BEHOLD! THE ANARCHESTRA

Alex Ferris is quite obviously a genius, a 62-year-old inventor/composer who lives in the desert with his large array of giant, weird, hand-built musical instruments tuned to microtonal scales. It all sounds so impossibly obscure, esoteric, and outsider-y, but the music is beautiful. Even with it's lack of conventional instruments and standard Western "do-re-mi" scales, it's compulsively listenable. It helps that The Anarchestra (which could mean anything from Ferris solo to a large group) has a very tight rhythmic sense. His earlier pieces, performed in 4/4 time, have almost an Afro-Cuban level of funkiness. Not the sort of thing that gets play in discos, but it should.

Tho these are all instrumentals, with no noisy guitars or shouted vocals, the punk influence is clear, not just in the band name, but in the economy of the compositions. There's no long intros, drawn-out endings, or endless noodling. A piece begins with most of the instruments playing at once, all locked in, then a few minutes later, it stops. All that's missing is Dee Dee Ramone shouting "1, 2, 3, 4" between each track. There's a lot of albums, but it doesn't take hours of wading thu it all to find something good. You'll know right away. And what could be more DIY than building your own instruments?

Ferris' instruments don't create too many harsh noises. Percussion, strings, winds...it's all  so musical - the heir to the Harry Partch/Moondog legacy of eccentric visionaries. More recent albums have an almost meditative calm to them, but it's more "In A Silent Way"-era Miles Davis than New Age. Too much banging-and-clanging for the yoga set.

I actively seek out both invented instrument and microtonal music, so I'm amazed that I haven't heard of this guy before, but he seems to have made little effort to connect to the music world, even the avant-garde scene. He has been coming aboveground lately, releasing an enormous amount of music on his

Bandcamp page.

It's all very consistent. From what I've heard, I'd say that you could jump in anywhere, the water's fine. I happen to be listening to the "KLEKT" album as I write this, and it's probably as good a place to start as any. Highlights include the wonderfully spooky "klekt 12," and the all-too-brief 1 minute long "klekt 7." Some tracks could be "Rain Dogs"-era Tom Waits instrumentals.

Dig this 67-minute documentary:

Speaking of Harry Partch, I was amazed to read that Paul Simon is using some of Partch's instruments on his latest album. Oh great. He'll probably ruin microtonal music the way "Graceland" drove people away from the glory and wonder of African music, which sadly, to this day, still has yet to shake the hippie/urban trendy/"World Music" tag. Still, I am a little curious. Not curious to have actually listened to it yet, tho. Have any of you? Is outsider music made on homemade instruments the new NPR fad?

Here's something you most certainly will like listening to: that wonder from Down Under, Buttress O'Kneel, who's the one who hepped us to the Anarchestra in the first place. Thanks, BOK! And dig the latest release from the mistress of mad mashup madness and berserk break-core:

"Lemons": made entirely from 2 recent Beyoncé songs, chopped and sliced like, well, lemons.



OUTER SPACE MUSIC FROM OUTER SPACE!

Who or what is/are Ko Transmissions? I don't know, but the lengthy letter that accompanied the cassette release featured here tells a long, involved story of musical messages sent to planet Earth by the Ko people. Yes, we have apparently made contact with space aliens. You heard it here first!

Ko-core is all instrumental. The tape gets off to a good start with some lovely harp sounds. This is followed by a drummer-less rock band, and a vaguely Middle Eastern electric guitar solo. Those last 2 parts weren't too interesting, but @ 9:12 we get to an excellent passage of exotic tribal drumming backing more Middle Eastern sounding violin (?) and possible other stringed things - music for green-skinned belly dancers entertaining their masters on some far off planet.

Which is followed by spooky guitar drones that smack of vast interstellar voids. Fine stuff. Next up, some noodly guitar plucking; a lengthy track starts @ 21:00 with drums and  what sounds like mbira, cowbell-y percussion, and some kind of ethnic flutes/woodwinds that sounds like an Irish pennywhistle made out of PVC pipes. Then: atonal guitar skronk. I like the oddly bent Residential noises that start around 32:00 and the ambient drone that follows it. Some Beefheartian proggy guitars are then called to prayer at Mecca, and we're done.

