Xing Wu Records: SHÀNG ‚Äì 3-Way Split-CD
After the wildly successful first release (the international compilation CD Xing Wu / Insight which has garnered much acclaim overseas but yet totally ignored locally), forefront local avant-garde/experimental label Xing Wu has finally released its second project.
SHÀNG features three different artists, namely Yin Pin, Yandsen (ex-Moxuan) and Ah Tham AKA Tham Kar Mun (ex-Chong Yang). Some of you may have seen them perform as A Thousand Year Liquor & Death and many more permutations and guises earlier this decade, either at one of the Unclogged series or at the Majelis series. Of late these guys have gone totally off the map, with Pin living in Melbourne, and the other two learning new instruments and generally probing the mysteries of “difficult music” (if you can call it so).
Price is RM 36 (inclusive of postage). SHANG: THAM KAR MUN / YANDSEN / YEOH YIN PIN (XW5002 CD) Xing-Wu’s second release, Shang, brings together recent works by 3 “old men” of Malaysia’s Mejelis scene who are also co-founders of the EMACM (Experimental Musicians & Artists Co-operative Malaysia). The 3 pieces documented here each draw from and trace out disparate trajectories, but share as an exigent aim the portrayal and expression of gestures that reference Malaysia — however oblique and idiosyncratic these references may seem to be. A revered figure in the Malaysian-Chinese underground, Tham Kar Mun’s contribution, “Confining Abstract in Zero” is a piece composed solely with voice and objects. This composition is almost completely driven by a colloqualised quasi-Taoist predilection, i.e., a philosophical and pragmatic concern that attempts to stage a (im)possible surmountation of a/the reified Past by approximating the point of Abstraction — a point where the Past would appear as an effaceable or/and ponderous moment. Yandsen’s “In The Score” is a meditative performance with an acoustic instrument. While the piece may appear gesturally improvised through and through, it is really a sustained and careful translation of his long and arduous study of Klangite “witticisms” (something unfortunately only a Klangite could ever understand). This piece further reveals Yandsen’s terribly rustic sensibility in a constrained and disciplined performance. It further attempts to evoke temporal details inherent in tensional moments between punctuation and stillness. With close to a decade and a half worth of unreleased material, Yeoh Yin Pin’s latest offering, “Funeral”, closes this release with a surreal journey that revisits his long-standing fascination — since childhood — for colloquial Chinese-Hokkien opera and Taoist funeral music. At times baroque and at times minimal (and no doubt the distinction often collapses), this piece not only alludes to a personal and cultural history but also attempts, above all, to foreground the complexities that surround the relation between sound and meaning. Contact: jabes@yat.ch or visit Xing Wu’s Website According to the site, it is available in KL at the Music Exchange & Fantasy Music.
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