There are several reasons why one must appreciate this given: the dedicated human being behind the label / these anthologies, the stunning releases offered by the whole USG-family, the possibility to ‘explore’ known and unknown musical territories, you know… This newest compilation / anthology just follows that adorable trend as part of the Sound Mapping Project…
Or, in short: Anthology Of Contemporary Music From Far East collects twenty ‘songs’ by as many artists / projects from the Indo-Pacific or South-East Asian continents. Before delving into the soil of each entity involved, I’d like to grant gratitude to Raffaele, whose efforts, i.e. efforts to trespass the limits and borders of Aural Art, are of non-ignorable importance. Not only he’s a skilled musician himself, yet his support towards the specific niches of Sonic Supremacy is of a honorable level. This newest compilation marks another step by opening the borders to the Far East.
[And just in case of interest: some acts were part of the first IDIL-edition too.]
Anyway, like I did for many samplers, anthologies or compilations before, I will describe, shortly and concisely, what each individual track (and the composer) stands for, more or less (I’m just a modest, humble human entity into this huge universe of aural majesty).
- Senyawa (Indonesia), Istana (live) (07:22): Senyawa is a two-headed project by singer Rully Shabara and instrumentalist Wukir Suryadi, who’s part of this anthology too under his real name, by the way (see further).
This track originates from the Alkisah album and offers a unique blend of different angles: a megalithic wall of electric guitars (purest Drone Metal with a vile Doom-edge) with additional, eccentric string-experimentation (expect some fine high-tech guitar-noise-rape), combined with strange voices (especially melodiously shouting or mesmeric-ritualistic chanting, with inclusion of whispers, screams and spells); an hypnotic piece, bleak yet transcendental at once, mingling past and present, mixing tradition and progression…
- 姚春旸 Chunyang Yao (China), Remnant (04:32): this artist (composer, lyricist, vocalist, producer) tries to add her traditional Naxi heritage (a tribal region in the South of China) into her musical (read: electronic) experiments.
This specific composition differs impressively and convincingly from what this artist created in the past, for Remnant brings forth a deeply horrifying, even macabre approach of long-stretched and little lo-fi-oriented Dark Ambient, injected by eerie and asphyxiating whispering voices, haunting synth-waves, and creepy noises (my personal track from her to date)…
- Andy Chia (Japan), Prana, Live In Japan (Volume II) (excerpt, 04:09): a musician (especially known as flutist), a Master in Music studies and art director for the SA-collective.
With this song (and most others), Andy melts doomed electronics with obscure voices (including throat-singing, screams and evil whispers, as well as manipulated vocal recordings), getting surrounded by bizarre field-recorded sounds, and of course - as from the second half of the track - the typifying traditional flutes of Oriental origin - resulting in a mostly uncomfortable, inconvenient, malformed yet fine (sonic / mental) adventure…
- Gina Lo (Taiwan), Vocal Exercise (03:00): hailing from Taiwan yet currently living (and working) in Berlin, Germany, Gina Lo is known as sound installation / improv sculptor, searching for the equilibrium of the physical world (humanity and our material surroundings) versus the untouchable one (nature and cosmos, soul and spirit).
Their contribution on Anthology Of Contemporary Music From Far East is based on varied vocal sound-sources as basic, with spacy glitches, spacy loops and Music Concrète-like essays in addition. Do not underestimate the subtly represented force of hidden sound-recordings and flickering elements…
- Baishui (China), The Hungry Fisherman 飢餓的船夫 (04:13): this Chinese musician / composer / poet nowadays lives in Florida, if I am not mistaken. Yet the ‘traditional’ and archaic sources are kept maintained.
Anyway, this specific song too offers an archaic, old-spirited approach in the first place, i.e. a melody based on traditional flutes / harmonies, at the same time little spooky and revealing (cf. the intro, sounding like an introduction to some movie or series, done through several ancient flutes). The tension, being built towards the end through the rising addition of ‘deep’ hypnotic synths, just fortifies the mysterious content…
- Mahakit Mahaniranon (Thailand), Liberation Of Distortion (01:30): improvisation and experimentation are two constant elements within the frenzy world of this act.
