Gamelan Pandan Arum

My favorite thing about the Performing Indonesia festival was that it brought together people I’ve seen perform, met and played gamelan with from Davis, Los Angeles, Seattle and D.C. The two directors of the UC Davis gamelan played with Pusaka Sunda, Jessika Kenney performed as her duo, and a singer from the L.A. consulate group sang with the embassy group.

But the biggest gamelan-world overlap was Pandan Arum, consisting of many members of CalArts’ Burat Wangi, the focus of my master’s thesis. Tyler Yamin established the group after studying in a remote Balinese village, learning a distinct style of court music from the 17th century that is nearly extinct. His mentor unexpectedly passed away last summer, leaving Tyler to help organize the group in Bali and teach the repertoire to his colleagues in Los Angeles.

If you’re familiar with Balinese gamelan, you’ll notice that this group has a very different sound. The metallophones play in unison instead of interlocking, and while the popular gong kebyar is frenetically fast-paced, this samara pegulingan style is comparatively much slower.

My First Radio Documentary!

I think I’ve been working toward this for a really long time, and I’ve only realized it in the last few months. I’ve always wanted to be a journalist, but my interest and confidence in writing has waxed and waned. I’ve always loved sharing music, but you can only do so much storytelling with radio DJing.

Producing radio documentaries seems to be a culmination of so many skills I’ve been working to gather: recording music and atmospheric sounds, interviewing, writing narration, editing audio and creating a compelling story.

I met one of the hosts of “Feminist Magazine” while taking pledges for the KPFK fund drive last month. When I told her I studied journalism at USC, she invited me to contribute stories to the show. Right away I thought about Sharmi and Anal Cube, who were coming to L.A. in a couple weeks on a tour they described as “sweaty hairy femmes of color combing through the pubic U.S.”

So I worked it out with Sharmi, got the bands’ permission, went to two of their shows (but only recorded music at the second because I got smoked out at the first), brought them to the KPFK studios to record an interview, transcribed for days, edited for days. How do people do this every week?

The story aired today, and I got to hear myself through an actual radio, from outside the studio, for the first time ever. And I can’t wait to work on more.

You can hear it too!

Beast Nest + SBSM

Sharmi Basu, a.k.a. Beast Nest, Beastie, Mama Buries, Brother Time, Sharmin Ultra! and my former KDVS publicity co-director, spent a few days in Los Angeles on tour as part of an Oakland music collective called Anal Cube.

Her current music project is a mash of electronic effects manipulating a Yamaha keyboard and a Nintendo DS.

“I start off harsh, like creating some sort of harsher environment, and then moving into some sort of attempt at light that’s not totally light, but reaching for that within the harshness,” she explains of her set. “You’re constantly trying to move through the fog to get to the light, and it never actually happens. So you end up falling back into the darkness — but then there’s that moment.”

SBSM is Rosie (singing on this song), Sep and Laura. I asked what it stands for — Sharmi Basu Sound Master is one iteration, but it’s up for interpretation. Each member sang two songs, and Rosie announced hers were for her mom, who passed away when she was only 10.

“It’s kind of like everything is a reminder of her absence, and so i think it’s really good for me,” she says about performing these songs. “How do I take the birth and death out of me and my art? I think it’s impossible. I can try to sing about something different, but it all comes from that place.”

These clips are just a sneak preview of a bigger Adventures in Audio project to be revealed next week. Stay tuned!

John Densmore Station ID

I met John Densmore today.

The first time he came into the studio at KPFK, where I’ve been volunteering as a production assistant, it took me a few minutes to realize who he was: the drummer of The freakin’ Doors. I wanted to record something with him then, but he was in and out before I could close the John Densmore Wikipedia page.

He has been promoting his new book, The Doors: Unhinged, about the legal battles between the remaining members and parents after Jim Morrison died. And in the middle of promoting, Ray Manzarek died too.

So the interview on “my” show, “Global Village” with Betto Arcos, was postponed until today. They discussed the book, Ray’s sickness and incredible musicianship, and insider notes on several L.A.-themed songs. The archive of the show will be up for two weeks (the interview starts halfway through).

