BMTH live in Jakarta 2024

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This time around Ravel gets it right and BMTH (Bring Me The Horizon) are headlining the Nexfest festival in Jakarta which also features Babymetal. In this format there is no seating - which makes for a much more intimate experience - although you do have to arrive really early if you want to pick a spot right up close to the stage.  We arrived about six hours before BMTH were scheduled to start their performance and bought plenty of drinks to stay hydrated in the tropical afternoon heat (mind you, some of those were Iceland vodka mix!) This was a gig I had long been looking forward to - especially after the debacle last year. Not everyone likes BMTH of course. For deathcore fans the band sold out. For metal heads the band is not purist enough. And for the wider mainstream audience, the band is too heavy. You can't please everyone of course but there are few bands in the rock world which can match the sheer emotional velocity of BMTH. To bring metal and even aspects of metalcore t...
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Lee Man Fong’s “Bali Life” sells for US$3.3 million!

You know the economy is picking up when works of art start to sell for record breaking prices: 

A 1960s oil painting of Balinese villagers by Indonesia’s Lee Man Fong fetched a record HK$25.3 million ($3.3 million) in Hong Kong, the top lot at an Asian art auction marked by signs of return to pre-credit-crisis prices. Lee’s 2-meter-long “Bali Life” depicts a rustic scene of the islanders at rest. 

Source: Bloomberg

 Lee Man Fong’s “Bali Life” sells for US$3.3 million!Lee Man Fong painted classic Bali scenes and was - for obvious reasons - one of Sukarno’s favorite painters. 

And the buyer of “Bali Life”? An unidentified Asian private collector, according to Sotheby’s (let’s just hope he’s not an employee of the Indonesian tax office). 

Interestingly, 78 of the 145 artworks at the auction were done by Indonesian artists. They include Affandi’s “Cuenca,” I Nyoman Masriadi’s “I’m Still Lucky” and Agus Suwage’s studies of human psychology, “I See, I Hear, I Feel” and “Don’t Be Amazed, Don’t Be Entitled.” 

Affandi is of course an Indonesian legend, and while it is worrying that many of his artworks have gone overseas it may for the better given that high air humidity and high temperatures are raising concerns about the condition of his paintings kept in the Affandi museum in Jogyakarta. 

And as for Agus Suwage, well you may remember him for the controversy surrounding his wonderful Pinkswing Park exhibit at Jakarta's international biennale a number of years back. 

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