Stars and Rabbit
Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Behind the Music
Stars and RabbitWhen Ian offered the opportunity of collaboration on The Outlaw Ocean Music Project, the melding of music and journalism just made sense to me. It makes the artistic process even more interesting.
If you really care about the ocean, Ian’s stories become so important. Five intense years of a dangerous journey, investigating with real-time interviews vividly illustrated, as if you were there, watching the lawless activities human beings are capable of in this watery realm so far from land. It’s horrendous and it’s shocking. And I knew straight away that this was a worthwhile project because it was summoning my role as an artist to do something about these issues and be part of it, be part of keeping these topics exposed for the world to see.
Finding the most suitable chapter to retell…that was definitely challenging because we felt like we had to address them all. Our favorite part was definitely doing our research on Rebecca Gomperts. It took us hours to find any documentaries about her and her projects, before we actually wrote the songs.
As for the audio component, Didit was listening to all the sounds in the sound archive Ian made to get inspired. All the sounds in this project share Ian’s experiences, which will transport you straight away to The Outlaw Ocean no matter where you are at the moment. With music, somehow our soul knows to connect across countries and borders and this kind of bond is one of the most powerful of all.
About Stars and Rabbit
Elda Suryani and Didit Saad have been continuously sharing their journey over the last decade, originating from a cultural city in Central Java, off to write in Dutch cultural towns, savored the legendary music venue in the UK to Iceland’s most exquisite stage, and humbly experienced the traditional Japanese sacred stage. These have broadened their perspectives and senses of making music that really speaks out their distinct personalities. They become more aware of their own evolution and all they want is just to make music borderless. A field of limitless expressions called playground and it always brings them the purest of joy. It's going to be an exciting journey to follow the world they create. Their recent album, On Different Days, expresses their thoughts about creating space for oneself. As the world once stopped and forced people to reconnect with their being, they're taking all that time to redefine everything.