Returning Minimalism: New Works for Balinese Gamelan Gong Kebyar

A bird sings and insects hum in the background. A metallophone begins playing a rapid three-beat pattern. Another, played with soft beaters and sounding like singing bowls, joins in, and then another, and another. Three-quarters of an hour later, the last instrument fades and the wildlife takes over again. And, as hypnotists say, you're back in the room. In Returning Minimalism, a group of Balinese musicians take the idea of Terry Riley's In C – a web of melodic fragments that the players develop on the hoof – and apply it to the bronze percussion of their own gamelan gong kebyar. It's the companion to a disc of Javanese gamelan (reviewed in #79), but the new album is better, perhaps because the fierce, bright Balinese instruments adapt to the concept more easily than the restrained Javanese gamelan.

The disc has two long tracks. The first, ‘In Deng’, is the floor-filler – it builds and builds, instruments tinkering with the theme while gongs shift the harmonic foundations. ‘In Ding’ is the comedown, slower, sadder, more cryptic and prowling. They're both great. The music highlights the differences between gamelan and minimalism as much as the similarities. Gong kebyar is a firework display that piles up spectacular effects; minimalist music is like gazing into the flames of a fire – it's always the same but always different. This falls somewhere in the middle; the Western composer it most recalls is John Adams, with his lush and romantic take on minimalism.