{"id":100043292,"date":"2025-07-04T23:19:49","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T23:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/?p=100043292"},"modified":"2025-07-04T23:19:51","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T23:19:51","slug":"no-gods-in-the-soundcheck-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/?p=100043292","title":{"rendered":"NO GODS IN THE SOUNDCHECK ROOM"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cTrack 07\u201d Wasn\u2019t Even Supposed to Exist<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was something off about the way the feedback screamed that night\u2014too high, too clean, like it knew something it shouldn\u2019t. It was just another lousy gig, another Wednesday with sticky mic cords and speakers that buzzed like flies. But when I hit that third chord, the one we always faked because Gendy never learned the real progression, the whole room… paused. Not stopped. Not dead. Paused<\/strong>. Like reality skipped half a frame, and nobody noticed except me and this girl with cracked glasses sitting cross-legged on the floor, chewing on her hoodie sleeve. Her eyes got wide\u2014anime wide. She mouthed something. I think it was \u201cdon\u2019t stop.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back then we were called Kremes<\/em>. Don\u2019t laugh. We were barely seventeen, hopped up on Aqua botol and cheap dreams. We recorded songs in Rian\u2019s dad\u2019s garage, surrounded by broken helmets and one angry cat. Punk was already dead in Jakarta, they said, but Malang still had this flicker\u2014these late-night shows behind warungs, rusted amps from the \u201890s, unwashed black tees that said Gugur Sebelum Bermain<\/strong>. We weren\u2019t good. We weren\u2019t trying to be. We just wanted to be loud enough that no one could hear our families falling apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We didn\u2019t even name that track. \u201cTrack 07\u201d<\/strong> was just what it said on Rian\u2019s MP3 burner when we dumped the raw audio into a folder labeled Stuff<\/em>. But somehow, that<\/strong> was the one that stuck. The one people passed around at warnets and printed on blank discs with permanent marker. The one that, if you listened on old wired headphones\u2014only wired<\/em>, and only if one side was already broken\u2014it did something to your brain. People said weird things. Like how the high-pitched feedback opened up memories that weren\u2019t theirs. Or how they felt like they knew the ending to a movie they hadn\u2019t watched. Or how they couldn\u2019t sleep without dreaming of a looping bassline in a city full of red lights and cables in the sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of it made sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t believe it either until Bagas, our old bassist, called me from Blitar two years later, voice trembling like a fever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBro, I think this song\u2014it\u2019s inside me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said he couldn\u2019t play bass anymore. Not just physically, like his hands shook or whatever, but emotionally<\/strong>. Every time he plucked a string, he said he felt like he was copying someone else\u2019s life. He didn\u2019t even remember writing half the riffs from that night. When I reminded him of the girl with glasses, he went quiet for a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe bit her tongue, man. During the last chorus. There was blood. I saw it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thing is, I thought the gig had maybe thirty people, tops. Bagas swore there were at least eighty, spilling into the parking lot, climbing up onto the AC units just to listen. I checked the flyers. Checked the photos. He was wrong. But then again\u2026 he wasn\u2019t the only one who remembered more than what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enter Kila.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She found me on Instagram in 2023. Messaged me three times before I replied. Her profile pic was a CRT TV with a smiley face drawn in ash. Her first message said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t know me. But I found a broken CD with your song. And I\u2019ve been hearing… things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She lived in Surabaya. Age 14. Claimed she rebuilt the entire track from a scratched disc she found in her older cousin\u2019s drawer, using a busted Acer laptop, a cassette recorder, and headphones she wrapped in tin foil. Said it was for \u201cbetter signal clarity.\u201d I wanted to ignore her. I should\u2019ve ignored her. But the curiosity\u2014that old itch<\/strong>\u2014it came back. The same one I had when we first screamed into cheap mics and thought maybe, maybe the sound could tear something open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I asked her to send me the track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She refused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, she sent me a diagram. Hand-drawn, scanned in black and white. Looked like a map, but not of any real place. There were circles with labels like \u201cSONIK_PARA\u201d<\/em>, \u201cFEEDWAY_NORTH\u201d<\/em>, and one that just said \u201cMemory Loop 03B: Me\/Ayo\u201d<\/em>. In the center: Track 07<\/strong>\u2014underlined, circled, and stabbed through with what looked like a guitar pick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I called Bagas again. Told him everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said Kila wasn\u2019t the first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in 2016, a zine had started floating around in some university art circles. It had no name, no publisher. Just 48 pages of rambling notes, handwritten lyrics, distorted photos of what looked like our old gigs, and a recurring phrase scratched in ink:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is no god in the soundcheck room. Only ghosts.