‘Mind-melting West Javanese gong pop, recorded in 2007 at Jugala studios in Bandung, based on a Javanese secular village music and dance tradition known as ketuk-tila, which was transformed into a popular studio music in the early 1960s by the producer Gugum Gumbira, founder of Jugala. With vocals by Idjah Hadidjah, one of the key historic voices of jaipongan, the situation here is disorientatingly heavy, low bpm gong pressure coming straight from the originators. It is a much less dainty affair than classical Javanese gamelan, and less febrile than the fully automatic Balinese variant. Hadidjah’s golden voice sews together shifting polyrhythms that would baffle a watchmaker; the whole is embroidered by rehab and underpinned by Mariana Trench level bass drops. A second disc features a set of thoughtful electronic reworkings’ (Frances Gooding, The Wire).
