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The Wire #186 August 1999
Crank up the central heating, puff on a clove-scented cigarette, and use this album to transform your sitting room into a Balinese bus station. Or a bustling market, a garden in pouring rain, a gamelan maker's showroom, or a frog choir in a rice field. Make no mistake, these frogs are good, crisply recorded while busy rehearsing their minimalist improvisations. Indonesian Soundscapes is a spinoff from a field recording trip by Loren Nerell and Dale Strumpell. Stepping back from a tight focus on music, the ear discovers how it is integrated into other activity, whether it's a shadow play for a New Year party. Or Muzak oozing through a Surabaya airport lounge. The general feel is pleasantly ambient, and the brain-shredding racket that is also part of Asian street life is kept at arm's length. - Clive Bell
Outburn Magazine Issue 10 September 1999
Ethno-flavored field recordings: Given his inspired flair for ethnic music and affinity for travel, Loren Nerell is unquestionably the ideal candidate for producing an audio documentation of Indonesian culture. Compiled during a series of visits to Java and Bali between 1992 and 1997, Indonesian Soundscapes is a varied travel guide via intensive location recordings of native ceremonies, natural environments, and other places of interest. The most intriguing pieces tend to be the ceremonial entries such as the predawn sanctity of Call to Prayer, the aggressive native percussion ensemble in Galungan Ceremony, and most of all, the primal rage of gamelan monkey chants in Kecak. Thoroughly effective are the tracks of natural ambience found in the self-explanatory Frogs, Morning Insect Sounds, Evening Sounds, and Morning Rain. From purely a listening standpoint, certain inconsequential tracks fail to sustain interest for the full duration as they are inadequate without firsthand visuals, namely the stops at the Bus Depot and Surabaya Airport, in addition to the everyday commotion heard in Walk Through the Market. Indonesian Soundscapes may disappoint somewhat for its lack of musical oriented content. In terms of authenticity with respect to its subject matter however, it is a glowing success. - Adam Bialek.
The Boston Phoenix November 11 - 18, 1999
Indonesian Soundscapes (Soleilmoon) was recorded by Loren Nerell while he was putting together an ethnomusicology master's thesis. The disc includes a few pieces of situational music: part of a Javanese "shadow play," some spectacular gamelan ensembles, the "monkey chants" that are widely assumed to be traditional but were actually invented for tourists' benefit. But it also fleshes out their background with the sounds of Indonesian frogs and insects, a gamelan maker's showroom with people testing out the instruments, the ambient sounds of the market in Payangan, and even a Balinese bus depot. The rhythm and tones of speech, animals, weather, and daily life bear the same relationship to a place's music that its language bears to its poetry; hearing the sound world around Indonesia's music is a path toward understanding how it works within its culture. - Douglas Wolk
MANIFOLD MAILORDER
Loren Nerell, an artist on Lustmords Side Effects label, went to Bali to study a form of ceremonial music, and while there became fascinated with the environmental sounds; the jungle, insects, ceremonies and social gatherings, the airport lounge, the markets, different times of day like morning, night. Recording these locations, a disc of these moments has been put together here with stunning effect and clarity. A Koji Marutani, Syllyk attitude is apparent here as the cold, concrete sounds of "what is happening" is the background colour, but clear segues and changes occur from track to track. "Being There" is the order of the day, and whats better than being a ghost in a strange land? The strangely-folded booklet enclosed is nice as well, with some explanatory text. And a detailed track description on the back.Very, very nice. Magical.
Digital Artifact
Indonesian Soundscapes is the document of fieldwork done by one Loren Nerell while in Bali working on a masters thesis in Ethnomusicology. Though originally focused on a particular form of ceremonial temple music, Nerell was drawn in the found sounds and aural environments of routine life in Bali and Java.
Titles like Wind Through Bamboo Forest, Frogs, Bus Depot, and Morning Insect Sounds deliver just what they promise as Nerell's portable DAT recorder comes along for every walk, ride and event. And these are events. Recorded ceremonies feature traditional chants, choruses and heavy rhythmic percussion, and these are a handful of the pieces scatter throughout the 71 minute recording. Though interesting, these segments may only be disruptive or unsettling to anyone being lulled to sleep by the quiet, calming ambient moments. This recording might best be looked at as a PBS style documentary soundtrack. - Shuler
Sideline #28
This CD has been recorded in Bali and Java by Loren Nerell and Dale Strumpell between June 1992 and September 1997. The title of the project is a good summary of what this duo invites you to listening to. They simply recorded numerous sounds going from ceremonial music to very imaginable sound from the street or the forest. Its a picture from Indonesia full of noises coming from chickens, insects, birds, people who're speaking, ritual passages ... what ever. The result is a kind of ambient soundscape which has been already release by other projects like Ebola, Alan Lamb... - D.P.
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