There really isn't music bleak or horrified enough to capture the events of film The Act of Killing, and that's not what this is. DJ Rupture, aka Jace Clayton, teamed up with Indonesian vocalist Nova Ruth and nomadic bass artist Filistine to scour the archives of the Museum Musik Malang for archival recordings from the years surrounding the murders following Indonesia's 1965 failed coup. The result is a backdrop of surf rock, psych folk, sunny pop, and indeed some bass, all cut with poems written by leftist dissident Wiji Thukul, tactile reminders of the nightmarish events that took these songs as their backdrop.
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There's a dissonance here between brash pop sounds/feelings and abject darkness, one that the film plays with as well in its mixing of garish Westernisms and cultural banalities with actual hell. It's a different sort of uncomfortable, somehow even more real.