Envisaged (2022)
13th full-length studio album

Release Dates

Kekal, July 15, 2022 (digital)
Elevation Records, July 15, 2022 (CD)
Elevation Records, July 15, 2022 (Cassette)

Track Listing

1. Anthropos Rising
2. Born Anew
3. The Alchemy Of Creation
4. The Ascending Collective
5. Conduit Of Light
6. Anarchy In The New Earth
7. Summer Harvest
8. Zero Point
9. Destiny Recalibration

Total Running Time: 51:43

Album Description

“Envisaged” is an album that was specifically created to celebrate The Great Awakening of humanity and Earth's Ascension to the higher octave of vibrational frequency. All the songs were written during the recording process, to capture the spontaneous moments of insights within each and every passage of creation. The music and lyrics represent a creative spiritual journey following continuous revelations regarding the current events on Earth that have been unfolding especially in the past few years. If observed and put together in a continuum, they signify the process of global collective awakening and purification towards humanity's grand destiny: to transcend the matrix and rise beyond the construct of duality.

Stylistically, this album follows Kekal's faithful tradition by utilizing avant-garde and alternative approach to various expressions of rock, metal and electronic music.

Release Note

CD version is a limited-edition Digipak. Cassette version is a limited-edition as well. Both released by Elevation Records. Digital download can be chosen in either high-bitrate mp3 or other audio formats (lossless FLAC and ALAC available) that can be purchased through Bandcamp. See section below for purchasing information.

Credits

Produced by Jeff Arwadi for Kekal
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Jeff Arwadi at Ideation Station
Cover artwork by Soundmind Graphics
Photography by Jeff Arwadi and SCA

Since 2009, Kekal has no official band members.

Digital Album - Download + Streaming

Direct from Kekal @ Bandcamp.
Lossless formats (FLAC, ALAC) or high-bitrate mp3 available for audio download, plus streaming from Bandcamp app. Download comes with a 13-page digital booklet in PDF format.

Other digital music stores + online streaming sites:
Spotify, Apple Music/iTunes, YouTube, Amazon Music, Deezer, Shazam, etc...

Physical Album - Limited-edition Digipak CD and Cassette Tape

The CD is factory-pressed and comes with an 8-page saddle-stitched booklet inserted into a matte-black pocketed Digipak sleeve with copper foil hot-stamp. To purchase the album, email the record label at info@elevationgroup.co with your mailing address (incl. country) for CD or Cassette price + shipping cost. They accept PayPal for international orders. You can also order the CD or Cassette online at Grimloc Store based in Indonesia. If you live in Indonesia, you can also purchase the CD or Cassette through Tokopedia e-Commerce for easy and secure online transaction (Indonesian resident only).

Free Download Envisaged

If for some reason you are unable to pay for the album, no need to look for it elsewhere. Free download codes for this album are available from Bandcamp.
Email kekalband@gmail.com and ask for your free download code.

Recalibrating Destiny

This is behind-the-lyrics written discourse of the new KEKAL album Envisaged, written by Jeff. An e-Book document with over 120 pages in mobile-friendly PDF format. Visit www.kekal.org/recalibrating-destiny to download. You can also read online if using a desktop browser. If using mobile, it prompts you to download the file.

Q: Congratulations on the new album! May I know your opinion about "Envisaged" from your own perspective? Do you feel satisfied with the music, or is there anything else you think that could make this album to be even "better"?

Jeff: Thank you. Well, I did not want to look back after the album was considered final. But it did take a few months to mix it properly, and to be honest with you, it gave me quite a headache mixing these songs as I went back and forth to tweak them. The reason is because it was recorded at the same time it was written, in that case many of the base tracks like rhythm guitars, synthesizers and drums could not be finalized until everything was ready for mixing. Those tracks were recorded dry and I had to create the right tones during mixing because every song required a slightly different character and sound to bring its atmosphere up. I could not just use the same sound setup as a template like most of metal bands. This has always been the case for Kekal, each song has to be treated differently and with love. The album was recorded in my apartment with a very minimal DAW setup and almost no external hardware effects. You can't really expect the output as you would record it in a multi-million dollar studios.

