J. “Mo’ong” Santoso Pribadi (THA/ID)
“Mo’ong” Santoso Pribadi is an experimental music composer and instrument builder born in Bangkok, raised in Java, Indonesia, and currently based in Vilnius, Lithuania. His practice centers on decolonial approaches to sound, seeking to reconnect with and reinterpret the sonic histories of the Indonesian Archipelago while reshaping them within contemporary contexts. Rather than rejecting tradition, Mo’ong engages in an ongoing dialogue with it, allowing inherited memories, gestures, and rhythms to be questioned, reimagined, and embodied anew.
Working across experimental music, performance, and sound art, Mo’ong collaborates extensively with modern dance, theater, contemporary puppet theater, installation art, and performance art. Since 2015, his Limbah Berbunyi project has focused on composing music from found objects and waste materials, followed by the Sound-Making Objects project, which further explores the hidden resonances and sonic agency of unconventional materials.
Mo’ong’s recent solo work marks a quiet turning inward after years of collaborative projects such as Raja Kirik his experimental duo with Yennu Ariendra exploring contested historical narratives from the Dutch occupation of Indonesia and Takkak Takkak, a cross-cultural collaboration with Shigeru Ishihara (DJ Scotch Egg). In his solo practice, sound becomes a bodily and intuitive process: listening closely to how memory, environment, and material interact within him.
Each composition emerges from encounters with found objects gathered from his surroundings. These materials are not forced into familiar tuning systems; instead, Mo’ong follows their natural unfolding. Track titles arise as onomatopoeic responses to the sounds themselves—sonic imprints that carry the memory of each object’s voice into the music. Through careful listening, these objects reveal their own tonal worlds and quiet agency.
The result is music that feels both ancient and new, grounded yet untethered. Across his work as a composer, performer, and sound designer—including contributions to independent films—Mo’ong creates spaces where memory and experimentation coexist, allowing sound to remain porous, unconfined, and alive.