About JALAN JALAN

Jalan Jalan is an experimental New Age/world fusion outfit from Japan. Listeners familiar with the group's beautiful debut BALI will find much to appreciate on BALI DUA, which arguably improves on its predecessor. Like BALI, BALI DUA uses Indonesian gamelan music as its foundation, sampling the traditional instruments (along with various chimes and gongs) to evoke breezy, paradisiacal visions of Bali. Behind, in, and around these samples, however, Jalan Jalan employ keys and electronic textures to generate wide, symphonic swaths of atmosphere that push the gamelan elements into the stratosphere. The resulting mix is intoxicating, bringing together ambient, electronica, world music, and minimal composition for an overall effect that is perfectly suited to meditation, relaxation, yogic practices, and headphone immersion. [JALAN JALAN] means 'to walk' in Indonesian. [JALAN] means road, and by doubling it, it turns into a verb. When you walk through the island of Bali, you will notice how this island is richly covered with sounds. As you walk the village paths and the road that leads you to the beach, you will hear the sounds of the island. It is like the scent of the flowers in the air. Sounds flow from this album just like that. The air of Bali itself. The Gamelan is an orchestra of brass instruments unique to the islands of Bali and Java. Each instrument plays the same chord in slightly different scales. The soft sounds of brass resonate with each other forming one big sound wave. At times, the sound is like a bellow from underground. Almost every man in Bali is a Gamelan player. They are brought up listening to the sound of the Gamelan as their lullabies. It is their flesh and blood. In other words, Gamelan music is always being played within the bodies of the people of Bali. When we listen to this album, what we hear is the mindscape of the people of Bali, the sounds of the Gamelan, which are always on their minds. 'JALAN JALAN' brings us the music which fills the everyday lives of the Balinese people, and by using a new instrument called the computer they have assimilated the music with ambient sounds. Bali is said to be the most spiritual place in the world. It is a mysterious island, playing music like a living creature. This album takes us there.