Copyleft 2008 Tsefula/Tsefuelha Records and Yes No Wave Music

Under the Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Creative Commons License

Shorthand Phonetics is Ababil Ashari (Vox, Guitars, Bass, Programming)

All Tracks by A. Ashari except track 3 by A. Ashari/V. Listiani

Produced and Mixed by Ababil Ashari

Recorded in The Pink House

Liner Notes From Ababil Ashari

“Fire!” adalah sebuah konsep 39 menit yang berpusat pada sisa-sisa diari milik Hanabishi Hideaki. Diari yang dimaksud sebenarnya adalah sebuah jurnal utuh mengenai tahun kedua Hideaki di Fakultas Kedokteran di Eiroku University. Hanya saja, apartemen di mana Hanabishi tinggal saat itu terbakar dan melalap semuanya, selain piyama yang ia pakai dan beberapa lembar diari tersebut. Api telah membuat sebagian besar diari rusak dan tak dapat dibaca. Sementara banyak bagiannya terbakar menjadi abu, beberapa entri terbaik berhasil diselamatkan tanpa kerusakan apapun. Lagu-lagu yang bertanggal di dalam album ini berasal dari entri-entri tersebut.

English:
“Fire! (I Could Have Died and All I Could Think About Was My Charred Diary)” was the third full-length LP by lo-fi indie rock band Shorthand Phonetics. It was released on the internet in September of 2008. This LP was recorded into and programmed on a Hewlett-Packard Presario V3500 with webcam mic. It was recorded/programmed sporadically between February 2007 and April of 2008. “Fire!” is a thirty-nine minute concept album that revolves around the charred remains of Hanabishi Hideaki’s Diary. This particular diary was supposed to thoroughly document Hanabishi’s second year of med school in Eiroku University. Unfortunately, the apartment complex Hanabishi lived in burned down and took almost everything except the pajamas on his back and these charred pages of his second year diary. The fire left many of the entries obliterated and unreadable. While the majority of the entries were left as ashes, select pages were left relatively undamaged. The dated songs of this album were those entries…

Reviews

Mendengarkan rilisan ini mungkin kita akan masuk dalam dimensi keseharian seseorang yang berbentuk transformasi catatan harian ke sebuah gemuruh eksperimentasi nada-nada yang diciptakan.
Bisa digambarkan rentangan suara synthesizer ataupun riuhnya senar gitar mencitrakan alur cerita dari track awal hingga akhir.
Shorthand Phonetics seperti ingin bercerita sesuatu kepada kita disini. Gelap-terang, emosi keceriaan berbalut keluh kesah.
Keseluruhan kisah aural yang menarik darinya, menarik untuk didengar walau mungkin ada sebuah let down pada kisahnya di track 6 yang terdengar tidak se-dewasa track-track lainnya. Apapun yang terjadi disini hanya Ababil Ashari yang tau.

Almost certainly, as we listen to this release, we will drift into a routine’s dimension which is a transformation of the daily journal with the experimental clamoring sounds composed.
We can literally visualize the composition of synthesizer sound and the sounds of guitar strings, from the first track to the last one, into a single story plot.
Shorthand Phonetics tries to tell us a story. Dark-bright, a combination of joyful atmosphere and complains.
The whole interesting aural story is worth to listen to, although there is some down side in the story, where track 6 is sounded to be less established than the others.
Whatever is going on there, only Ababil knows.
Bagus Jalang

Ababil Ashari, sebagai satu-satunya mahluk hidup dibalik Shorthand Phonetic memanfaatkan kesendiriannya dan memilih untuk bersahabat dengan webcam mic dan bereksplorasi menggunakan PC.
Ia sudah menghasilkan beberapa rilisan, baik saat masih nge-band bersama manusia, maupun setelah merubah konsep prosa menjadi berbagai komposisi lagu.

Di 8 lagu di rilisan berjudul Fire! oleh Yes No Wave ini masing-masing lagu memiliki karakteristik tersendiri, dimulai dari gaya vokal nasal a’la pop-punk-emo, sampai ke teriakan emosional post-hardcore.

Benang merahnya berada pada aransemen Pink Floyd-esque dengan beat yang lebih agresif a’la And You Will Know Us By the Trail Of Dead, dan emosi a’la Hell is For Heroes.

Overall album ini bisa dikatakan brilian, walaupun karakter SP belum begitu menonjol, namun dengan rajin berlatih, konsisten dan terus produktif, Ababil pasti akan memperoleh pengakuan yang jauh lebih besar di kemudian hari.

Tulisan ini hasil mendengarkan rilisan ini setiap hari sepanjang minggu sibuk penuh perjalanan panjang dipertengahan November 2008
Jakarta-Bandung, medio November 2008

Ababil Ashari, the only known living soul behind Shorthand Phonetic, exploits his solitude and prefers to befriend the web cam microphone in exploration of his PC.

He already released several works, both when he was in a band with his fellow humans and recently, after he elaborated the concept of prose into song compositions.

Each of the 8 songs in this album, released under the title “Fire!” by Yes No Wave, has distinct characteristic with vocal varied from the nasal twang of emo-pop-punk to the post-hardcore’s primordial-emotional scream.

What bonds them together is the Pink Floyd-esque arrangement plus more aggressive beats ala And You Will Know Us By the Trail Of Dead meshed with the emotion similar to that of Hell is for Heroes.

To sum up, this album is brilliant. Although Shorthand Phonetic is yet to have its own character, with more practices, and the same level of consistency and productivity, Ababil, no doubt will receive more appreciation in the future.

This writing is a result of listening to this release for a full week long packed with long trips between Jakarta-Bandung in the middle of November 2008.
Jakarta-Bandung, November 2008 
Eric Wiryanata (deathrockstar)