Malar by Uwalmassa

https://divisi62.bandcamp.com/album/malar

Genre: Experimental

Rating: 5/5

released on bandcamp January 5, 2022

Recently a few things have been coming out of Indonesia that’s likely to sit well with fans of western avant garde music. Developing an appreciation for Gamelan is a rite of passage for western music fans. Indonesians were working with complex microtonal percussive concepts when the French were first standardizing Gregorian Chant. I just want to say that all these cultural traditions are amazing. Everyone has a right to feel pride and to honor their tradition. Art isn’t ugly. Anyway, once western composers went into electronics in a new post-Schoenberg existence music keys and 12 tone rules became meaningless in that framework. So it was natural for composers to look to the East where those musical seeds were never planted. To a western composer of electronic music it was as if eastern music, Gamelan being one of the most immediately appealing and exciting, was free from a prison of rules. Now that we’re in the digital age and everyone can hear everybody it’s only natural for Indonesian composers to also borrow from the west, especially with electronics that don’t cramp the style. That’s a long ass preamble but this is a very successful blending of styles and marks a new evolution in a very old tradition. And to be honest, it’s really only through the avant garde where these unions don’t sound silly. This is important music and highly enjoyable music. Dig it.