Biography
Indonesian progressive jazz-rock outfit I Know You Well Miss Clara operates under the guidance of guitarist Reza Ryan, who authors most of the material and steers the quartet’s artistic course through a range of reference points that encompass King Crimson, Mahavishnu Orchestra, and several acts tied to the British Canterbury scene of the 1960s and 1970s, among them Soft Machine, Matching Mole, Hatfield and the North, and National Health. Ryan, who took up the guitar in 1991 when he was ten, established the band in 2009 by enlisting keyboardist Ady Wijaya, bassist Enriko Gultom, and drummer Alfiah Akbar, all of whom were then enrolled in music studies at the Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta. In remarks directed to Sid Smith, author of the liner notes for the group’s debut album Chapter One on MoonJune Records, Ryan recounted that the phrase I Know You Well Miss Clara had first served as the title of one of his own compositions until Wijaya and Gultom proposed it as the ensemble’s name, an idea that remained in place. The quartet’s emergence naturally drew the attention of MoonJune founder Leonardo Pavkovic, whose label has earned recognition both for its emphasis on the Canterbury sound and guitar-virtuoso tradition exemplified by Allan Holdsworth and for a roster that includes Indonesian jazz-rock guitarists such as Tohpati Ario Hutomo of simakDialog and Tohpati Ethnomission alongside Dewa Budjana. Chapter One was captured during an eighteen-hour session across two Yogyakarta studios in 2012 before MoonJune issued the recording in September of the next year.