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sandikala

by Sandikala Ensemble

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"With his intelligence and imagination, Dion has succeeded in expanding the musical language of the Javanese gendèr. Dion's work is one of the representations of the latest generation of gamelan composers that treads to the road not taken, it's worth waiting for what Dion's next works will look like." - Wahyu Thoyyib Pambayun, composer and gamelan musician

"An extraordinary synthesis of concepts essential to traditional Javanese music, such as rasa and irama, and a contemporary engagement with electroacoustic techniques, psychoacoustic phenomena, and egalitarian cultural hybridity. Dion Nataraja ponders important questions through arresting sonorities, and this is a true intercultural music for our time." - Anthony Cheung, composer and pianist
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Herutjokro as Posthuman

Herutjokro as Posthuman is a piece that explores the ideas of Romo Herutjokro Semono (1900 - 1981) in relation with the discourse of posthumanism. Conceptually, it is an attempt to deconstruct and build new ideas based on the Javanese idea of rasa; rasa is secularized, reinterpreted, and translated into formal and extra-musical processes through the use of extended techniques on the gamelan, improvisation, alternative tuning (the gendèr and suling in this piece are retuned), spectral harmony, and algorithmic processes.
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Ronggowarsito's Neganthropocene

What does transculturality mean on the brink of the apocalypse? In an attempt to reflect upon this question, I attempt to explore the question of transcultural composition outside the framework of an optimistic synthesis. Rather than a sense of optimism, a sombre air of pessimism persists throughout the piece: does any transcultural project still mean anything in the face of the climate catastrophe? Here, the central theme revolves around the question of survival, as well as the question of the post-anthropocene. This theme is manifested through the use of gazel (Turkish solo singing genre) improvisation with an instruction for the singer to constantly shift the makam. The texts are collages from the book of Revelation, fragments of Ronggowarsito’s poetry (Ronggowarsito, Javanese poet, 19th century), and distorted Candrasengkala. The piece is based on the principle of hyperkembangan, a compositional technique I developed that explores the liminality between pulse, complex sound, and noise; it is an extreme extension of the idea of irama (rhythmic density) from Central Javanese gamelan.
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Hyperkembangan X

The attempt to stretch the concept of irama by exploring the liminality between pulse and noise is at the heart of this piece. This idea, coming from Central Javanese gamelan, organizes the temporal density within a piece; starting from irama lancar with one saron panerus beats per balungan notes, to irama rangkep with sixteen saron panerus beats per balungan notes. Hyperkembangan is based on a central question: what would the sound of an extremely high level of irama be, where the balungan notes is imperceivably sparse, while the elaboration is extremely dense? This hypothetical situation leads me to conceptualize a piece based on a progression from pulse, to complex sound (represented by spectral harmonies), to noise—noise here functions as a representation of an overload in the elaborative part. The piece is played with two gendèrs with pair tuning consists of customized 14 notes system that could accommodate spectral harmonies (based on the spectra of note 1 in gendèr struck with hard mallet) and its various manipulations. The "X" in the title—as well as a reference to Boulez's "Polyphonie X"—suggests a kind of cultural defacing, where new content is imposed on the cultural memory of the music, yet still maintains parts of those memories; a form of a musical palimpsest.

credits

released October 15, 2021

Compositions by Dion Nataraja

The gamelan pieces are performed by Sandikala Ensemble

Yustiawan Paradigma Umar - Gendèr
Roni Driyastoto - Rebab, Gendèr
Mustika Garis - Rebab, Gendèr
Suseno Setyo Wibowo - Gendèr
Daniel O'Connor - Percussion

Allen Shawn - Piano I
Yoshiko Sato - Piano II
Nathaniel Parke - Cello
Kaori Washiyama - Violin
Joseph Alpar - Makam Vocal

Mixing and Recording - Luke Taylor, Adnan

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dion nataraja Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Dion Nataraja is a composer, artist, and scholar from Indonesia. He is currently pursuing a PhD in music composition in UC Berkeley, California. His musical and scholarly works have been focusing on the intersection of areas such as spectral music, Javanese gamelan, improvisation, instrument building, algorithmic composition, posthumanism, postcolonial studies, and critical theories. ... more

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