Artist ︎︎︎Asa Tone
Title︎︎︎ Temporary Music
Label · Leaving Records
Format · Album
Release · LP / CD
Year · 2020
Format · Album
Release · LP / CD
Year · 2020
Asa Tone is Jakarta-born Melati Malay and New York based Tristan Arp and Kaazi.
In January 2018 the trio travelled to Indonesia during Melati’s annual return home, set up a temporary studio in a house nestled in the jungle’s canopy and recorded a series of improvisational pieces together, later edited for brevity. The music incorporates both digital and analogue processing and largely draws upon the groups collective voice, a small selection of instrumentation (Rindik, Moog Sub 37, Infinite Jets, Suling) and their immediate environment. Despite this, they aimed to record a kind of music together that doesn’t seem to come from one specific place, but instead, from everywhere.
The result is an idiosyncratic voyage of equatorial excursions in voice, mallets and synthesis, both transportative and fluid, yet firmly grounded in the earth. Cyclical, randomized patterns grow and blossom during these often delicate and heartfelt renderings, staying with the listener long after both sides fall silent.
Temporary Music LP will be released on January 31, 2020 on Leaving Records. It is the group’s debut album.
In January 2018 the trio travelled to Indonesia during Melati’s annual return home, set up a temporary studio in a house nestled in the jungle’s canopy and recorded a series of improvisational pieces together, later edited for brevity. The music incorporates both digital and analogue processing and largely draws upon the groups collective voice, a small selection of instrumentation (Rindik, Moog Sub 37, Infinite Jets, Suling) and their immediate environment. Despite this, they aimed to record a kind of music together that doesn’t seem to come from one specific place, but instead, from everywhere.
The result is an idiosyncratic voyage of equatorial excursions in voice, mallets and synthesis, both transportative and fluid, yet firmly grounded in the earth. Cyclical, randomized patterns grow and blossom during these often delicate and heartfelt renderings, staying with the listener long after both sides fall silent.
Temporary Music LP will be released on January 31, 2020 on Leaving Records. It is the group’s debut album.
Produced Kaazi, Tristan Arp, Melati ESP
Written, Recorded, Mixed Kaazi, Tristan Arp, Melati ESP
LP Design / Layout Kaazi
Art Direction Kaazi
CD Design / Layout Kaazi & Oshi Kunii
Obi Design Oshi Kunii
Asa Tone Logo Design Ciaran Birch
Video 1 Kaazi
Video 2 Georgia Studio
Jakarta/NYC’s Asa Tone slip right under the skin with a mix of mercurial gamelan and electronics for California’s Leaving Records...
Exploring space where traditional Indonesian music re-merges with American new age’s Far Eastern inspirations, ‘Temporary Music’ offers firms up an ephemeral, experimental sort of ambient interzone that shares similar coordinates with the music of Georgia, Visible Cloaks and their wealth of Fourth World ambient inspirations.
The trio of Jakarta-born Melati Melay with New York based Tristan Arp and Kaazi recorded their debut album in a temporary studio nestled in tropical jungle canopy during Melati’s annual trip home in 2018. Improvising in long, meditative takes of mallets, bamboo, vocals, and electronics, the results were edited for brevity back in NYC and resemble a heat hazy series of snapshots from what clearly appears to be a lovely time spent together.
In 10 pieces flush with rhythmelodic cadence and aqueous shimmer, they elegantly skip and swoon from the beat-less, plasmic shimmy of intrpduction, ‘To Tell a Picture’ to the closing sound poem of ‘Each Pool a Lifetime’ via mosaic of moiré patterns; tilting uptempo thru the impish dance of ‘Perpetual Motion Via Jugnle Transport’, and swooping across the Hassellian dub of ‘Visit From Tokay’ to the tight ambient dancehall bumps of ‘In Everybody Repeating’, a spirited dream sequence called ‘River At Work’, and more dembow/dancehall styled ruggedness recalling Haruomi Hosono/YMO on ‘Ogoh Ogoh’. - Boomkat Product Review
Written, Recorded, Mixed Kaazi, Tristan Arp, Melati ESP
LP Design / Layout Kaazi
Art Direction Kaazi
CD Design / Layout Kaazi & Oshi Kunii
Obi Design Oshi Kunii
Asa Tone Logo Design Ciaran Birch
Video 1 Kaazi
Video 2 Georgia Studio
Jakarta/NYC’s Asa Tone slip right under the skin with a mix of mercurial gamelan and electronics for California’s Leaving Records...
Exploring space where traditional Indonesian music re-merges with American new age’s Far Eastern inspirations, ‘Temporary Music’ offers firms up an ephemeral, experimental sort of ambient interzone that shares similar coordinates with the music of Georgia, Visible Cloaks and their wealth of Fourth World ambient inspirations.
The trio of Jakarta-born Melati Melay with New York based Tristan Arp and Kaazi recorded their debut album in a temporary studio nestled in tropical jungle canopy during Melati’s annual trip home in 2018. Improvising in long, meditative takes of mallets, bamboo, vocals, and electronics, the results were edited for brevity back in NYC and resemble a heat hazy series of snapshots from what clearly appears to be a lovely time spent together.
In 10 pieces flush with rhythmelodic cadence and aqueous shimmer, they elegantly skip and swoon from the beat-less, plasmic shimmy of intrpduction, ‘To Tell a Picture’ to the closing sound poem of ‘Each Pool a Lifetime’ via mosaic of moiré patterns; tilting uptempo thru the impish dance of ‘Perpetual Motion Via Jugnle Transport’, and swooping across the Hassellian dub of ‘Visit From Tokay’ to the tight ambient dancehall bumps of ‘In Everybody Repeating’, a spirited dream sequence called ‘River At Work’, and more dembow/dancehall styled ruggedness recalling Haruomi Hosono/YMO on ‘Ogoh Ogoh’. - Boomkat Product Review