Rumah Sakit

Rumah Sakit 25 collects Rumah Sakit’s debut album and their long out-of-print Travels In Constants EP into one extraordinary package. Reuniting the band with Bob Weston to meticulously remaster from the original master tapes, Rumah Sakit 25 features new cover art from old friends and collaborators, Jeremiah Maddock and Marty Anderson. The expansive 180 gram audiophile-grade gatefold 2xLP includes full-color printed inner sleeves featuring hundreds of previously unpublished photos documenting the inspired early era in the band’s history, as well as a massive full-size 24-page art book of previously unpublished artwork by Maddock. It’s an exquisite opus that masterfully captures a band who ultimately inspired artists that followed them, and whose members’ later collaborations with the likes of Foals, Pinback, Sweep the Leg Johnny, Sleeping People and HEY!TONAL would underscore how uniquely diverse and prolific Rumah Sakit truly were.

Rumah Sakit were a four-piece rock band based in San Francisco, CA. The group began to take shape in 1998 after guitarist John Baez, bassist Kenseth Thibideau and drummer, Jeff Shannon, all moved from Redlands to San Francisco. Fully formed once guitarist Mitch Cheney quickly joined, the band settled on the name Rumah Sakit – a literal Indonesian translation of “sick room” (aka hospital) – and a sound that fused the frenetic energy of Red-era King Crimson with a meditative melodicism that starkly contrasted the vast majority of “math-rock” bands of the era. Soon thereafter, Rumah Sakit entered the studio for the first time to record what would become their eponymous debut album.