Jonathan Kusuma's Jakarta Techno Has Found a Home on Optimo Music and Cocktail d'Amore

Optimo Music doesn't put just anyone on its catalogue. Neither does Cocktail d'Amore. Both Glasgow and Berlin imprints have, at different points, released Jonathan Kusuma, a producer who splits his time between Jakarta and Singapore and has spent close to two decades building a discography most of his peers back home never get the chance to.

Kusuma, who also goes by Ojon, didn't start out angling for European labels. His own account of it, given to Bandwagon Asia, is plainer: "The city really shaped me into who I am today," he said of Jakarta, the place where he learned to DJ and where he still bases most of his work. In Singapore, he's named HQ among his favorite rooms to play in Asia.

A Passport Stamped by Four Different Scenes

The label list is the part that gets attention outside Indonesia. Kusuma has released through I'm a Cliché in Paris, Bravura in London, Jeansreatti in Italy and Optimo Music in Glasgow, the long-running label run out of JD Twitch's record shop that has a reputation for being picky about who it signs. He's also put out records on Cocktail d'Amore and Correspondant, two Berlin imprints built around the kind of dark, body-first disco and techno that doesn't translate well on paper but fills a floor at 3am. His sound has been described as running on "heady synths and propulsive, tribal-like beats," closer to proto-techno than anything you'd call tropical or exotic, despite where he's from.

That regional identity surfaces more directly on record than in interviews. His 2022 EP Dream Bot, released on Hong Kong's 宀 (Mihn Music) as both a digital release and a vinyl pressing, samples Balinese Kecak chant on its closing track, "Noise Bleed," layered under gamelan tones and arpeggios that point forward rather than back. "It refers to an automated bot — software application — that engages users to dream," Kusuma said of the EP's title at the time. "It's my personal take on what the future holds." The same record got a remix from Tolouse Low Trax, a name that doesn't show up on Jakarta-adjacent releases often.

Dekadenz, a Nightclub, and What Came After

At home, Kusuma co-founded Dekadenz, a Jakarta club night that grew into a record label. He also co-founded Akamady Records with Gerhan Fer, known as Komodo. On July 15, 2022, the city's 3000 Group appointed him Music Director. The group's venues include Ding Dong Disko, a retro-futurist bar and club in Kemang that had, by then, become one of South Jakarta's more reliable nights out. It didn't last. Ding Dong Disko announced its permanent closure in February 2025, nearly six years after it opened, one more South Jakarta room gone the way so many have. By November 2025, Mixmag Asia's coverage of his Bank The Drums EP had him leading music direction at Zodiac Jakarta instead.

The Drums Keep Banking

What hasn't stopped is the production. Bank The Drums, a four-track EP, came out via Bless You, a sublabel of Berlin's Sound Metaphors. The title track opens on tightly packed percussion before sliding into darker, more metallic territory; "All For Me" holds a steady 4/4 under cosmic flourishes; "Drummer Girl" leans into organic percussion and half-buried vocals; "Tserah" is the loosest of the four, minimal on the surface and busy underneath. It's a record built for the two or three in the morning stretch of a set, when a crowd that's already in is listening for texture rather than hooks, and for headphones afterward, when the same tracks reveal what they were doing with the low end all along.

Jakarta's underground has produced its share of late-blooming success stories; Cyda, a decade into making singles before his first album, is another one Loopliner has covered. Kusuma's version of that story has just run longer and traveled further, one Glasgow or Berlin release at a time.

Cover photo: Jonathan Kusuma press photo, via xceed.me.

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