Asa Tone / Mutalkind / Music From Memory

The trio Asa Tone, following their recent collaboration with the sadly departed Ariel Kalma, return with a new album. The set, titled “Mutalkind”, finds the friends – Melati ESP, Tristan Arp and Kaazi – indulging in further electro-acoustic experiments, exploring creating a musical language that blurs and blends their Mexican, Indonesian and American roots. Now also adding Balinese percussionist Putu Septa into the mix. The latter’s presence is felt, in particular, on tracks such as “Jalur-Jalur”, where rhythmic, gamelan patterns ripple beneath Arp’s tropical modular textures and Melati’s vocals. Here she moves between intimate words – as if lifted from a phone – and soft, angelic, hushed scatting. Throughout the recordings Melati’s contributions are cut up and used percussively, like another instrument. The fragments, a glitched glossolalia, often appearing to be triggered / MIDI-ed with the drums themselves. “In Vanishing Landscapes” is a collage of whispers and quietly whizzing,…