Abstract:

Local death metal group Rudra’s presence and practice has posed prospects and problems for studies concerning musicians who compose, perform and generate forms of extreme metal. Their relative in/significance in written accounts is as revealing as their seventeen-year existence; a revelation of the complexity of the author-functions—South Indian, Hindu, Youth, Singaporean, South Asian and extreme metal musicians—as a consequence of legal, psychological, social, moral and aesthetic layers in operation. Rudra’s lived and living practices resonate with Appadurai’s five -scape articulation of the problems of social reproduction and integration in the face of multiple trajectories of globalization which potentially obfuscate any meaningful contemporary discourse on nationalism. While Appadurai’s -scapes are not constituent of global flows but disjunct trajectories along which im/materiality may be seen to be moving across multiple boundaries, it is the porosity of sounds that permeate these trajectories; soundscapes. Soundscapes emergent from Rudra’s practice (through interviews, privately held material, newspaper articles and local as well as international interviews posted on the group’s website) provide opportunities of negotiating meaning by deep listening and invite an informed perspective of and about their musical practice and their situatedness in Singapore.

Author: Eugene Dairianathan