Jun Ray Song Chang

by

ASA-CHANG & 巡礼

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What do you get when you combine chattering, idiosyncratic tabla rhythms, squelchy analog electronics, and a drunken, back alley vibe worthy of early 80s Tom Waits? Asa-Chang & Junray deliver just such a concoction. Surprisingly, it goes down smooth and tastes remarkably sweet. As bands like Cornelius, the Boredoms, and Ground Zero have demonstrated, the Japanese have a knack for taking aspects of widely disparate musical styles and mashing them into garish, technicolor hybrids. Like Acid Mothers Temple, Asa-Chang and Junray take their assortment of influences and stretch, splice, and mutate them into an individual language. Unlike AMT, A-C & J don't have their image invested in a particular era. Despite the predominance of tablas, there are no cutesy pomo references to Indian culture. In the absence of a conceptual agenda, hybridity becomes an identity in and of itself. The key to the group's unique sound is found in the arrangments, where changes in various instrumental and vocal sounds seem to automatically trigger changes in others. Zig-zagging tabla runs are shadowed by spoken word vocals, and hairpin rhythmic stops cause electronic tones to slide up or down a scale. Orchestral backdrops suddenly shift in tone without changing timbre, like a sheet of sound being whipped about in the breeze, its shadows and contortions changing continuously despite the static print. I can state with confidence that this disc is like nothing else you've ever heard. Its alien beauty seems to be indicative of a new era, where the visible seams of postmodern pastiche have given way to nomadic hybridity as a natural state. The cultural tributaries that have rapidly converged with the advances in global communications technologies of the last couple of decades have created an environment where a group with seemingly incompatible influences can create a sound that simultaneously evokes manic exploration, and a relaxed conversation among friends