There’s so much pleasure sprouting from Kembang Mas EP by Ipoh-born S. Razali. You can feel this immediately when you hear the spiralling, hypnotic “Aaahs” that ooze from “Ulangan” a track that calls out youths who are deemed lazy and do nothing all day long. Unlike its theme of overlooked mundanity, the track incorporates majestic details and gleefully changes technique from one verse to another. S. Razali makes being lazy sound alluring and inescapable. It’s a substantial introduction to the 35-minute-long EP because just when you think it couldn’t get any better, it does.

Marking his debut, Kembang Mas is cannily crafted and brilliantly written, exploring themes of personal identities. Most importantly, it viciously showcases a prodigious talent who has been flying under the radar. The EP is a dream-like, kaleidoscopic escapade, hypnotising you with every listen; the more you focus on it, the more you lose yourself. The tracks, individually, craft not so much a world but rather a time, with tangible moments you can revisit with every listen and perhaps relate to. Its sonics present zero moments of stasis; instead, S. Razali — first name Saifuddin — went maximalist on the compositions, blending psychedelic funk, traces of progressive rock and Islamic music elements. He liberates his words to sculpt an astonishing work that makes a grand entrance to the scene, one that we haven’t seen in a while.

Kembang Mas was written, mixed and produced by S. Razali himself over eight months. Every fibre of work you hear in the EP is welded by him and no one else. Yes, this also includes his voice as the babbling parent in “Ulangan” and “Hai awan / Tolong kencing muka saya, ya?” in “Kencing Langit” — which I initially thought was taped from ‘60s classic films. Vocally, S. Razali presents himself as a shapeshifter. At times, he sounds like an aging man speak-singing in front of children hungry for bedtime stories. For most of the EP, he sounds like other people, and rarely like himself. The maturity of it all would surprise you to learn that he was born in 2003 — a fact that I’m still grasping to accept because I don’t think I’ve ever been this envious of someone’s maturity at such a young age before.

In an interview with bawahtanahrasmi, S. Razali explained that the EP was a project to “express how much he misses his mother’s village,” located in Chroy Metrey, Cambodia, which he visits at least once a year. This cultural cross-pollination translates throughout the tracks. Not only does he offer glimpses of the golden era of Cambodian music, the ’60s Khmer psychedelic rock boom, but he has also woven its DNA carefully into his work. In the slow-boiling “Kencing Langit” and the magnificent closure “Chroy Metrey” the DNA strands of the genre’s pioneers, such as Sinn Sisamouth — one of the most prominent musicians who fell victim to the Khmer Rouge regime’s attempt to abolish foreign influences, particularly in music — are evident. What was once a golden era of a thriving music region, whose musicians succumbed tragically as victims of the Cambodian genocide, later saw its influences resurrected in the ’90s and has now found a place in the work of a 21-year-old musician from Ipoh. Who would’ve thought?

His reign of rich influences doesn’t end there. S. Razali also comes from a nasyid background, which should come as less of a surprise when you hear his melodious, elongated “Aaaaaahs,” akin to listening to prayer recitals at dawn. Here, Razali weaponises his religious education background and turns it into a stunning remodel of religious music. These elements are more than just supporting actors in his work; they’re put front and centre. Far from being annoyingly in-your-face preachy, they glisten — not made to be worshipped but precisely to illustrate the beauty of it.

The idiosyncratic confluence of his Cambodian roots and religious music upbringing produces a work that can be daunting to pick a favourite from. One of the most glorious moments in the EP is the third track, “Balas-Balas” where midway, he deeply howls somewhat in desperation before the tune changes into a feminine voice that turns out to be S. Razali singing in falsetto: “Dia pemilik harta / Kuasa tak tercatat / Pengurus alam buana / Tak daftar syarikat.” The second-to-last track, “Krama” is a dancey, ‘80s disco-ish song written assumingly as a resistance anthem: “Percayalah, hiasan bukan semata-mata / Sesungguhnya, dia simbolik perjuangan.” Ferocious political or resistance songs with stadium-rock drums and sing-along vocals to project the message of the people are all too familiar. But if there’s anything to learn from the musicians who endured the Khmer Rouge era that S. Razali studies, it’s that fighting the people in power means you have to dance to it. Isn’t happiness a form of resistance, too?

It’s easy to gain access to a wider audience and attention when the label “Nusantara music” is plastered on the music. But is it Nusantara music just because they play a few clings of gamelan in the background? Is it Nusantara music because you sprinkle in classic Malay words here and there? The modern successor of Nusantara music is consistently sought after by its hungry seekers who claim nobody is doing it in its true essence anymore. What even is Nusantara music in the modern landscape? All of these questions don’t seem to matter to works like Kembang Mas. S. Razali’s celebrated wall of Southeast Asian musical influences and culturally rich background deserve more than just to be pigeonholed into applaudable modern Nusantara music. The last time this achievement was visible was Sang Rawi’s Malay New Order, whose legacy ends in a way that leaves a bitter aftertaste and makes you think: “Damn it, we could’ve had so much more.”

S. Razali’s rise isn’t due to any miracle or the people’s hunger for true modern Nusantara music. He is simply a talent too colossal to be buried or clumped among his peers. While most debut works in the scene are usually a blip in the year-end music archival, either forgotten or remembered way too late, Kembang Mas fondly soars as one of the most important works we have this year. And we’ve only seen the beginning of S. Razali.

Stream or buy S. Razali’s Kembang Mas on Bandcamp:

Farhira Farudin is a Kuala Lumpur-based writer, whose work has appeared in Malaysiakini, MalaysiaNow, Eksentrika and others. She is the founder of Noisy Headspace.