Dewa Alit & Gamelan Salukat: Chasing the Phantom (Black Truffle)

Genetic (Black Truffle, 2020), the first release outside Indonesia from contemporary Balinese composer Dewa Alitand his Gamelan Salukat, remains a favorite, not just from 2020, but also from Oren Ambarchi’s Black Truffle imprint.

Gamelan Salukat, a 25-member ensemble performs on instruments specially built to Alit's designs, using a unique 11-note scale. The 2020 album includes one piece spread across two sides. The ensemble's uniquely-tuned metallophones launches into a stunning passage of rhythmically complex call-and-response motifs, making striking use of abruptly muted chords. There are many moments in this recording where the acoustic ensemble sounds almost electronic, a productive uncertainty that pushes Alitand (and the listener) far outside the gamelan tradition.

In short, we were excited for the arrival of Chasing the Phantom.

From the one-sheet:

“Dewa Alit, Bali's master of contemporary Gamelan composition, returns to Black Truffle with Chasing the Phantom, presenting two recent works played by the composer's Gamelan Salukat […]

Alit explains that the ensemble's name suggests ‘a place to fuse creative ideas to generate new, innovative works’ and both [of the] compositions [included here] demonstrate the composer's ability to wring stunning new possibilities from variations on the traditional Gamelan ensemble [...]

‘Ngejuk Memedi’ (Chasing the Phantom) results from Alit's reflection on the complex relationship between tradition and modernity in Balinese culture, particularly in the way that belief in the phantoms or spirits known as ‘memedi’ are shared through social media using digital technologies.

Embodying this uncanny co-existence, the opening passages of the piece are at once immediately recognizable in their use of the metallophones of the Gamelan ensemble and strikingly reminiscent of electronics in their timbre and movement. At points, what we hear seems to have been fragmented with digital tools, or even to originate in some incessantly glitching DX7. After several minutes of this manically tinkling metallic sound world, the metallophones are joined by drums for a meditative passage of lower dynamics, as the uniformly high pitch range explored in the opening sections gradually opens up to include resonant low gong hits.

‘Likad,’ written during Covid-19 lockdowns, channels anxiety and uncertainty into musical form, resulting in a piece that, even by Alit's standards, is stunning in its complexity and the virtuosity it demands of Gamelan Salukat. Its opening section is perhaps most remarkable for its mastery of texture, with rapid transitions between dry, muted strikes, and metallic shimmers calling to mind the use of filters in electronic music. At points, the complex irregular repetitions of short melodic patterns, where the music seems to get stuck or be suddenly interrupted by a skip, recall the mad sampler works of Alvin Curran or the skittering surface of prime period Oval more than anything familiar from acoustic percussion music. Moving through a dizzying series of twists and turns, the piece ends with a majestic sequence of chords possessing an almost hieratic power.”