Picture by Azrul Zainal
Written by Aida Rashid
Hailing from Cyberjaya or what they’d call as a ghost town, Youth Portal are Ikram Hakim, Zaki Aryoseno, Asyraf Zamli, Aimaan Syamim and Ysfin Tazky — your quintessential boys next door who survive through the post-Strokes era as they make shoegaze pop music cool again.
More importantly however, is who are these guys? It’s always intriguing to delve into the identity that’s synonymous to a particular artwork. “Well it all started out in university. Ikram and Zaki met each other in the bus on the way to class, and they got along well instantly because of their tastes in music (this sparked the whole jam thing). They eventually met up with Ash at orientation, who later joined the group to help with the recordings. Aimaan (myself, a fellow first-year) met both Ikram and Zaki in the lift of our apartment complex, we got along and started hanging out with each other. I joined the band to lepak with them and since Ash was my classmate it felt natural to stay and just eff around,” laments Aimaan.
“Our first drummer, Ridho, was the last to join until he left after graduation. Tazky, joined in as permanent replacement in 2017. He was Zaki’s futsal friend. Aside from Tazky, the band was formed within 2-3 months of us meeting each other. We did it simply because we wanted to do something aside from just studying. Cyberjaya gets pretty boring after a while. We wouldn’t have met each other if it weren’t for the place simply because we came from different backgrounds and different cities. Even Tazky is an MMU student, so YP is definitely made here. So essentially, Youth Portal came about because we wanted to get something more than what we already have, to try something new and create things based on our experience, together . Or less pretentiously, we’re just 5 friends doing this out of boredom.”
Butter Breakfast EP
With the rise of bedroom indie pop, Youth Portal not only benefited from releasing ‘Butter Breakfast’ — their debut single last year, but also contributed to the increase of the scene’s listener demographic. We can see their self-titled EP as an expansion of Butter Breakfast — what we could see now is merely the surface of what’s down under. It is a portrayal of adolescence in yellow and pink, with a tinge of blue signifying a bit of melancholy. It is a minimalist interpretation of scattered teen angst and pure love; accompanied with strong reverb in the instrumentation and fuzzy vocals.
Picture by Karlrul Shaqif
It isn’t really a big surprise that the EP brings you back to the early days of Beach Fossils with ‘What A Pleasure’ and Craft Spells with ‘Idle Labor’ — records that encapsulate the ideals of high quality lo-Fi music, as these guys are avid listeners of bands from Captured Tracks — the independent record label that houses the likes of Wild Nothing and DIIV. The band is also heavily influenced by 80s dream pop/shoegaze bands such as MBV, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Joy Division and The Smiths. “We try to bring that lo-fi dreamy feel to our songs and translate it with our own way.”
When asked about how the EP came about and the journey they took in finishing it, it wasn’t all candy floss. “Most of these songs started out as demos back in 2015, but as for the context of the EP, there were a lot of false starts on our part. We didn’t really start the recording on these songs till late 2016 when we were readying up to release Butter Breakfast as single. So from that moment to until we have finished the production, it took about two years. The struggles with finishing the EP stems a lot on the fact that we are not doing music full time. The thing with being a 5-piece outfit, we have to accommodate to each other’s time and schedule, since some of us are studying and some of us have jobs. That definitely affected our progress in some way, but with that being said it also helped us a lot in fleshing those songs out better.” There’s always a silver lining in everything — despite taking a long time completing the EP, the band still managed to pull through amid dealing with differing schedules and not being full-time musicians.
Picture by Karlrul Shaqif
The writing process is one of the prominent elements to the production of an EP, and different bands have a different approach to it. “For the writing process, it starts from Zaki’s bedroom with guitar lines by him and lyrics by Ikram through random jams. They would write these song structures and bring it to the rest of the band so we can try it out during jamming sessions. Most of these songs are pretty old, so it does go through some changes throughout the years, and that happens in those sessions. Of course there are some exceptions to the rule, some ideas are started by other members, Draft for example, was fully composed by Ash, with Ikram providing the lyrics.” A creative process is often times based on an accumulation of ideas from years back, and the diversity of the result essentially comes from that very fact. Everyone in the band is essentially involved in the making of the EP, “Ultimately everyone has a hand in completing these ideas — with Tazky adding his drumming style and Aimaan, the occasional lyrics writing. Ikram and Zaki do most of the arrangement, Ikram does a lot of the rhythm guitar/keyboard parts as well.. and Ash is the band’s in-house recording engineer.”
The 8-song EP with an Outro track is suited for a drive to catch the sunset by the beach, or just to become the soundtrack of your life that’s on constant survival-mode. It brings the calming effect that we all need — in this world that expects too much of us. Starting off strong with ‘Turning Point’, ‘Draft’ is a romantic plea towards one’s lover ‘I wanna draw your attention away, I wanna make you feel better today’. ‘Loop’ features a memorable bass line, with backing vocals that adds onto the gloomy ambience. ‘Film Song’ is the classic shoegaze track of the EP, one that could also be reimagined as a vintage short film shot with a Super 8. The same can be said for ‘Floss Candy’, they’re both made to be a time-travelling vessel that brings you someplace else. ‘Butter Breakfast’ remains the simplest yet strongest song on the record, a crowd-pleaser, to be exact. Outro, the hidden track that features breathy vocals by Sofi Zamri, marks the perfect end to the whole affair.
Youth Portal EP is raw, consistent and true to it’s genre. It is easy to get into, especially with the current celebration of bedroom cum shoegaze pop music. Crafted based on the accumulation of nostalgia and different personalities yet still manage to be consistent and seamless — it is a record worth delving into headfirst. As a debut release, it generally puts of a great impression and we are excited to see what’s left in store for the independent music scene from Youth Portal.
