[AS PUBLISHED IN MALAY MAIL]
IMAGINE poring through your phone and discovering a list of sound files identified only by the date and time you recorded them. Perhaps it is not that difficult to picture if you often record lectures or enjoy storing weird little ideas and saving them as voice memos.
But if you are freewheeling troubadour Azmyl Yunor, those grainy few minutes of soundbites could just make up your next EP. Still writing, still recording, still busking, the 40-year-old is experimenting on his music-making mission, and he is not in it for the money.
“I do it for myself, including playing shows and recording. Busking because it’s what I love and I’m playing to no one in particular — it’s spiritual.
“I stumbled upon this vocation; it wasn’t something I had an ambition about when I was younger. I’m a music fan first.
“That keeps me going. I don’t have this mental state of ‘wanting to move up in this industry’. Rather, I’m an outsider looking in.”
Ampang Park is Azmyl’s 14th album — fourth EP and first digital only — two decades after he made his presence felt in the country’s indie rock quarters.
In 1997, he put out his debut album, Watever on cassette, already going against the compact disc grain, but Ampang Park may be his most unconventional release yet. The five-track collection, comprising songs recorded on his Xiaomi phone, was uploaded to azmyl.bandcamp.com at midnight last week.
“They were demos I found on the smartphone’s recorder that I realised were fully formed songs. They appear on the EP in their original form — warts and all.
“What struck me was the graininess and the rawness of the sound. It harkened back to recording on a basic cassette Walkman like I used to.
“It is barebones, just man and guitar. The EP is not a demo. They are versions I want delivered to the world. They may have different live or recorded permutations in the future but conceptually for this EP, they are what they are.”
The message runs deeper.
Azmyl wants the songs about Ampang Park, the mall to be demolished and replaced by a Mass Rapid Transit station, to represent “places and memories” his listeners hold dear.
He grew up in nearby Jalan Semarak, then Jalan Gurney, and used to watch his family pick up home essentials from the mall. He had been spending a lot of time there lately.
“Everyone has their own ‘Ampang Park’ so to say — a place they have great affinity with that doesn’t exist anymore or soon to be taken out of existence.
“Like Bukit Bintang Girls School where Pavilion Mall now stands. There is absolutely no reference or any marking about what used to be there.
“I feel the mall is symbolic of the city’s lack of physical history and constant de-historicisation. What is a city without its people and memories?”
On top of new releases and recent Peninsular-wide Lima Penjuru tour, Azmyl is still senior lecturer at the School of Arts, Sunway University. He recently took his students to Ampang Park to make a documentary about the building.
“I felt the place is emblematic of the current regression of KL in its quest for development.”
Musically, the songs delve back into Azmyl’s lo-fi roots.
It’s his first release under the genre since 2003’s ends and a move away from his last effort, the 2015 patriotic folk rock album Was Was recorded with Orkes Padu bandmembers.
The sound draws on a distortion, an aesthetic that lends a sense of “intimacy, entering into a private space”.
“The graininess does add a certain layer of authenticity but more importantly a playfulness and immediacy which lacks in so-called professional recordings.”
Lo-fi, the genre and its influences, has been a longtime companion of Azmyl in his musical journey.
“The rawness is also very rock ‘n’ roll and punk rock to me.
“Listen to any early Delta blues or rock ‘n’ roll recordings. They weren’t high fidelity recordings but it made you aware of the songs first and foremost.
“I’m aware the recording may not be to everyone’s liking, but I believe the songs are. Good songs should be able to travel through all ranges of fidelity.”
Still independent, Azmyl can be spotted with his six-string and harmonica at various low-key venues around the Klang Valley.
Having never signed to a major label, he gets his kicks slinging rock and blues, be it onstage to supportive crowds of 20-or-so at Merdekarya or to passers-by at the walkway in Publika.
The performance is pure, and it allows him to release a record every now and then.
“Some friends who are signed to major labels have even told me they wished they had taken my path because of greater artistic freedom.
“Sure you have to hustle around for shows but that only keeps you sharp.”
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