None of it sounds particularly extra-terrestrial, but neither does it sound like any standard musical styles, unless 'random weirdness' is now a genre. 44 minutes of inter-planetary communication here:

Ko Transmissions

Behold, the Daxophone! The FUNNIEST Instrument Ever?!?

The late, great Hans Reichel gets a lot of props in the modern jazz world for his guitar playing, which is all well and good, but Maniacs should proceed directly to the few recordings he made highlighting his invention, the hand-crafted wooden objects known as Daxophones. Imagine a school kid bending his ruler over his desk making a boing! sound, only played with a violin or cello bow. In the hands of Reichel, a master musician as well as inventor, the Dax is amazingly versatile, capable of all manner of sounds, often with cartoonish undercurrents.

Reichel calls this album an 'operetta' even tho there are no singers. Indeed, there are no other instruments on this album besides the Daxophone. Yet the instrument has the uncanny ability to mimic human speech sound. Not only that, but the song "Bubu And His Friends" sounds like a whole barnyard of animals singing in harmony. Not only do these instruments sing, they swing, dad. These are not just weird noises for a chin-stroking avant-garde academic. "Street Song" is filled with hand-clapping joy. The percussion-heavy "You Can Dance With Me" reaches an almost Afro-Cuban level of danceable groove. And the catchy bubblegum rock of "Oway Oway" could convert the most brainwashed of mainstream music followers (well, in my fantasy world...)

Some songs suggest actual musical genres, like salsa, jazz or country, but played as if by Martians who, after picking up some terrestrial radio transmissions, attempt to interpret  the music of Earthlings on their alien instruments, tuned to no known scale. A wonderful work of weird genius. The fact that the name 'Hans Reichel' is not as well known as 'Kardashian' does not speak well for the human species, but we can start changing that right now:

Hans Reichel - "Yuxo, A New Daxophone Operetta"   [2002]

You can also listen to/buy another great Daxophone album (along with a slew of his guitar releases) here:


https://destination-out.bandcamp.com/album/shanghaied-on-tor-road

Music For Saw Blades, Wood Planks, and Rolling BBs Around in a Dish

 I am woefully behind in heppin' you-all to the latest and greatest releases awaiting your cold cash. I have so many samples of new releases that I'm splitting them into the avant-classical/experimental/electronic/weird-instruments genres (today's batch) and the novelty/outsider/wacko pop/rock end of things (next post). From the sublime to the ridiculous.

Our universities are still producing music majors who move into composing, teaching, conducting, etc. and labels like Innova and Ravello are still promoting them. I have no academic music background, but this collection of the latest works from composers far beyond the classical mainstream sounds great to me. Not exactly chilled/ambient, but, as it's mostly instrumental and often atmospheric and emotional, great stuff for waking to in the morning, or for evening's contemplation with a cocktail. Tho we start off with  a bit of a bang:

1. David Kechley "Design And Construction - III. Cross Cuts": Percussion!  The aptly-named "Colliding Objects" album features not only pitched percussives, but just about anything else that can be struck with a stick.  The title track "requires marimba, cymbals, large drums, tam tam, pitched gongs, crotales, woodblocks and exotic bells." The piece featured here utilizes circular saw blades, and wooden planks cut to different lengths.

2. Andrew Violette's "Sonatas For Cello and Clarinet" is as moody as it's cover - tracks with names like "Mournful Bells" offer truth in advertising. The piece also boasts such non-standard classical music oddities as a cha-cha, but what really grabbed me was the dreamy piano that came in at 1:30 of "Grazioso leggiero." It's what I imagine Alice's trip to Wonderland must have sounded like.

3. McCormick Percussion Group "With Intensity": Awright, more percussion! The title piece of the McCormick's new album, "Concerti for Piano with Percussion Orchestra" is 15 minutes of variations on an oddly sentimental, but gorgeous melody. It's as old-fashioned as you can get for a piece for piano and nine percussionists. Part one is included here, but all three movements are, well, sublime.

