Ecilo Signed to Jeff Mills' Axis Records. Then He Built Indonesia a Techno Label of Its Own.

The cover art for Ecilo's 2021 album on Axis Records shows a chrome robotic arm dragging itself up a staircase toward a glowing doorway, an eyeball where its head should be. It's the exact science fiction vocabulary Jeff Mills has spoken since he started the Detroit label in 1992, all cosmic dread and machine bodies. Mills doesn't lend that visual language to just anyone. He lent it to a DJ from Jakarta.

Ecilo, born Reza Putra Ananda, had been building toward that call since 2008, working a catalog of rare jazz, soul and disco into DJ sets while his own productions leaned hard into Detroit-style techno. By the time Axis put out his album Uncovert in June 2021 (catalog ASD033, ten tracks), he already had releases on Berlin's ARTS, the Netherlands' Planet Rhythm and the UK's We Are The Brave behind him, plus a day job as music director and resident DJ at Jakarta's Kilo Lounge. Axis's own bio for the release credits him with reaching number two on Beatport's techno DJ chart, a label's marketing claim rather than an independently verified one, but the catalog number and the tracklist are real, and so is the deal.

A Detroit Deal, Made in Jakarta

One track on Uncovert is called "Dalang Antariksa." A dalang is the puppeteer who voices every character in Javanese wayang kulit shadow theatre; antariksa is Indonesian for outer space. Put together, it's a tidier summary of what Ecilo does than any press quote could manage: Javanese tradition run through Mills' science fiction obsession, and it works both ways. Axis Records has released maybe a few dozen artists across three decades of operation. Getting one to be Indonesian is not nothing, and it's the kind of achievement Southeast Asian dance music rarely gets credited for outside its own region.

Underradar: Turning One Deal Into a Pipeline

A lot of producers would have taken the Axis credit and gone looking for the next European booking. Ecilo used it as capital instead. The same year Uncovert came out, he co-founded Underradar Records in Jakarta with fashion designer Trisatria, built not just as a label but as a clothing line and booking agency in one. Resident Advisor lists eight artists on its current roster: Andra, BBANDIT, Bedez, Ecilo himself, I Vision, Raff Track, Shintarø Kanie and Søm1, none of them names international bookers already knew.

The label's most ambitious move to date paired Jakarta with Shanghai. Asia Futurist, released in November 2021 with Shanghai's Bassis crew, pulled in producers from Jakarta, Bandung, Hong Kong, Taipei, Korea, the Philippines and India onto one compilation. "It's not the bpm. It's not the style. It's the soul of the humans making the music that matters," the project's own description put it, a bigger claim than most compilation blurbs bother making, and one that reads less like hype now that the region's scenes actually talk to each other more than they used to. Underradar followed it with Revolt, billed as Indonesia's first dedicated techno compilation, made with Koronna Collective and Bordel Ensemble Records.

Still on the Road

Five years on from the Axis deal, Ecilo hasn't stopped touring the circuit he helped build. He played Jeff Mills' own 30th-anniversary Liquid Room show at ZoO in Jakarta on May 25, 2026, sharing a bill with the man who signed him. Two days before this piece went up, on September 19, 2026, he played Kuala Lumpur's LoveboXX Techno Edition, still working the region rather than chasing a European relocation. It puts him in company with the acts profiled in our rundown of the region's independent labels: people who took an international co-sign and pointed it homeward instead of using it as an exit visa.

That's the harder story here, honestly. A great record on a legendary label is one kind of achievement, and Southeast Asia doesn't get enough of that kind of credit. Building the infrastructure so the next Jakarta producer doesn't need Jeff Mills to notice them first is a different, slower, less glamorous kind of work. Ecilo is doing both.

Cover art: Ecilo, Uncovert (2021), courtesy of Axis Records.