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bagas said a friend at ITB told him the zine was banned after someone tried translating it into Javanese and passed out mid-sentence. That someone went deaf for two days. That someone else started speaking in reverse. I laughed. I wanted<\/strong> to laugh. But deep down I felt it too. Like maybe that night\u2014that sound\u2014that stupid, broken song we made when we were dumb and angry and high on nothing but dreams\u2014had punched through something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a theory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kila calls it \u201cresonant parasitic pattern memory.\u201d<\/strong> She says music\u2014real<\/strong>, raw<\/strong>, unprocessed analog sound<\/strong>\u2014can carry emotional data that embeds itself in the listener\u2019s subconscious. Not lyrics. Not melody. Not rhythm. But something deeper. She says \u201cTrack 07\u201d accidentally embedded a corrupted neural imprint<\/strong>, like a psychic scar. And that anyone who listens to it long enough\u2026 starts syncing with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever that means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She thinks we captured something. Not created it. Not wrote it. Captured.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She thinks the feedback\u2014those four seconds at the start\u2014are not just sound, but a tear. A hole in the way things are supposed to work. She says there\u2019s a voice in that hiss if you slow it down to 0.3x speed and run it through a reel-to-reel tape player. I told her she\u2019s losing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then she sent me an audio file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t open it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I can hear it sometimes, even now. Even without clicking play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wish I could tell you this is just a story about music. About youth. About nostalgia and broken dreams and how our dumb little songs can mean too much when we\u2019re too young to know better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something happened. Is happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two weeks ago, I heard from Jefri\u2014the guy who used to record our gigs on his Nokia and upload it to Multiply. He\u2019s in Yogya now, teaching music to blind kids. He messaged me out of the blue:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHey. Track 07 just played on a broken radio in my classroom. The radio wasn\u2019t plugged in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t know what to say. So I just replied:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid the kids hear it too?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His answer:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey knew the lyrics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I called Rian. We hadn\u2019t spoken in years. He moved to Bali. Does real estate now. Married. Two kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I asked him if he remembered \u201cTrack 07.\u201d
He paused. Too long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he whispered:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe never owned that song.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I see your suspicion forming. This is all superstition. Grunge-fried brains. Nostalgia soaked in tinfoil conspiracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But let me ask you this\u2014when was the last time you felt<\/em> something when a song played? Like actually felt it? Like your bones ached with the sound, like the air went thick, like you didn\u2019t know whether to cry or scream or just run into the nearest wall?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because that\u2019s what real<\/em> music used to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before algorithms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before auto-tune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before lossless turned into soulless<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You Can\u2019t Unhear What You Unwrote<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kila vanished for three days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t mean she ghosted. I mean her account was wiped, photos gone, messages unsent. Her number disconnected. The last thing she sent me was a voice note. I still have it, but I don\u2019t listen to it anymore. Not since that night the power went out halfway through and my phone wouldn\u2019t turn off even after I pulled the battery. The voice note was 7 minutes, 07 seconds long. Of course it was. Of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I played it once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was talking, yeah. Trying to explain how the frequencies in \u201cTrack 07\u201d could overwrite memory in microdoses, like emotional malware. But about two minutes in, her voice changes. Gets slower, deeper, not pitch-shifted, just wrong<\/em>. Like it wasn\u2019t her. And at the end, right before the file cuts, she says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a song. It\u2019s an opening.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That word again. Opening. Like the feedback wasn\u2019t noise, but a key. And we, in our teenaged stupidity, struck it by mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem is… part of me wants<\/em> to hear it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not the file. Not a copy. Not some internet-reconstructed bootleg that teens upload to Discord servers while bragging about \u201clost-core indie-core audio hauntings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No. I want the real<\/em> thing.
The original.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That sticky night in Malang.
When the power flickered.
When Bagas broke a string mid-verse and kept playing anyway.
When the mic let out that scream.
