Heals Marks Their Official Debut with Spectrum: Layers of Emotion and Distortion
Bandung-based shoegaze unit, Heals which consist of Alyuadi Febryansyah (Vocal, Guitar), Reza Arinal (Vocal, Guitar), Muhammad Ramdhan (Guitar), Octavia Variana (Vocal, Bass), and Adi Reza (Drums) officially released their debut album, Spectrum on April 9th, 2017 by FFWD Records.
Since the release of their single, ‘Wave’ a year ago, Heals has gone through a long creative process and effort to create this album. Five of them spent nights of composing song in a rented house to able to gather and share ideas effectively. In result, some songs were created in the process while some other songs were created during the recording process.
Heals, while admitting they are heavily influenced by bands such as My Bloody Valentine, My Vitriol, and Cocteau Twins, still maintain their unique character in this debut album. Their shoegaze formula incorporated in layers of distortion, melodious and hazy vocals which enable them to produce catchy and experimental songs simultaneously.
Spectrum, generally, is a series of story on human’s fantasies according to each of Heals’ members’ perspective. These perspectives are incorporated into something they refer as a prism. Their friendship and background is what makes the prism real, as they have been friends for years and involved in their extreme music days together. Thus, even though having different perspective, they manage to have similar stance and character. In general, Spectrum is an album full of emotion and personal anxiety.
Track number two, Lunar, for example, depicts an abstract impression upon engaging other person. As for ‘Azure’, the song firmly talks about a guy who lives his life against the masculinity stereotype. Heals also explore the depth of one’s mind in their lyrics, such as ‘Anastasia’ (track 5) which talks about how a person got trapped in his own fantasy, and the single, ‘False Alarm’ (track 7) which talks about how own thought can often scramble one’s mental state.
Responding to the release, Alyuadi, the frontman imagines this album as a pet. “It is as if we were cats being nurtured and sheltered, and now we are ready to break out from our comfort zone. It is a major relief” He said.
