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"RADIO SUMATRA: THE INDONESIAN FM EXPERIENCE"
This is third volume examining Sumatran popular music to be released onAlan Bishop's non-authoritarian world music label Sublime Frequencies.The first was Folk and Pop Sounds of Sumatra Vol. 1,which was the label's very first release, a compilation of music fromcassettes purchased in the northwesternmost island of the Indonesianarchipelago.Sublime Frequencies
The breadth and scope of Sumatra's indigenous musicalculture was fascinating, as were the bizarre cross-culturaljuxtapositions that often resulted in hilariously corny but eminentlylistenable pop hybrids. The material on this disc is much the same asthat earlier disc, except that all of this music was captured from FMradio broadcasts throughout Sumatra, Java and other parts of Indonesia.Anyone who has heard past volumes of radio collage from the SF labelknows that Bishop is particularly talented at editing and sequencingthese volumes with a listener in mind. He intersperses disparatemusical styles with radio station IDs, sections of Sumatran talk radio,karaoke call-in shows, signal jamming noise and other assortedunexplained audio phenomena. Bishop has an ear for the chaotic clash ofethnic styles that is only possible in a place like Indonesia,deliberately segueing from Islamic Folk to Gambus Rock, from saccharinefemale vocal pop to punk and heavy metal pastiches. Some of the songsare utterly excruciating, others are strangely beautiful, but none lastlonger than three to four minutes, so there's always relief around thecorner if your ears can't take any more. Sumatran culture in particularseems to fascinate Bishop because it plays into his aestheticpredilection for adulterated, post-modern cultural half-breeds, whichhe clearly sees as superior to ideas of cultural purity or classicism.Through the years, the music that Bishop has made with the Sun CityGirls has freely and unceremoniously dipped into various ethnic musicforgeries with an admirable lack of political correctness or humility.With Sublime Frequencies releases like these, Bishop's ideas of "worldpsychedelia" come into clearer focus; the continued cross-germinatingand interlacing of popular art forms create a complex and chaotictangle of ethnic noise that resists deconstruction or analysis, buthints at a vast cultural archive simmering below the surface. The lackof information about the performing artists, recording dates or othercontextualizing information provided with these releases tends tosupport this view. For Sublime Frequencies, it doesn't really matterwhere or how or why, it just matters that we can tune into something atonce exotic and familiar that forces us to consider the rapidlyconverging world community.
The breadth and scope of Sumatra's indigenous musicalculture was fascinating, as were the bizarre cross-culturaljuxtapositions that often resulted in hilariously corny but eminentlylistenable pop hybrids. The material on this disc is much the same asthat earlier disc, except that all of this music was captured from FMradio broadcasts throughout Sumatra, Java and other parts of Indonesia.Anyone who has heard past volumes of radio collage from the SF labelknows that Bishop is particularly talented at editing and sequencingthese volumes with a listener in mind. He intersperses disparatemusical styles with radio station IDs, sections of Sumatran talk radio,karaoke call-in shows, signal jamming noise and other assortedunexplained audio phenomena. Bishop has an ear for the chaotic clash ofethnic styles that is only possible in a place like Indonesia,deliberately segueing from Islamic Folk to Gambus Rock, from saccharinefemale vocal pop to punk and heavy metal pastiches. Some of the songsare utterly excruciating, others are strangely beautiful, but none lastlonger than three to four minutes, so there's always relief around thecorner if your ears can't take any more. Sumatran culture in particularseems to fascinate Bishop because it plays into his aestheticpredilection for adulterated, post-modern cultural half-breeds, whichhe clearly sees as superior to ideas of cultural purity or classicism.Through the years, the music that Bishop has made with the Sun CityGirls has freely and unceremoniously dipped into various ethnic musicforgeries with an admirable lack of political correctness or humility.With Sublime Frequencies releases like these, Bishop's ideas of "worldpsychedelia" come into clearer focus; the continued cross-germinatingand interlacing of popular art forms create a complex and chaotictangle of ethnic noise that resists deconstruction or analysis, buthints at a vast cultural archive simmering below the surface. The lackof information about the performing artists, recording dates or othercontextualizing information provided with these releases tends tosupport this view. For Sublime Frequencies, it doesn't really matterwhere or how or why, it just matters that we can tune into something atonce exotic and familiar that forces us to consider the rapidlyconverging world community.samples:
