Killer contemporary asian electronic music on Chinabot (NM)
Sipaningkah creates dense, trance-like compositions that are steeped in the Minangkabau culture of his home province of West Sumatra, Indonesia. Fusing elements of folk and avant- garde noise, his new Chinabot-released record Langkah Suruik calls on ancient musical traditions to create a new world, one that has a teeming, hypnotic energy, rich with textural depth.
Lagkah Suruik, which translates as “step back” in the Minangkabau language, comes from a concept in the Silat Harimau martial arts philosophy. “The Langkah Suruik is the wisest step, choosing to step back and not fight,” says Sipaningkah. “However, I interpret Langkah Suruik as a way to see, search for and relearn the roots of our personal traditions, so that we can then use them in reading the current world situation.”
On Langkah Suruik, the multi-instrumentalist Sipaningkah draws deeply from Minangkabau tradition while forging his own experimental path. It features an instrument he created himself, a “Tasauff” percussion instrument inspired by three traditional Minangkabau musical instruments: the Tasa drum, Talempong gong and Rabab string instrument.
He also plays traditional Minangkabau instruments on Langkah Suruik, including a pupuik soroang, a wind instrument inspired by the sound of elephants, as well as the Canang gong, a serunai flute, and a sampleong pipe. Sipaningkah uses this traditional repertoire in an eclectic and unexpected way, creating pummelling rhythms in non-traditional song structures.
The album is deeply concerned with the contemporary as well as the past. Dantuang, which translates as “boom” or “explosion,” is Sipaningkah’s response to the current situation in Gaza. It opens with a riot of flute sounds before a complex, hammering beat kicks in, insistent and dangerous, roiling the music up into a howl of pain. Folk meats raw noise again on Ranuang, a dirge that builds into a shimmering cataclysm of frenetic energy.
