ADRIAN ADIOETOMO
Known as one of the current revivalist of Blues music in Indonesia, especially Delta-Blues. This is due to his first album, “Delta Indonesia”, which was included in the Rolling Stone Indonesia’s Best Album Of The Year 2008 that has made its mark as a revolutionary album in the Indonesian music scene. The album is a tribute to the great delta bluesmen in the 1930’s in a lot of ways; the guitar playing, the songwriting, as well as the overall sound of the recording.
Adrian himself started playing back when he was still in high school. Playing any simple punk and rock songs at first, the developed into heavy metal. When he moved to Australia, his taste and playing gradually shifted to Delta Blues. This was further encouraged when he met one of his heroes, the late great Chris Whitley there and hung out at his apt in New York.
In Australia he met another great slide guitarist, Jeff Lang whom he also learned a lot from. After coming back to Indonesia for sometime, he started playing blues at pubs and expatriate cafes around Jakarta and garnered quite an appreciation for playing favourite blues numbers in acoustic slide-delta style. The live-recordings and demos he made as souvenir sold out almost every time he played . This ensured him to record the demo in an album version and made it commercially available.