I managed to grab John between studio pre-records to get a KDVS station identification on my dinky portable Zoom:

Jeff Goldblum: Jazzman

I could hardly believe it when I learned that actor Jeff Goldblum performs 1) every Wednesday 2) at a restaurant a mile away from my house 3) that serves gluten-free desserts 4) with a jazz ensemble 5) for free.

I was even more surprised to see that when he takes the stage at Rockwell in Los Feliz, he doesn’t act like a total goof. He doesn’t tell jokes or even talk that much at all. He plays piano. He sings and scats a little. He wears a pork pie hat. He’s not Dr. Ian Malcolm or Mac or Rachel Berry’s gay dad. He’s just a jazzman.

That said, the most engaging, energetic song of the night was when he brought up guest vocalist Maiya Sykes, who killed on “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby?”

The group plays weekly on Wednesdays at 9 and 11 p.m. It’s $20 to make a reservation or free to just show up and squeeze in, which was no problem for us.

The Downstairs Neighbor

The two guys who live below us are in a band. They practice a lot. One plays guitar, one sings. Late at night. Right now. Singing out their open window, bouncing off the adjacent apartment wall, and into our open window.

Eh, he was asking for it.

Javanese Gamelan Rehearsal

Since January, I’ve been practicing with a gamelan ensemble called Ngesthi Budoy at the Indonesian consulate in Los Angeles. This group plays in the Central Javanese style, very different although sharing the same island as the Sundanese (West Java) style I’m used to from UC Davis.

There’s a completely separate repertoire, new patterns, and the metallophones are numbered backward from Sundanese. I don’t like this tuning as much, but this dance piece “Eling-Eling Banyumasan” is pretty fun.

A big difference is we play a lot of contemporary pieces that stray from the traditional patterns and instrumentation. This song, “Mars Persahabatan,” features a standard snare drum in addition to the kendang hand drums. It’s probably the craziest gamelan song I’ve ever played:

KChung Radio ID

My buddy Solomon runs a low-power radio station in Chinatown called KChung Radio, named after its origin on Chung King Road. It started out broadcasting just one evening a week, but since the fall it has grown to cover five hours a night Sunday through Thursday, with dozens of DJs and live performances.

The station is currently holding a contest, mostly for their own benefit, to create audio station identifications for broadcast.

The winner gets a cute little KChung lightbox:

(I’m pretty sure I took this photo.)

So I cobbled together a submission tonight, attempting to redo my “I Am Sitting in a Room”-style experiment. Someone had to point out to me that I did it all wrong: I recorded straight from tape to tape in the same console instead of letting it play out loud and recording the room tone along with it. Doh!

But in this experiment I went back and forth between two portable cassette recorders. The first one is running out of battery, so my voice is slowed down (but I still can’t wrap my head around how it gets sped up to normal pitch). It pretty quickly degrades into feedback and then static.

If you want to compete too, submissions are due April 1.

• No parameters except it should probably say “KChung”
• Email to contact@kchungradio.org

Annah Anti-Palindrome

Do you get stuck in music ruts too? When you listen to the same bands over and over and see the same bands live again and again? But then out of the blue someone brand new pops up and you’re like, “I gotta get out more”?

Such was the case with Annah Anti-Palindrome, who played at Home Room last week at an event I attended without even realizing there would be live music. She’s from Oakland and plays with a loop pedal, an egg (real, not a shaker), a gas mask and a bow on a glockenspiel.

Annah also distributes this cute zine about home audio recording and editing with Audacity (like me!). They’re not available to order online, but she said they can be requested by email (for $5): resistingpalindromes at gmail.

French Quarter at The Smell

Stephen Steinbrink a.k.a. French Quarter from Tempe, Arizona, just put out two albums, neither of which I’ve been able to listen to on my stereo until I figure out some tape deck wizardry.

But this one, Desert Wasn’t Welcome, was recorded at K Records’ Dub Narcotic Studio in Olympia, Washington, so you know it’s gotta be good.

But I got to hear him play some of the tracks live at The Smell in downtown L.A. last week, along with Key Losers and The Finches. The latter two are still on tour through California, so you can check them out too!

“Goodbye Alligator Skin”