Q: Kekal has been called as the purveyor of weirdness, that's enough to "scare" many people off especially metal fans who don't appreciate differences and individuality. Do you feel that way when writing music, like people would see it as weird? What makes you think one element has to be like this and the other like that, and how does your metal and electronic music influences have anything to do with composing the music that mostly blending these two genres together?

No, I don't feel my music as weird. The world is actually more weird to me, with clueless people following each other blindly, and submitting themselves to authority without questioning. I don't listen much to metal music nowadays. I don't even know what metal is if you asked me, I mean what is considered as metal and what is not. I really have no idea. I have lost reference to anything that's accepted within metal including how the music is produced. My approach of songwriting and production is more common within the electronic and hip-hop genres, which the music is being composed at the same time as the recording process, section to section. I used a method of cut and paste to make it easier, because most of the times everything was recorded only in one or two takes, all improvised without any prior rehearsal, including many of the rhythm guitar and vocal tracks. You can actually notice the exact copy when these elements are repeated in a song, but there are never more than two times of repeat. I personally have a love for the sound of analog synthesizers and old Roland drum machines, although I no longer own any of those now since switching completely to digital soft-synths for space efficiency and cost reductions. But I still want to incorporate the unique sounds of these analog instruments, that's why you still can hear those "80s sounds" although they are just the digital representations or samples. Right now, there are many digital soft-synths out there that can emulate the analog synthesizers quite nicely, even symphony orchestra and full choirs.

Q: People seem to questioning the roots of Kekal's music. Before you started to embrace the electronic, reggae/dub and ambient elements, the music of Kekal in the beginning seemed to carry both metal and punk elements. What kind of music you listened to growing up?

My very first introduction of the so-called metal music was in 1984 when I was still a young kid. I remember buying a bootleg cassette mixtape (this was common in Indonesia back in the 70s and 80s) because I wanted to know more about the heavier side of rock music. That mixtape had about 14 or so hard rock and metal bands, one song each band, but it was Iron Maiden with the song "2 Minutes to Midnight" that blew me away! That song was the heaviest and carrying the most energy out of the entire mixtape, and I became a fan of both the band and metal music after that. I skipped all the hair and glam bands in the 80s because I just wanted to explore heavier and more energetic side of hard music, whether it’s metal or punk. But I did not leave the melodic side of music either. In parallel, I also dig music from Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, A-ha, Pet Shop Boys, stuff like that. I personally felt more inclined to their music than the glam rock and hard rock of the 80s. My introduction to electronic music was from those bands as opposed to pure electronic music like Kraftwerk or Skinny Puppy, so it was natural that the electronic music adoption to Kekal always carry the pop sensibility to it, and also groove.

Q: It seems that your appearance at the moment is more inclined towards variation, electronic, experimental rock and clean vocals compared to your early material. Are you tired of being a raw black metal look?

Jeff: Well, we simply grow up as musicians. Kekal began to explore many other territories from our 3rd album in the year 2001, so it has been over 20 years already that we keep redefining ourselves through constant explorations. Everything is natural, never forced, and it wasn't that we were tired playing extreme metal, whether it's black metal or anything else, but because music is music. Music has already existed thousands of years before metal as a genre was invented through explorations, and the music keeps growing and evolving through further and further explorations. I feel that Kekal evolves through a natural process of finding ourselves, discovering and rediscovering the core within our music, the reason why we write and play music. And we also have a philosophy that moving forward is the only way life can be experienced wholly. When we express ourselves through music, the music has to reflect what is within us, otherwise it's just a fake expression or a gimmick. The most essential thing is how we play, as opposed to what we play.

Q: What would you like to try out in the future? Is there anything you haven’t done yet?

Good question. I really don't know, and to be honest with you, I don't want to think about getting or achieving something in the first place. The most important thing is to keep moving forward with what we have right now, being content with yourself in the present moment. Music is part of life and it is an expression of our inner-selves, so it doesn't really matter how and where we go, the band would always be following its music. We haven't done many things of course, even after 27 years and 13 albums now, but still, looking back, we've also done many things that we didn't even realize we could have done in the past, such as touring Europe as an example. But after we did it, we didn't feel like we've "achieved" something, even though as an Indonesian band we were the first one touring Europe back in 2004. It was our music that led us to get there. This is the same music that makes Kekal to become what we are right now, because we always play music authentically. Even though as a band we're not commercially successful at all and still remain in the underground so to speak, how many small bands are able to release 13 albums in 27 years? Not that many. Many bands would just break up or dissolve after 4 or 5 albums that weren't "successful" enough, even less than that, because their motivation was based upon external factors, you know, that "make it or break it" mentality. For us, the key is to just keep going because it's the music that drives the band, not the external factors. It doesn't matter where we go next, but when we believe our music is an honest expression, everything else is secondary. Honest music transforms us the musicians behind it, and it also transforms those who listen to it. Personally, music has helped me to grow spiritually as a human being. I get goosebumps when thinking about this.

