| Aziz Idris |
FRESH from their conquest at Borneo Jazz Talent Show 2018, Brunei’s experimental rock band Perfect Scums announced the release of their third album LUNA, which literally translates to ‘moon’ in Spanish.
The flagship song from the album, Dreaming, has a mixture of funk, R&B and electronic sound already featured and co-produced by Progresif Cellular’s Volume 2 of the ‘Locals Only’ edition.
Perfect Scums does not shy away from experimenting with genres when writing and producing music; back in 2012, the band recorded their first ever album Social A from inside a bathroom due to the ‘acoustics’.
“I guess it gave us hope that if people liked our music despite knowing it came from the toilet, why should we stop?” said the band’s frontman Malai Jazly.
In 2014, the band released Chapter 13 in which the band started experimenting with synthesisers. Their follow-up Long Play (LP) in 2016, Electronic Heartbeats, introduced a heavier contrast in their guitar-synthesisers mix, focussing more on the latter.
“We were completely inspired by 1980s synth-pop (synthesiser pop) bands and experimented with using 80 per cent synthesisers in the entire album. The album itself was met with mixed reviews, some people feeling unsure of the change because this was quite a leap, and probably our ‘poppiest’ album yet,” Malai Jazly said.
“However, we have come to the fact that we can never impress everyone as artistes. We stuck to our guns and continued on to try new things such as LUNA.”
Recording of LUNA began in April last year with some songs that didn’t make it to neither previous albums as it was not “fitting with our ideas” at the time.
According to Malai Jazly, with every album, the band always try to better themselves and pushing the boundaries with what each member can do within their capabilities, both technically and creatively.
He added, “We chose the moon (LUNA) as a symbol of our album theme this time around because of its aesthetic and meaning. The moon can be both peaceful and yet frightening, depending on the context it is in.”
LUNA is now available on all streaming sites such as Deezer, Spotify, Shazam, GooglePlay and iTunes. Fans can also visit the official website at www.perfectscums.com.