4. Jeffrey Weisner's album "Neomonology" is bass-ically just upright acoustic bass. "The compositional process for Armando Bayolo’s 'Mix Tape' began with Weisner sending a mix of his favorite tunes to Bayolo, who then reworked them with pop and rock favorites of his own." I can't tell what the original sources are (maybe they were changed due to copyright issues?) but I dig this. It could have been the bass part to something out of Glass' "Einstein On the Beach."  Elsewhere on the album, Weisner delves into micro-tonal territory.

5, 7. We now move completely out of any recognizable musical traditions with two short excerpts from Ulrich Mertin & Erdem Helvacioglu's "Planet X." Were this the '70s, the concept album about the arrival of a mysterious planet of hostile aliens would have been told with corny lyrics and a histrionic singer. Fortunately, today we get pure abstract electronica, along with something called a GuitarViol.

6. The title track of Yvonne Troxler's "Brouhaha" album, features violin, cello, and ball bearings being rolled around in three glass bowls. Cool! Elsewhere, Troxler and the 11-person Glass Farm Ensemble work their strings, horns, electric guitar and, again, plenty percussion into a variety of pleasingly dissonant (possible micro-tonal) shapes, inspired by the noise of New York City, and, on another track, meteorites. The meteorite piece is a good 'un, sounding like it's performed entirely on pitched plastic cups. Lots of variety and invention - one of my fave albums of this bunch.

7. Barry Schrader's "The Barnum Museum" is, like "Planet X," an electronic concept album, and this concept is so rad that the booklet that comes with the CD is at least as interesting as the music - a phantasmagorical visit to PT Barnum's 1800s "museum," where every room in the enormous mysterious building contains another enigma, or seemingly real-life myth, from mermaids to flying carpets, to things best left unexperienced. Behold! The Chinese Kaleidoscope.

8. Harry Partch's "Bitter Music" is one of my Albums Of The Year - a 3-disk collection of the legendary gay/ homeless/ hobo/ micro-tonal musical instrument inventor/ writer/ outsider /genius (phew!) It's mostly spoken-word, but hey, it's the journals of a Depression-era hobo "riding the rails" - illegally hopping on freight trains criss-crossing the country in search of work, all the while virtually re-inventing music. Reading from his journals is KPFK radio presenter, and founder of the Micro-Fest annual music festival John Schneider, who also plays some mean guitar, custom-made to Partch's bizarre specifics. This is one of the more musical, as opposed to text-heavy tracks: Just in time for winter, it's "December, 1935 - Night. Four black walls."

M4M Sampler: From The Sublime...

I have just done your holiday shopping for you. You're welcome. Coming soon: 'M4M Sampler: ...To The Ridiculous'

Music For An Avant-Garde Cruise Ship

Here's a collection of new (or new-ish) pieces of sonic loveliness excerpted from albums now out for you to spend money on, most of it fairly low-key abstract ambient/hypno/drone instrumentals by composers of...what? "Avant garde"? That implies that they are at the forefront and everyone will follow them. Maybe that will happen. Or maybe they're off in their own little universe, too singular and odd to ever influence anyone. "New Music"? Well, that one's just plain silly. Is it still 'new' in a year, or ten, or fifty? Then what do you call it? "Alternative classical"? I like this one, since most of these folks came out of the musical academy. But when you're composing for a cymbal, or electronics, or microtonal guitars, or junk percussion (as all the folks featured today do) it hardly sounds very 'classical.'  We'll probably never settle this one, so let's just listen to some beautiful music, shall we?

Music For An Avant-Garde Cruise Ship

(Due to circumstances beyond my control, I can't use mediafire now.  After clicking the above link, scroll down for a choice of downloading options. You may have to wait a few secs.  We apologize for the inconvenience.)

