David Parsons - Ngaio Gamelan

Well folks its my 200th post and to celebrate a very special record
that few people have heard about, from an artist few people know
anything about. When I first heard this record it threw me head
long into a incredible, expansive musical world. It was on a show
on the ultra amazing Internet radio station Hearts of Space, I
first heard this record, on the first show of theirs I heard.
I've lost count of how much new music HOS has introduced me
to, but this post is about David Parsons
David comes from New Zealand, with some 13 albums to his
name and a number of world music site recorded album sets
including the mammoth 15 volume Music of Islam and the
fantastic 5 volume Music of Armenia. He plays many
instruments, sitar being the one that started his musical
journey.
After nearly five years of traveling, including 11 months on the
road in one year, the Parsons family returned to New Zealand
in 1997. Parsons finally returned to his own music. Consciously,
he says, his approach hadn’t changed. He was still working
intuitively, still picking up the sitar when he needed a burst
of inspiration. But subconsciously, he suspects a profound
influence. “I couldn’t believe the precision of the rhythms
we heard while we were traveling,” he says. “So my approach
didn’t change, but the materials and ideas did.” Drawing on
the melodies and instruments he had recorded around the
Eastern Hemisphere, Parsons set to work on a project that
would bring the amazing experience of the world’s ancient
acoustic traditions into an electronic setting.
It would become the record Ngaio Gamelan.
Using samples of his hours of recordings of instruments like
the Armenian duduk (an oboe made of apricot wood), the Iranian
kemanche (a spike fiddle), and the sarangi (the Indian box cello),
Parsons created a sound world that was enriched by his years of
travel. The trademark darkness that colored his prior recordings
was leavened somewhat by the brilliant chimes of the Indonesian
gamelan, the metal percussion orchestras of Java and Bali .
“I knew the duduk would fit with the Balinese gamelan,”
he says. But the practicalities of bringing those two tunings
and traditions together would have been difficult to do without
electronics. After spending so much time with some of the world’s
great acoustic traditions,
Parsons says, “it was hard to warm up to synthesizers again.
But if you use them for what they can do, not what they can’t do,
it works out. The synthesizer is good at aural landscapes
and sound sculpting—creating sounds you’ve never heard before.”
Since Balinese gamelans are tuned to specific scales,
Parsons had to play the sounds into his sampler and then
'temper' the sampled sounds to fit into the scale needed.
This record is a true masterpiece.

Tracklist
01 - Urarto to Ubud
02 - Tjampuhan
03 - Laplapan
04 - Ararat Legong
05 - Jalan Jalan
06 - Sarangi Saron

Download Here

David Parsons - Ararat Legong