WE’RE JUST GIRLS. WITH A MOBILE.

Some people believe that the true value of music lies in the music itself, not on how deluxe people might want to listen to the sound quality.  Music still could be delivered even with low quality recording.

With his love of cracking little noise sounds, Eric Wirjanata from the independent music web magazine, Deathrockstar, has traveled around cyber space to find this kind of female singers -songwriters – who record their performance using a simple voice recorder on their mobiles.  After a year, he finally manages to gather six of the finest ones.

He then produced it into a compilation: DRS Sampler Vol.2.

DRS Sampler Vol 2 cover artwork

The Wishpy Hummer opens the tracklist with “My Love”.  Her introduction verses are makes me immediately choke.  With an acoustic guitar and her thick British accent, Joan Lumanauw sings, “My love is a plagiarism.”  Joan, the girl behind The Wishpy Hummer shows what this compilation is all about: great music in lo-fi.

“Jane and The Rain” is a happy ballad from Syarlothsita, a mysterious girl behind a cartoon character.  Without diminishing the “simplicity” in terms of music recording, her indie-pop music is presented in better quality.  It’s a sing along tune with xylophone, tambourine, flute and other instruments that you would think any 60′s hippies would dance into.

There’s also Panda Beach with a sorrow-driven song, “Deeper”.  It’s a little bit boring, but I bet the darkness of this song would never fail to be your brokenheart-buddy.  Its short duration would likely make you press that “play again” button, if you are that gloom.

In courtesy of Little Fish Record, Frau joined the compilation with “Mesin Penenun Hujan” and being the only artist with an Indonesian lyric.  Leilani (a girl) and Oskar (a piano), has been a topic in some conversations among local indie-enthusiasts.  This is probably her (and the piano’s) early demo which tells Vierra to give up those Disney thingy and stick with their emo-teen pop instead.

Emersil tells a story about “Mary Thompson”, which sounds like an acoustic version of hard-beat original.  The good thing is, that hard-beat is still there.  Not much musicians sing with power like this in acoustic version.

Last but not least is “You Said” from Windyasari, guitarist of garage rock act, Jack and Four Men.  The most interesting part of her song is her long introduction speech.

Taken from her youtube entry, this last track has put in compilation “As Is”.  Eric Wirjanata later describes that he would prefer that way and stand his artistic view as a producer.  Worry not, because you would release a long relieving breath when you finally listen to the song and get teased by Windya’s impersonation of Bob Dylan when she sings, “Come and seeiiihh…”.

The verdict, this is a great compilation.  It shows what the true music is.  You would still enjoy the music even though it’s recorded in low quality.  If you feel a little burned with all those premium sounds you’ve heard before, try to download this (it’s free. yay!) and listen to these girls by mobile.

You’ll see the other side of the world.  And thanks Eric Wirjanata for that.

Download DRS Sampler Vol. 2