1-2. Eleanor Hovda: "Centerflow/Trail II," and "Coastal Traces Tidepools 2." This 4-disk set (sold for the price of a 2-disker) is a revelation. The late Ms. Hovda wrote music that puzzled me at first - it's sometimes glacially paced, with long silences. The music doesn't seem "composed' as much as something that just naturally drifts along. I kept expecting ambient, drone, minimalism or chamber music - it is all and none of those. The first piece is for bowed cymbals, the second finds Hovda playing "piano innards." Not included here because it's 30 minutes long is an improvised piece played inside an enormous empty underground town water tank. My most listened-to album of the year so far, even at 4 disks.

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3. Philip Blackburn: "Ghostly Psalms: Scratch I Ching" - Blackburn is the man behind Innova Records, from whence many of these tracks come. Like Hovda, he's an American Midwesterner (yah, hey dere!), which he salutes on "Duluth Harbor Serenade," scored for actual Minnesota harbor boats, and landlubbers, recorded in the field. Or rather, on the shore of the harbor. That's a pretty neat trick, but the centerpiece of the album is "Ghostly Psalms," inspired by old ruined monasteries, and scored for all manner of unusual soundmakers, including, on this track, something called the 'human rhythmicon."

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4. Oscar Bettison: "Junk" - Wake up!  Amidst all these haunted atmospherics, here's a rocker.  I just saw this guy at Disney Hall, for the premier of a new piece of his that uses junk "found" percussion instruments, performed by the LA Philharmonic New Music group. Hasn't been recorded yet, but here's one from a few years ago by this Brit (now in the US) that also skillfully combines things like coffee cups, metal bars and wrenches with traditional instruments. Kinda long, so you may wanna skip to last third or so if you're pressed for time - it builds up to a fairly explosive finale.

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5. Andy Akiho: "Karakurenai (Crimson)" - This debut by a Japanese-American writing for Caribbean steel drum touches on jazz, classical, and avant-garde - everything but calypso.  Effortlessly enjoyable. I guess it's just not possible to make "difficult music" on happy, sunny steel drums. If any experimental music could get play on cruise ships, this would be it. Album: "No One to Know One"

6. Christopher Campbell: "Sleepless Nights" - Like Eleanor Hovda's music, this album unpredictably wanders around with no particular direction.  Unlike Hovda, Campbell's debut doesn't feature long drones and silences, but a kaleidescope of colorful sounds, including, on one of the 'Interludes,' a minute-and-a-half field recording of birds.  This is the most 'song-y' track, a thoroughly eccentric mix of fake old-timey gospel, accordion waltzes, and abstract sounds. Album: "Sound the All-Clear"

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7. Neil Haverstick: "The Spider" - Sometimes I think the old 7 tone "do re mi" Western scale is exhausted and music really needs to get into microtonal scales. However, when I  listen to contemporary microtonal music, I realize that the composers are not doing much to make it very accessible, hence keeping it in the tiny experimental music ghetto. (Sure, I like it, but I would, wouldn't I?)  But some of guitarist Haverstick's stuff is so cool I don't see how anyone could find it too objectionable - I mean, this piece is inspired by old sci-fi movies, and who can't get behind that?

8. Id Loom: "Sublation" - Mysterious ambient project apparently years in the making and only now coming to light. This track starts off with dense, rolling clouds of sound that part to reveal almost Gregorian-like singers. Strange and wonderul.  From the free download album "To: Atlantis."

9. David Lang / Sentieri Selvaggi: "Sweet Air (excerpt)"-  Lang's from acclaimed New York radicals Bang On A Can; Sentieri Selvaggi are the Italian group performing this lovely bit of minimalism for flute, clarinet, piano, violin and cello.  Sweet, indeed. Album: "Child."

Paul Rubenstein: Microtonal Music on Homemade Instruments

We first wrote about Paul "Ubertar" Rubenstein in 2009 when he was leading microtonal guitar-building workshops for New York children. They would then jam on these groovy home-made instruments, writing original songs to most charming effect.

