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Stinging Cassettes! Java​/​Bali

by AKASHIC RECORDS

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1.
Jakartka -----> Denpasar 22:07
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2.
Radios, Roosters, Ubud, Nusa Penida 10:00
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3.
Denpasar>Banyuwangi>Yogyakarta 19:58
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4.
Yogyakarta in Various Moments 09:25
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5.
Pak Suhardi, Ladrang Subukustawa 08:08
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6.
Dieng Plateau Marching Band 05:18
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7.
Sunrise Peliatan, Bali 16:44
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8.
Mary Ford + Muthhein, Yogyakarta 05:30
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9.
Cd Glitch (Mary Ford) 02:14
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10.
Kuda Kepang vs Artaud 17:07
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about

I realized only moments ago that I've neglected to write liner notes to the album, uploaded in 2012. Since this year 2018 is the 20th anniversary of my time living and traveling in Java and Bali in 1998, this introductory essay is long over due and yet perfectly punctuated by a gong agung.

These are recordings of the first order, raw, exhibiting a firstness, in the sense of Charles Pierce's idea of the fundamental experience, involving chance, solidity, reality, toughness. They are unstable, spontaneous, true and impenetrable, like stones. These are the very first field recording I made just at the dawn of my understanding that field recording was a "field" and an endeavor. My recordings in this collection did not have any determined or orderly focus (other to record my gamelan music lessons) and the only accidentally became a sound portrait of cultures & journeys.

While traveling across Java to Bali and back to Jakarta over 6 months, I used my portable cassette recorder/radio to gather audio impressions here and there and I had no way to edit any of the material. What you hear in the first track, for example, is everything that fit onto one side of a cassette, minus the segments that were too personal or boring for me to keep (the editing came later when I digitized the cassettes, also a rather quick digitalization made on a CD recorder/burner that I'd rented in Albuquerque, so always in a rush). There remain a few other cassettes in my (distant) archives of full gamelan performances in Yogyakarta, rehearsals and practice sessions at my teachers studio. One of my teachers, Pak Suhardi, can be heard playing gender on track 5, where he plays a ladrang while singing out the names of various gongs and kenongs at those moments when the ideal orchestra member should play those tones. I recorded prayer calls and roosters, frogs, some fish in a mandi, and some Jathilan street performers and a marching band in the terraces of Banyuwangi -- all of which came to me as complete surprises and I would often rush to dig the recorded out of my back-pack to capture whatever I could manage, often furtively, shyly, not wanting to come across as impolite or inhumane, which always seems a risk in such situations where the objectifying gaze (there is no audio equivalent of the gaze, I think) transforms humans into specimens and people don't like to be oggled at like creatures in a zoo. I also recorded snippets of radio broadcasts (contemporary Jaipong, Indo-rock, dhalangs telling Ramayana tales) -- in various cities and even on the buses etc. I am unlikely to ever experience anything again quite like this. In any case, I hope the listener can hear with the sense of excitement and curiosity of the traveler not knowing what's around the bend. The photo on the cover is an actual volcanic pool on one of the lower terraces of Mount Merapi. We had only a few disposable cameras on the road and perhaps only 30 or so photographs survived my various relocations (that archive in Florida alone can tell, I have only digital versions here). Please enjoy and share, as we "go to press" with the new introduction winging its way into the new age of potential listeners.

credits

released October 23, 2012

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AKASHIC RECORDS image

AKASHIC RECORDS Poland

Guitarist, composer, sound designer, field recordist, shortwave radio poet, blending electro-acoustic, electronica, spectral comp., cracked circuits, sounding organic objects with an ear towards earth voices. Studied Javanese and Balinese gamelan and theories of Partch and Xenakis. Working with dance/theater/butoh co. Djalma Primordial Science. More than 400 concerts throughout Europe since 2005. ... more

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