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, whirring circuitry. Only the tender, tribal “Ember” evolves into a “proper” song.

Each piece is a showcase of complex but chilled programming. Bucolic, but busy with synthetic steel pans, marimba, kalimba, balaphon, and the zing of treated zither strings. Figures, timbres, gently tumbling. Beats bouncing off one another in an organic manner. Like IDM recreating an ancient ceremony. Meditative mantras surrounding the listener with a sense of serenity. Ringing, shimmering. Bits and pieces sometimes running backwards without interrupting the flow.

While the machines and methods are modern, the melodies are traditional in flavour. The cool, computerised collisions, the counterpoint, as West African as Steve Reich-ian. The sound design shares something with folks like Visible Cloaks, or aus, the artists on his label, Flau, and others influenced by the intricate, electronic improvisations of the Japanese innovators / pioneers, Inoyamaland. That said, “Mutalkind” is far more “pop”, more accessible, than any of the above. While the production is totally contemporary, there is something timeless to the album. It could also, just as easily be an avant-garde 80s treasure, discovered by a diligent digger, ready to be slotted into a sunset soundtrack.*

*I can hear echoes of things like Laurie Anderson’s “Excellent Birds”.

Asa Tone’s “Mutalkind” can be ordered directly from Music From Memory.