When the girl with the cracked glasses mouthed \u201cdon\u2019t stop.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because I don\u2019t remember how the song ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s what kills me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tried to recreate it. Got the old gang back. Well\u2014whoever was still alive and willing. Bagas wouldn\u2019t play. Said his hands still didn\u2019t work right around strings. Rian showed up, older, softer, wearing cologne. He laughed too much, but I could see the nerves behind it. And we booked this shitty studio in Lawang, just off the toll, next to a rice field where crows kept circling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We tried everything. Same gear. Same tempo. Same amps. Even found an old mic that looked like the one from the gig, still with rust on the grill. Rian strummed that cursed chord progression, and we all waited for the pause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But nothing came.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just noise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just four tired men pretending we could touch magic again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That night, I had a dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was back in that warung, watching the stage. Except I wasn\u2019t on it. None of us were. The band was… wrong. Like a glitchy memory of us. Too tall. Too pale. Fingers too long. And the song was playing, but backward. The girl with cracked glasses was floating above the crowd. Her mouth opened wide, wider than it should\u2019ve. And when the last note hit, the walls fell inward like lungs collapsing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I woke up with blood on my pillow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hadn\u2019t bitten my tongue.
I hadn\u2019t even slept on my side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s where I tell you something even I don\u2019t like admitting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started hearing it in other songs. Just fragments. Buried under lo-fi drum fills. Hidden in the reverb of 2000s emo B-sides. An echo in an unplugged acoustic set on YouTube from a Bandung bar, timestamped 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTrack 07\u201d is spreading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not as a whole, but as a virus. Fragments. Motifs. Little pieces spliced into tracks that shouldn\u2019t have it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a bootleg vinyl pressing of a jazz improv session from 1974\u2014before<\/em> we were even born\u2014that ends with three chords that match our progression exactly. I ran it through software. It\u2019s identical. Pitch, tone, timing. Identical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know how.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know why<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it\u2019s waking up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I met someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not romantically. Not really. Just\u2014another survivor. Or maybe an early infected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His name\u2019s Anton. A session guitarist who used to play backup for folk singers in East Java. He heard about the song through a Reddit thread, got curious, started digging. Found a cassette tape with the words \u201cNO CHECK \/\/ NO GOD<\/strong>\u201d scribbled in red pen. Thought it was a demo. Played it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He told me he blacked out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woke up five hours later with the tape unwound around his wrist, bleeding from the ear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He hears the track in his dreams now. Says he\u2019s started drawing symbols in his sleep. I\u2019ve seen them. One looked like the feedback waveform from our original recording. Another resembled Kila\u2019s diagram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He thinks the song is trying to complete itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like it\u2019s unfinished.
And it\u2019s looking for players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the part you\u2019ll think I\u2019m making up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found a version of the track recorded in 1982.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I swear to you, Fendy, on my kid\u2019s life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bootleg punk EP from a defunct band called Sonik Tengah Malam<\/em>. Side B, track 4. Same riff. Same feedback intro. A few minor changes, yeah, but the structure\u2014it\u2019s there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tracked down the last living member. Old guy, nearly blind. Lives near Batu. Calls me \u201canak metal.\u201d When I played him our version, he just nodded. Said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t write it either.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how old is this thing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where did it come from?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What if it\u2019s not a song?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What if it\u2019s a memory?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What if it\u2019s a parasite?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went back to the old venue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a bakery now. They serve overpriced donuts and jazz playlists. But when I stepped into that space\u2014my skin went tight. The air still hums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I walked to where the stage used to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Put my phone on record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Closed my eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I whispered the opening chords into the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mic feedbacked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No amp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No mic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then… something replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not in sound. Not in words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just a feeling. Like a hand on my chest, pressing. Like someone trying to tune me<\/em>. Like I wasn\u2019t the player anymore\u2014but the instrument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I haven\u2019t slept well since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My wife says I hum in my sleep. Same few notes, over and over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I checked the recording.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just static.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if you loop it…
slow it down…
run it through a tape deck…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can hear a faint voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not Kila\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not anyone I know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTrack 08 coming soon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do I try to finish it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do I try to stop it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do I gather the old crew, press record, and surrender? See where it leads?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or do I burn every copy, every chord, every recording\u2014and pray that\u2019s enough?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if you\u2019re reading this…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if you ever hear that sound\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That high, thin wail…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That buzzing pause…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That girl whispering \u201cdon\u2019t stop\u201d…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just remember\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We didn\u2019t write it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It found us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s looking for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Fendy Satria Tulodo is an Indonesian writer and music producer under the name Nep Kid, with tracks out on various online platforms. When he’s not working on stories or beats, he’s out in the field making things happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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