His new album is solo - no kids - but it serves to demonstrate the man's compositional originality. Microtonal doesn't mean "out of tune," not if it's done right. In this instance, as with the Kraig Grady records we featured earlier, avoiding the usual Western do-re-mi scale doesn't mean ear-wrenching atonality, but a gentle Zen-like Asian feel. Percussives plink and plonk, chime-like keyboards tinkle, and sometimes an electric guitar-like object (perhaps the "alumitar," pictured right) shreds over it all. Track 5 has some fantastic harmonic interplay, and Track 6 should be a hit, sporting the most irresistible melody in 5/4 time since the heyday of Dave Brubeck. Tasty, tasteful, and tuneful.

The new album "Solo Trios" is now available from Spectropol Records (or listen/buy from the Bandcamp page), but His Ubertarness has given us permission to post the entire album... at 128 kbps. That's right: if you want it in hi-fi, you gotta buy it. As well you should - the NY school system has made the questionable decision to cut his music classes. So the man is available to do scores, soundtracks, whatever you need. Maybe even parties, weddings and bar mitzvahs, tho those would be some pretty weird bar mitzvahs. What would Aunt Myrna think?! Anyway. Thanks muchly to Mr. Rubenstein.

Paul Rubenstein "Solo Trios"

While My Pencilina Gently Weeps

"The pencilina is an electric board zither played primarily by striking the strings with sticks; also by plucking and bowing." And musical instrument inventor/singer-songwriter Bradford Reed is, so far as I know, the world's only performer on this nifty instrument. It's a credit to his songwriting that I didn't know anything about this instrument when I first heard his music - I just liked the song.

Of this 1996 album, the Brooklynite writes, "A strictly live pencilina album. For better or worse I used to have a very purist approach to recording- It must be live. A 50/50 split of instrumental and vocal tunes." Yup, no other instruments - just the one-man-band doing his eccentric thing. Songs range from slightly dissonant, possibly micro-tonal, plinkety-plunking, to actual catchy tunes. The slightly rough, unaffected singing makes Reed appear to be some sort of indie-rock Harry Partch.

Bradford Reed - "Live! At Home"

This album's going out of print, but he's got more for sale on his site. I recommend "Solo Live Songs" if, for no other reason, the excellent "She's A Rocket." And I can't believe I'm writing about someone from Brooklyn. I'm so trendy! Please forgive.

MUSIC FROM AN IMAGINARY ISLAND pt. 2: "The Stolen Stars"

Music For Maniacs proudly co-present with the North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island a second spellbinding, uniquely exotic album from microtonal composer Kraig Grady.

"The Stolen Stars: An Anaphorian Dance Drama" is an altogether different beast from the "Music From The Island of Anaphoria" album we presented here a couple of weeks back. "Music From The Island" was a variety show, every track a new direction. But "The Stolen Stars," tho it's divided into different tracks, is all of a piece. The music, designed to accompany a puppet shadow play dramatizing ancient Anaphorian myths, begins with "The Bees Awaken" - the thick string drones do indeed resemble buzzing insects. Gradually these give way to vibraphone-like metallophones until finally the strings fades out and gently chiming gamelan-like percussion melodies take over. The microtonal scales (no 'do-re-mi' here, folks) performed by a crew ten people strong create shimmering resonances that trick the ear into hearing notes not played. I took pics of the liner notes (included in the zip file) that describe the myth.

Kraig Grady "The Stolen Stars: An Anaphorian Dance Drama"

Grady's latest album "Beyond The Windows Perhaps Among The Podcorn" is an original piece not utilizing any of the musics of the mysterious island of Anaphoria, but it certainly is inspired by them. The 6-person group, now including sax, cello, trumpet, bassoon, and the wordless vocals of popular L.A. singer Mia Doi Todd is even more drone-laden, like Eno's "Music For Airports" minus any interruptions, stretched out to induce a remarkably hypnotic state - a veritable audio yoga class. I'm not posting it, tho - it's one of the few Grady releases still in print, so buy it HERE.

