Featured Essay:  Needle Digs the Scar Deep

by Fendy S. Tulodo

The record skipped, the needle jerking as the guitar blasted through the room. A shrill screech cut the song dead. I froze. That was not supposed to happen. But somehow, it felt right. Like the record was trying to fight back.

The shop was behind an old bakery in Malang. Most people passed it without knowing it was there. No sign. Just a metal shutter with faded stickers of bands I grew up hearing but never saw live. Some called it Toko Rekam Jaya. Others called it “the vault.”

I used to walk there on weekends. Not to buy. Just to breathe.

The place smelled like cardboard and old glue. The air had weight. Inside, records stood in leaning stacks, sorted by no system I could understand. Each pile looked ready to fall but never did. The owner never asked if I needed help. He would just nod and let me wander.

Sometimes I would stay for hours, flipping through sleeves with my headphones on, playing beats I had been working on the night before. I never told him I made music. I never told him I did not own a turntable either. I just watched him play whatever he felt like. Mostly jazz or psychedelic rock. Nothing popular. Everything dusty.

I think I liked the silence between songs the most.

I remember the day he played a record that skipped.

It was not intentional. The needle hit a rough spot and jumped back three seconds. But instead of fixing it, he let it loop. Same riff, again and again. Each pass sounded more broken, more alive.

That was the first time I really listened to a mistake.

I had grown up in a digital world. In my world, we fix everything. We cut noise. We clean vocals. We tune each note until it matches a grid. But that loop was not perfect. It was not even clean. It was flawed. And it felt honest.

I turned and left without speaking.

Later, in my quiet room, I kept thinking about it… not the real sound, just the memory stuck on repeat. I built a track around a guitar loop that falters. A beat that stumbles for half a second. It felt real, like someone breathing too fast or forgetting a word.

People think making music is about being heard. For me, it became a way to notice myself. I was working full time as a motorcycle salesman, handing out brochures and memorizing monthly targets. I knew which bikes sold fast and which ones sat too long in the display window. But I didn’t know why I felt so far away from my own body.

After work, I made music. I used whatever I had. Cracked software. Headphones with one side dead. My laptop froze every twenty minutes. I lost projects all the time. But the broken parts taught me something. They taught me how to listen again.

I stopped trying to be polished. I started sampling voice notes. The rain kept a soft beat overhead. Later, my door creaked, and in my head, it became quick hi-hat snaps. My beats became a kind of diary. No words. Just feeling.

One night, I posted a track called “The Flame” I did not expect anything. It was built around a field recording of static from my old TV, layered with a simple bass loop. I had left six seconds of empty space near the end. Just silence. Pure silence.

That track got shared more than anything I had made before.

Someone messaged me and said the silence felt like breathing.

I replied, “It was.”

The truth is, I kept that feeling locked inside. Not a single soul ever knew how deep it went. Not even my wife. At the time, our son was still learning to talk. I would play beats for him and watch his face. He didn’t smile, but he would stop moving and just listen. That was enough.

Music became less about proving myself. It became a way to stay close to the present. Some nights, I played the same track ten times, adjusting one tiny part over and over. Not for anyone else. Just to hear how it changed the air in the room.

I still walked to Rekam Jaya sometimes. The owner would be spinning something weird, as usual. Once he played a record with no label on it. I asked what it was. He said he forgot.

I told him I made music.

He said, “I know.”

I asked how.

He said, “You listen like someone who makes things.”

That was the highest praise I ever received.

I never sold a beat. Never released a full album. I don’t chase streams or followers. But I keep uploading. Quietly. Often with no title. Just a sound that means something to me. A short loop. A field recording. A broken chord.

Each upload is a kind of offering. A small proof that I exist.

Some days I think about pressing a vinyl version of my music. Just for myself. One copy. I imagine holding it. The weight. The texture. I imagine playing it for my son when he’s older. Telling him, “This is what silence sounds like when you love something too much to speak.”

But for now, digital is enough.

A while back, an old voice message popped up on my phone. A stranger. He said he played one of my tracks at night during his delivery shift. He said it helped him breathe.

He did not say which track.

That felt perfect.

Music is not always about the song. Sometimes it’s about the space it creates. A loop. A crack. A moment where the noise of the world steps aside and lets you exist.

I think that’s why I never asked the owner of Rekam Jaya for a record. I did not want to take anything. I only wanted to feel something.

And I did.

Each time the needle skipped, something in me did too.

Not backward.

Forward.

Into a version of myself I could finally hear.

Fendy is an art worker from Malang, Indonesia. He works with words and music to study how time feels different to people, and how connections linger even when they’re gone. By day, he sells motorcycles. By night, he makes moody music as Nep Kid and writes stories in different forms. His art lives in the gap between words and true feelings.