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Album Review: ‘Aroma Kahayan’ by Theo Nugraha and Arrington de Dionyso

Recorded in 2015, the collaborative album from Kalimantan noise musician Theo Nugraha and American experimentalist Arrington de Dionyso only found release late last year

Marcel Thee (The Jakarta Post)
Fri, January 26, 2018

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Album Review: ‘Aroma Kahayan’ by Theo Nugraha and Arrington de Dionyso

Recorded in 2015, the collaborative album from Kalimantan noise musician Theo Nugraha and American experimentalist Arrington de Dionyso only found release late last year. It can now be bought on Dionyso’s Bandcamp page for a “pay-what-you-want” price.

Considering the musicians involved in it, it comes as no surprise that the record sounds as expansive and eclectic as it does. A one-track, 30 minutes-plus odyssey of sounds, Aroma Kahayan conjures up everything from dissonant drones to pulsating electronics — ebbing and flowing with unpredictable dynamics.

Just when things start to feel comfortable, Nugraha and Dionyso pick it up again with another deconstruction of sound. At times, its magic comes from not being able to tell the “real” instruments apart from the electronics.

The record was recorded in Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan, in 2015, while Dionyso was touring Indonesia.

A multi-instrumentalist known for playing with unorthodox instruments, for this recording, Dionyso utilized a bass clarinet, a lalove, a suling (traditional Indonesian recorder), and an alat guntur (bromiophone). Meanwhile, Nugroho provided auralscapes through his home-made electronic setups, which included a variety of noise-makers and sound-effect pedals.

“Arrington visited us [in Palangkaraya] in December of that year,” Nugraha said.

“And on the second day he was there, we decided to do the recording, but we couldn’t figure out how to go about it.”

The initial idea by Nugraha was to ask Dionyso help him organize a show in the forest area there.

For his part, Dionyso says that he has always felt at home working in Indonesia.

“There is an incredible openness. I meet many musicians who are so excited about trying something new. It feels like a very ‘fair’ exchange to me.”

Eventually the duo headed to the residence of a friend of Nugraha’s. The friend had simple Zoom recording equipment that they would have to make do with.

“We recorded the whole thing live right in [the friend’s] living room,” explains Nugraha. The friend had company over, and the sound of them chatting and laughing as they played a game of cards can be heard prominently on the recording as the song progresses.

“We were discussing the noises that they were making, which were bleeding into the recording, but in the end we didn’t mind it,” Nugraha says.

Dionyso concurs, and adds that “we wanted to embrace all of the sounds happening at the same time, everything would become a part of the larger expression in that moment. We didn’t really talk about it very much before the recording, it just felt like we had a natural understanding of what we were trying to do.”

The recording process relied fully on the spontaneity of the moment, without any deep prior discussion between Nugraha and Dionyso about the music they were going to record. Nugraha was used to playing improvised pieces live, but it was his first time putting a jam session down to tape that way.

Explains Nugraha, “I was a bit nervous at first, but it was a process where everything flowed — like a labyrinth — but then the rhythm set itself on course. We captured moments, like the noise the rain was making as it dripped on the roof while we were recording.”

“Music in Indonesia is connected with a kind of spiritual feeling — when we play together we aren’t just playing to make people happy or have a party, we’re also playing to make a connection with nature and perhaps to have a connection with the spiritual world,” says Dionyso, who adds that it isn’t always the case when he plays with American or European musicians — “But it Indonesia it is never ‘only’ the music, the music is just a way to connect with bigger things that we can’t always see.”

For his part, Nugraha used a simple Casio keyboard, which he fed through some sound-effect pedals, as well as a circuit-bending equipment.

Nugraha and Dionyso came up with the title, which references Lake Kahayan in the region, as it was a “symbol.”

“He saw it as something that represented moments like meeting with [indigenous] people in the forest, or visiting Mount Tenkiling where Tjilik Riwut [Kalimantan national hero] prayed and meditated, and all the related Dayak culture,” suggests Nugraha about Dionyso’s use of the title.

Though not very audible in the recording itself, the duo also used samples of traditional and children’s songs of the region — though they were heavily processed as to be anything resembling what they were.

Aroma Kahayan is certainly an acquired taste, but it is a true artistic expression — spontaneous and unfiltered. It is a hypnotic soundtrack of the bridging between the indigenous and modern world, whereupon new musical methods process raw sounds into something that is, at once, familiar and alien.

“I learned a lot about the process of improvization,” says Nugraha, “in terms of how to respond to other instruments — whatever it is. Learning to utilize different techniques when responding to new sounds was a big thing for me,” he says.

Dionyso praises Nugraha, saying that “in playing music with Theo I find him to be a very sensitive listener, always paying close attention to the ways of expressive sound.”

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Aroma Kahayan can be bought through arrington.bandcamp.com

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