By Jake von Haken

A while back, I had the wonderful opportunity to sit down and chat with Indonesian indie rock group Reality Club. Hailing from south Jakarta, the band just finished up their very first U.S. tour! The show I attended at Neumos in Seattle was their first stop along the way. I was a newcomer when it came to their music, and I have since become a consistent fan. It’s no simple task to dive into indie rock and create a fresh, unique, and coherent sound in today’s musical sphere. After having the chance to talk to the band, I believe their distinct sound comes from a love of the fun that comes with every part of being in a band together. Performing, recording, or creating music videos, they really have captured the best parts of the music industry. 

The band took what they described as an unexpected approach at their beginning. They did not know each other prior to the formation of the group, and became close through the process of playing with one another. Chia brought up late in the interview that fellow member Faiz is her brother, but that was the extent of prior connections. Over the course of their eight years playing together, membership has gone through some changes. 

Current Reality Club members:

Fathia “Chia” Izzati – Vocals, Keyboards

Nugi Wicaksono – Bass

Era Patigo Rizky – Drums

Faiz Novascotia Saripudin – Vocals, Guitar

The following is the transcript of my interview with Reality Club!

Jake: What notable challenges have you faced together?

Faiz: We switched out the guy who actually formed the band, who is replaced now with Nugi, because the guy got busy with another band. Also the age gap was quite big between us and him, but what other challenges do we have? Oh, I guess the biggest challenge pertaining especially to the North America tour is, we were supposed to play South by Southwest in 2020, and uh, we all know what happened in 2020. As soon as we got news that we got our visa, as we finally felt like we were good, the next morning, we wake up and it’s canceled. God damn it.

Chia: Yeah, that was hard during COVID times because we get our money from gigs. It’s our number one money maker, and obviously in COVID we couldn’t do that anymore. So that was why we had to find ways to still be creative. It was important to have our name out there in the Indonesian music scene at least. That was a major challenge, but we overcame that, and we’re here now in America four years later.

Jake: What separates you from other bands in Jakarta, and how do you individualize yourself in that music scene?

Chia: All our music is in English, and we take great pride in our lyrics. I think that’s what separates us from most Indonesian bands. It’s actually more of a privilege than anything because we used to live abroad. 

Faiz: My father was a diplomat, so we moved around a lot and actually English is my first language, so that’s why when I write in English. It sounds natural to Indonesians and hopefully to everyone here as well. But I guess that was like the differentiating factor whenever we asked around. It’s like one of the key selling points in Indonesia. 

Chia: Which is not really unique here in America, It’s not important. In Jakarta they like that we actually write good English music. Because, other than that, we always want to try to make music that evokes emotion. That’s what we really want to do and that’s what we want our listeners to get out of our music, out of our performance, is that they feel all the feels. 

Jake: Emotions in lyrics, those are very important things! So your last album came out in May of last year, what have you been up to since then? Is this tour going to be performing that album? Is there any new stuff in the works?

Chia: So ever since we released our album, obviously we’ve tried to keep pushing it with music videos; we wanted to make a music video for every song, and we’re almost there, so we’ve been busy doing that but also just playing shows. Easily the best way to get music out there is playing shows. So tonight, what you will hear is mostly the third album, but we’re also bringing back songs from the second and first. For the U.S. tour, we had to get practiced again because we wanted to play songs we never really performed. We had to reflect and try to rehearse old songs that we already forgot about.

Faiz: It’s quite literally a dream come true for us. You know, I think when you form a band anywhere, the dream is to play around the world or play big shows or whatever. We’ve managed to play around the region like Southeast Asia, we played in different countries like Japan as well. So this is like the first time we took a 17 hour flight to play a show, so it’s nice, man. We’re really excited, a real dream come true, and we’re just getting started.

Chia: I must say that for this U.S. tour, we have a different mindset from back at home. We’re used to playing, like, sold out shows and festivals with really big crowds. So, coming to America, we’ve had a different mindset, we don’t really care how many people show up because that doesn’t matter. We’ll happily play in front of two people, we just want to play, we want to rock out!

Nugi: I think what I like about my fellow band members is they’re always very professional and keep giving it their all no matter how low energy or whatever the crowd may be.

Jake: So talking about performances and venues, where did it start? What were you doing?

Chia: The first gig was at a shopping mall. And it’s like, you know those bands that just play in public and nobody knows them? It was a little outdoor area we played and I swear like three people came, and that was our bassist’s friends. 

Nugi: After that we moved on to smaller gigs. I remember the first time we got a paid gig which was hilarious because it was a college event. They hired us, and at first, I was just like, “Wow, they want us to play? Like really?” We played the show and afterwards I’m up there asking them “Did you guys enjoy it? Was there enough people?” I didn’t realize at the time that when you’re a musician you get paid for the attempt. I was really concerned about it, but we got paid like, 250 dollars, and we were so happy. They paid for us, that’s a great feeling for a starting band!

Jake: Can you tell me about the music videos you’ve been working on? How’s the process been?

Chia: You can watch all our music videos on Youtube! We work very hard, especially since the concept for this album is its own cinematic universe (RCCU). We take really great care and attention to that. It’s so fun because every song is different. Every type of music video is also different; for the cowboy song–we have two cowboy songs–called dancing in the breeze alone which was so fun. We shot that in Bali and had to learn how to ride horses, we had to learn musical choreography. We had another one that’s James Bond themed with a fight sequence. It’s all super fun, and we’re all very involved. We love actually making the script and making the storyboard, micromanaging all the little things.

Faiz: There’s a reason why everything’s cinematic, especially for this album. Because the concept of the album is we wanted to showcase all the different shades of romance because everyone has their own love story, man. It’s so unique, everybody has their own issues, their own solutions, their own endings happy or sad, and it’s almost like everyone has their own movie. 

Chia: Every love story deserves its own movie.

Faiz: And every movie deserves its own soundtrack. We wanted to make that soundtrack, so to showcase the different shades of romance, we use different genres on the album. Whatever you do, whoever you are in life, that’s gonna be something that’s around you.