There's this one cool Malaysian band that sparked my interest since I first heard about them several years ago.
My brother was the emcee the other day for the launch of the second album of the band called The Venopian Solitude. My better half and I had seen this band before when they had just launched their first album about 4 years ago. Just what the heck is "Venopian" anyway you might ask? Well, apparently it is a make-believe world created by frontman or to be politically correct, the frontperson of the band, Takahara Suiko. According to an interview, she mentioned that usually 'retreats' to this world of hers whenever she feels stressed out and that is where her creative muscles really get into high gear. Well, the results are very interesting to say the least when you finally get to listen to the band's list of songs.
The Venopian Solitude is listed as an Indie band in most search engine results but I'd like to say that they sound a great deal like a weird mixture between Radiohead and the Plastic Ono Band. Seriously. So how can it be Indie?
Anyhoo, the new album's called Hikayat Gundik Berirama and for those who don't speak the language, it's loosely translated as The Tale of the Melodious Concubine. How about that?
My brother was kind enough to mention to the frontperson that my wife and I are big fans of her music and that we weren't able to attend the launch of their new album this time around. As a token of appreciation she made sure the whole band including herself signed on the album packaging and even dropped a personal message for my wife. Nice. 
What's more important is that the 'deluxe' album packaging gave you the CD recording (obviously), a cool sticker, thank you note and a bunch of individual lyric sheets in the Bahasa, Japanese and English language. I'm just a sucker for cool greeblies that come with the CD itself so yeah, the more the merrier!
Upon hearing the 12 songs for the first time in our car CD player, my wife and I concluded that their music has somewhat become even weirder, which is not a bad thing really. Their songs could be best described as 'weird good'. In essence, they just became more eccentrically better with the brand of music they introduced in their debut album.
The music industry in Malaysia could get really flat and predictable at times so when bands like Venopian Solitude comes along, they provide a breath of fresh air. They don't play your normal straight-up rock music and it takes a little patience at times to really get into the mood of every and each of their songs but you'll eventually get it.
I'm not gonna name any favorites from the album but the first few songs were very interesting to my ears after my initial listening to their new album.
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Anyway, for those curious on how the band sounds like, here's one of my favorite off their 1st album called Mahar, or loosely translated as 'dowry' in English. The first time I heard this I can almost hear Yoko Ono with Radiohead playing along in the background.
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