And that’s exactly what this extremely short piece stands for: a crazy amalgam of both digital and analog noise-manipulations, impregnated with electronic management: samples and noises, beats, elements from chiptune and depraved Psybient…
- Ryo Murakami (Japan), Ten Commandments (04:49): this Japanese artist / producer / label-chieftain is active for quite some time, and did win a Silver Lion a while ago. With his recordings, he also ‘reached’ the ‘Western’ worlds in the meantime.
Ten Commandments is like a film-score, a symbiosis of sensitive melodies (through minimalistic piano / strings and floating keyboards), subtle field-recorded elements (crackling noises etc.) and atmospheric details of multiple origin. Despite its minimalism, it’s quite rich, even abundant, in sphere-creation…
- Yoyogi Koen (Hong Kong), Amefurikozou 雨降り小僧 (01:38): the inspirational sources for this project are based on traditional Chinese theatre and the local culture from the very South-East of China.
Here too, the audible effort expresses / exhales a certain visionary enterprise, despite its out-loud silence, expressed by nihilistic ‘melodic’ elements and delicate yet efficient abstract sound-sources; it offers the audience a mixture of wonder and surprise at the one hand, and discomfort and confusion at the other…
- Sangwon Lee (South-Korea), Torturing Piano Excerpt (05:33): Sangwon is a notorious music-teacher, with awards and important licenses from both his home-country as well as all around the world (Switzerland, Argentina, the U.S.).
As Professor in sound-technology, he’s able to design aural constructions that trespass the ‘popular’ definition of ‘Music’. This fragment too goes beyond normality or comfort; different pedestals of sonic origin (abstract, glitchy, surreal and avantgarde in nature) and weird manipulated string-and-piano excerpts get canalized into some post-mental exertion; mind the introvert, gloomy outro (with viola / violin), by the way…
- Irving Paul Pereira (Singapore), Maybe There Is A Disco (04:09): also active as Aftervolter, Irving dwells in both visual and sonic territories of experimental artistry.
With his contribution, Maybe There Is A Disco, Irving explores the plasmatic sound-universe of Electronic, Free-Style and Techno-based horizons, and this through totally foreign notes, like 8-bit-like and chiptuny things, bleeps and gongs, beats and ticks…
- Wukir Suryadi (Indonesia), Menolak Tunduk, Refuse To Submit (04:53): as a solo-artist (the guy is involved with Senyawa - see above), acting under his own name, Wukir floats around in a widened orbit of both traditional and contemporary spheres.
Draped around an energetic tribal-based pattern, this determined ride might initially come with a certain touch of repetitive progression, yet the psychedelic Post-Jazz oriented eardrum-rape within the second half leaves you stunned and mute. The equilibrium in between the repetitive percussions and the psychedelic sound-sculping works hypnotically well…
- Ying Shui Di Jiang (China), 未完成 Jam at W Art Space (05:06): the quartet Ying Shui Di Jiang is a mainly improvisation-focused group of experimental artists, using traditional, modern and self-made instruments.
The impressive amalgam of instruments and the inherent, exclusive variation in structure works seductive and intoxicating at the very same time. The multifold use of traditional elements (flutes, voices), the mesmeric symphonic waves (mind those starry-eyed synths as from half of the hymn), and the alternative additions go satisfyingly well together…
- Kazuya Ishigami (Japan), Quantum Mind (03:55): besides acting under other pseudonyms (like the fine outfits Daruin and Rudain), this musician / composer / sound engineer did perform all over the Northern Hemisphere (like Europe and the U.S.).
Quantum Mind teases and pleases at the very same time with its morphologic symbiosis of Noise, Electroacoustics, Musique Concrète, Industrial and Avantgarde (I admit: this is a very generalist summary). In four minutes, this experienced creator succeeds to paint a permanently interacting and evolving sonore landscape, continuously mutating, never fading away into airy nothingness, while permanently maintaining a characteristic vision on mind-expanding ambience…
- Masayuki Imanishi (Japan), SO (04:10): another sound-deconstructive/reconstructive and improv-artist from Japanese soil.
This artist’s aim is never to compose a bombastic symphony of sounds, yet rather to procreate sound-waves of basic nature, through the use (or abuse?) of daily objects, digital manipulation, and additional instrumentation. SO is not the most experimental work by this artist, yet for sure a manifest of organic modernism…
- Fr(HK) (Hong Kong), FM Odyssey (03:31): the anonymous outfit Fr(HK) (which actually is the abbreviation for ‘Field Recording Hong Kong’) indeed uses found sounds from their homelands as fundamental and essential source to create their aural propaganda; these guys’ goal is, and I will quote, ‘to preserve the unique sounds of the city for future generations before they fade away permanently’.
