Asa Tone, the trio of Melati ESP, Tristan Arp and Kaazi, are out today with Mutualkind, a new album on the label Music From Memory. The three members wrote it while spread across Indonesia, Mexico City, Berlin and New York, and the label says that distance ended up shaping the music as much as any instrument did. It is out now as a digital album and on a single vinyl LP, or long playing record.
A shared language built from far apart
According to the label's notes, the album is about building a common language across differences in place, experience and musical approach. One of its main techniques has Tristan Arp playing electronic hand percussion that triggers fragments of Melati ESP's voice in real time. A library of spoken words and phonemes, the small units of sound that make up speech, gets rearranged through chance based rhythmic processes. In practice, the voice becomes percussion, rhythm turns into melody, and it gets hard to tell who is playing what.
Some tracks, including "Second Language" and "Watertalk," were recorded live in a single take. Others came together slowly, passed back and forth between the three members from different cities.
Bali in the final sessions
The last sessions took place in Indonesia, where Balinese percussionist Putu Septa added kendang, a traditional Balinese drum, to two tracks. That puts a hand played drum in conversation with modular synthesis, FM (frequency modulation) synth textures, electronic drums, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) wind instruments and Melati ESP's constantly shifting vocals.
The label describes sounds that are slowed down, stuttered and rebuilt, reflecting a world of illusory borders, vanishing landscapes and glitching ecosystems. One track is even called "In Vanishing Landscapes." Even so, the notes say the record stays rooted in caring for something shared, a field of music grown through listening, improvising and coming back together again and again.
The track list
The album runs 11 tracks: "Second Language," "Jalur-Jalur," "Soft Fascination," "In Vanishing Landscapes," "Ember," "( )," "Voicemap 1," "A Tiny Now," "Watertalk," "Hidden Channel" and "Unlayering." The catalog number printed on the sleeve is MFM086.
Our call
This one is Surfacing. Asa Tone make a strong case for collaboration at a distance, turning the gaps between three cities into part of the sound. If you like ambient music with a pulse, where voices, synths and drums float in and out instead of sitting still, start with "Second Language" in the player above. You can follow the members on their own pages too, including Tristan Arp and Kaazi.
New to this corner of music? Our ambient music starter guide is a good place to begin. For more records from the edges, see Light in the Attic's dig into Mexico's lost experimental records and Richard Skelton and Lawrence English's NOON.
