This entry was posted on Friday, November 7th, 2008 at 11:25 pm and is filed under Ambient, CD, Electronic, Experimental, Glitch, Improvisation, International, Minimalistic, Music Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
07.11.2008
Fusing improvisational Java music performance and electronic composing is Gregory Taylor of Madison Wisconsin. This is his first musical work, piecing this 7 track CD together live by creating samples and loops of an improv. electronic composition in the vein of Post Modernist and gamelan style music theory. Ambient and soft sounds ring like a cross between soft glass harps and organic wooden church bell. Glitch influence breathes lightly over the entire album that is free from silence and seamless throughout. Minimalistic in ways much like Brian Eno yet closer to Phillip Glass, Taylor uses synth tones performing in both Indonesian pentatonic scales Slendro and Pelog. Many of the track titles come from the Javanese note names of the Slendro and Pelog scales whose 5 notes were named after body parts. Note #2 – gulu – meaning neck, note 3 dada – is the chest, note 5 – lima – is hand or five fingers, and - nem,- note 6 referring to the male genitalia. The scales sad sound sets the mood of this album as its use in countries such as Bali were for cremation ceremonies. Celebrating Indonesian traditions and expanding it into the digital age, watch out for the easy New Age classification of his 25 year devotion to the sounds of Java.
-johnny darko