Q: You are a writer, composer and producer yourself, I think you have managed to divide your schedule as well as possible. So, how do you organize your daily routine as an artist?

Right now because everything is done inside my home, I don't have any difficulties in finding the right time because the moment has always been there. Everytime I have spare time and am not being too tired, I would just sit down and type lyrics or even record some stuff on the computer. My laptop has always been plugged-in to the audio interface and MIDI controller. When I worked with other contributors we just swapped audio files back and forth and wrote and recorded music that way. In the earlier days, it was a different story. It was hard to find the time to meet together to write the music and rehearse, so we made some compromise in how we wrote the material as opposed to keep writing music as a band through jamming. But those days have gone since over 15 years ago. The most important thing is to avoid overwork. Overworking will not make any music sound good, and when you are tired and hungry you would lose temper often, and that would negatively affect the energy of the music.

Q: Musically, classifying you in a certain genre is difficult to say the least, how would you describe your favorites? Where would you rank?

Jeff: I no longer see music as divided in genres and styles. The focus has always been to deliver honest and authentic expressions through the language of music, and then have them recorded so that people will have their own share of listening experience. I listen to all kinds of music, and my preferences are not based on music styles or genres, but based on the music that resonates with me at any given time, no matter what music styles or genres they fall into. My personal favourite albums also differ from time to time, depending on which stage of life I’ve been walking. Life is a journey, and music is a good and reliable accompaniment to that journey. So it can’t be stagnant or staying the same. Experiencing the music is pretty much the same as experiencing life itself from the third-person perspective, because honest music mirrors life’s experiences.

Q: There are some elements of Indonesian music in your music. Who would you consider your influences when creating?

I think if there’s any, they are not intentional. There are many ethnic groups in Indonesia who have their own distinct cultures and that would include music and dance, aside from food, clothing, architecture, and other traditions. I happen to carry a Balinese blood from my grandmother’s side, and many ethnic Balinese people seem to have a tendency towards artistic and spiritual practices. They put art and spirituality into a unified expression so to speak, whether it’s music, dance, painting, etc. If you’ve been to the island of Bali you would probably notice the obvious. Whether or not this has affected me, I don’t know, but I feel that my music has always been connected to my artistic expression as well as spirituality, although I never feel that it is intentional in terms of trying to connect to one of my ancestral roots. I don’t actually listen to any Indonesian ethnic music in particular. I have no interest in doing that. If there’s any “influence”, most likely because it’s tied to my DNA more than from a conscious external programming. DNA is a data that can be passed-on from the ancestral lineage and it can also be re-programmed through external social conditioning.

Q: You've identified in the past as Christian anarchists, is there a political-religious overtone here, or how would you describe it today as a statement?

My personal take on anarchism is more into the philosophical way of seeing humanity in terms of its relations to the entire living beings. We are all One and connected to each other in the equal sense, and therefore there is no need for the establishment of authority. We don’t need Kings and Queens, they are fake self-proclaimed authorities. Humans are inherently capable of self-managing themselves, and taking care of each other as part of the whole unit. This has roots in the spiritual realizations that we are part of the greater whole, the All or Universe, and we are part of the Source which most people call as God. Any authority is based on power and the lust for control, and all of those have roots from fear and the illusion of separation as the results of ignorance to the essence of life itself. The original practice of Christianity in its early years (before being taken over by the Roman Empire who made it into religion) was quite close to what we know today as Anarcho-collectivism, in which they established communes and then lived within these communes with no authority figures such as a Priest or a Pope, no hierarchy of masters and slaves between them, no private property, and they even shared wealth between them equally. Both religion and politics are by-products from the establishments of authority, so they are actually irrelevant to the core philosophy of anarchism which has already existed long before even the term “anarchy” was created.

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