an album that brought together artists to work with a collection of Javanese gamelan at Rumah Budaya Indonesia (House of Indonesian Culture), Berlin. They devised ways to best record these courtly instruments to develop a “royalty-free” sample bank with tuning instructions as well as researching and documenting their histories and cultural significance. More than a sum of its parts, “latent sonorities” is method of engaging with sonic heritage and provenance, as discussed in a podcast conversation with Project Leader Morgan Sully from September.
This mix draws from Yes No Wave Music’s back catalogue of electronic and experimental releases and was mixed live with Rekordbox software and a Pioneer DDJ-FLX4 controller. Also a shout out to Lloydfears [Instagram] & Bonebroth from whom I swiped the idea of asking Wok to leave a voice note. Listen to their great mix of “club music based on folk music“ from around the world on Kiosk Radio here.
Tracklist
01. Yennu Ariendra & J “Mo’ong” Santoso Pribadi – “Raja Kirik (Dog King)”
02. Senyawa/Wahono – “Alkisah II (Dalam Dua Bagian)”
03. Gabber Modus Operandi – “Jathilan Titan”
04. TerbujurKaku – “Rekayasa Cinta”
05. Bottlesmoker – “BA ALUK”
06. JFK – “Stabber”
07. Senyawa/Prontaxan – “Kekuasaan”
08. Mother Bank – “Jalan-Jalan”
09. Barakatak – “Musiknya Asyik”
10. Y-DRA – “1.2. Banjir Rob”
11. rEmPiT g0dDe$$ – “HIERARCHY IS NATURE”
12. Lynn Nandar Htoo – “Unlawful”
13. Pisitakun – “10/05/2010”
14. Y-DRA – “No-Brain Dance”
15. Asep Nayak – “Nayaklak Werni Wamena Aworok Haok Nen”
16. rEmPiT g0dDe$$ – “EROTIC RAPTURE”
17. Uma Guma – “Satu Kali Lagi”
18. Raja Kirik – “ACT III. Perangan”
19. Gabber Modus Operandi – “Hey Nafsu”
20. Haingu – “Nahanduka Na Eti Nggu”
This month’s episode is a conversation with Morgan Sully, an artist and organiser based in Berlin. Morgan records and performs music as Memeshift [Bandcamp] and also initiated “Latent Sonorities”, a “transcultural musical proposal” to explore notions of musical heritage, tuning systems and instrument-building among other things. Our conversation was recorded during a live broadcast at Refuge Worldwide Radio, Berlin, Saturday 7 September.