Influenced by older radio transmissions and broadcasting, Fr(HK) combine excerpts from these sources (fragments from radio shows) with additional (mainly metallic) noises and truly hypnotic, gloomy waves of keyboard-based elegance; the latter drenching the whole into an ominous mist of mysticism and marvel…
- Dadang Dwi Septiyan (Indonesia), Those Who Ponder And Those Who Dispute (04:06): within the more outsider-oriented and punkish community, this musician from Java is not a stranger to the label; also related to the Triswara outfit.
Another unusual balance can be found here, where modernism and tradition mingle together. At the one hand, you have the funky spine, with wah-wah pedals and groovy strings (though, it does include a hint of tradition, evidently). At the other, you’ll experience somewhat discordant flutes and ritualistic voices (the latter with a slightly throat-singing-alike timbre). Yet there’s more, like the injection of field recordings (like tropical birds singing in the trees) and that heavily droning finale. The track involved within this anthology-album features Ibnu Yan Wiratama (also hailing from the isle of Java), by the way…
- Lai Tsung Yun (Taiwan), Untitled #925 (02:40): Lai runs / curates the famous sound-art festival Lacking Sound Festival (taking place in the capital city of Taipei), yet he’s a notorious noisician too, and know from intriguing efforts like The Caveman Project or The Ancestors.
It’s a pity that this track is such short excerpt, for it stands for a mostly oppressive, even claustrophobic piece of the most obscure Ambient Noise Wall elegance. Untitled #925 is a collection of icy rumbles, creepy textures, metallic penetrations, and asphyxiating drones, canalized into one gigantic wall of doomed finesse…
- Farabi Toshiyuki Suzuki (Japan), The Views Whan Don’t Think Anything (03:56): being a label owner, DJ, composer and performer (like being the singer of the weird project Ek Dui Tin Char), Suzuki is known as well for his unique instrumentation (besides analog and digital knobs), (ab)using the traditional ‘shamisen’ (a three-stringed banjo-like guitar).
This artist’s typifying sound gets expressed once more by his out-of-the-box-thinking attitude. Of course, the shamisen acts like the soil, on which the composer builds his house of cacophonous pleasure: glitchy noises, electronic looping, wrapped-up beats, industrialized constructions, mechanic experimentation and manipulated voices and sounds, all in synergetic interaction with those treated strings…
- Pupa (Singapore), Jagitate (03:36): Pupa (to be pronounces as ‘Poo-PaH’) is an experimental and impro-laden duo-project, consisting of Wu Jun Han and Zeekos Perakos, and recently celebrating their tenth anniversary.
Their ‘translation’ (which is their definition for their sonic expressions) Jagitate is like a playful, pleasuring mixture of dynamic percussions, funky bass-lines, abstract digitalism, and additional samples and found sounds. It’s an energetic piece that redefines Electronic Music into a new dimension of post-abstract experimentation…
- Ritesh Maharjan (Nepal), Far Ancient Earth (Excerpt) (01:56): also acting under the pseudonym The Nois Society (indeed ‘nois’ and not ‘noise’!), Ritesh is known for his weird sonic escapades, mainly mingling field recordings, noises and found sounds with a focus on creativity.
Also this time, this Nepal-born artist starts from a shrieking yet hypnotic string-treatment, eradicating all sense of logic, and regenerating this sonic ruin into a brain-aching delight. This excerpt might be less extravagant than what this guy normally creates, yet it does bring a far more dark-tuned and grim-sourced result...
Anthology Of Contemporary Music From Far East has been pressed on compact-disc, i.e. a digipack-edition with intriguing cover artwork, as well as some fine layout artistry (the latter done by Matteo Mariano). It represents a piece of a statue-fragment with a divine character, yet without focusing on any narrow-minded religious aspect whatsoever. I guess it’s a fragment from a door or window, with a trans-religious sculpting that surely refers to the rich and open-minded attitude of the traditions from South-East Asia.
https://unexplainedsoundsgroup.bandcamp.com/album/anthology-of-contemporary-music-from-far-east
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/various-artists-idil-2024