On his new mini-album “8 Tahun”, singer-songwriter Adhitia Sofyan offers us a set of stripped-down acoustic songs with lyrics in local languages.

Adhitia Sofyan seems to put aside his acoustic guitar only when he’s taking photographs – another obsession of this experienced composer and singer from Indonesia’s capital Jakarta.

Earlier this summer, Adhitia released a mellow EP called “8 Tahun” (which means “8 Years”). This mini-album brings a collection of moody, beautifully performed themes decorated just with minimalistic acoustic guitar arrangements.

What distinguishes Adhitia’s new five-track from his last year’s LP “Silver Painted Radiance“, is not only the stripped down sound – previously he brought a whole band to the studio. But also the language. This time he dropped English for Indonesian, and in the case of the song called “Dan Ternyata” – for Javanese.

With such consistent atmosphere of the arrangements and vocals, a full-length like this would be a risky idea. But as a 20-minute set, it’s one of this season’s most captivating pieces of classic songwriting. Interestingly, as soon as you start to get used to the melodies, you’ll begin to notice musical peculiarities of the words.

No need to understand them really, although you can use Google Translate. Their musical side brings enough joy, and you’ll probably keep coming back to this EP during the last warm evenings of the summer – just as we do.

Stream “8 Tahun” EP on YouTube and Spotify.

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Adhitia Sofyan on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Soundcloud.