But - hey, cheapskates! - some new free Grady action is now available. Whirlpool, the duo of Grady and Chris Abrahams (of The Necks), recently performed an outstanding radio concert for micro-tuned harmonium and vibes that you can listen to if you scroll down HERE to Feb. 12, 2011. It's another lengthy piece, but I was never less than completely captivated by it.

MUSIC FROM AN IMAGINARY ISLAND pt. 1

Anaphoria is a mysterious, obscure island that Los Angeles microtonal composer Kraig Grady has been exploring for years. His addictive 1994 album "Music From The Island of Anaphoria" is richly exotic, but it's not exotica. No Martin Denny-type Polynesian pop here. Tho the music is sometimes reminiscent of Indonesian/gamelon music, the island's 73 different ethnic groups ensure that no one style predominates. It all sounds like nothing I've heard before. Why so much of this wonderful stuff is out-of-print and not as famous as Radiohead is something I'll never understand.
Pump organs, chants, hammered dulcimer, all manner of clanging, chiming, and thumping percussion are heard here, as well as the strange sounds of native Anaphorian instruments unknown to the uninitiated. Shadow plays are sometimes performed along with the music at Grady's concerts. Hypnotic drones and atmospheric sounds (acoustic? electronic? both?) suggest esoteric rituals and ancient ceremonies. If Harry Partch wrote the music for Disneyland's "Enchanted Tiki Room," it might sound like this.

Also on hand here is L.A. experimental music legend Brad Laner, a guy I first knew of from his notorious noise band Debt of Nature - I saw 'em get booed opening for Wall of Voodoo way back when. He has since gone on to play with Savage Republic, Medicine, Brian Eno, Yoko Ono, and many others.

Kraig Grady "Music From The Island of Anaphoria" [UPDATE 2-4-11: Back on line! Music For Maniacs and the North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island proudly co-present this album.]

01 Ecstasy of Exiles
02 Wedding Song (with Petra Haden)
03 Duet With Fogbound Oars
04 Ceremony At Airports Edge
05 Ritual Offering
06 A Sacred Feast
07 Banaphshu Remembers her Father the Clock Maker
08 Shadow Play - The Birds Rout The Demon Of Swords
09 A Farewell Ring

More Kraig Grady and the music of Anaphoria to come in future posts...

POTS AND PANS PERCUSSION (AND PONG)

Would you like to join a percussion group that is equally at home with experimental instruments, traditional Africana and theater? You can! Anyone can join the Temporal Mechanics Union...but there's a catch. They're based in the unlikely town of Arkansas City, Kansas.

But they do cool stuff like accompany silent sci-fi films, build and play on microtonal instruments, and have a song called "Cookin'" that's played on kitchen utensils. Their album "All Hands" really kills when they get down to African business, performing on a variety of ethnic percussives. Some of the tracks have a loose, drum-circle-in-the-park feel, but then they go way out to left field, like on this track, which features a variety of industrial objects and a "vintage video game":

Temporal Mechanics Union "Technocacaphanon"

If you're wondering what all these implements look like, there's a slew of videos on their site.
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EXPERIMENTAL KID'S MUSIC

8 year old kids playing microtonal music on their invented instruments? This - THIS - is what this blog's all about. Composer/musician Paul "Ubertar" Rubenstein teaches New York kids how to build one-string guitars, and play in African and Indonesian-inspired scales. Then they jam. Not just a novelty, this is some seriously good, unique unclassifiable music, whose contents are only hinted at by their song titles:

Ubertar + kids: Psychedelic Free Jazz
Ubertar + kids: Heavy Drone Rock - Sonic Youth, step off.
Ubertar + kids: This Is So Great - singing!

And how would you, yes you! like to get in on the action? Why should kids have all the fun? Paul sez: "I'm about to start microtonal music workshops at my music studio in Ridgewood, Queens (Dekalb stop on the L train). The first session will be Wednesday, 7/15 at 6:30 pm, and the cost is $12. People can reserve a spot by emailing me at paul@ubertar.com. It's for all levels-- total beginners through advanced."

HARRY PARTCH VS LLYN FOULKES

Yes folks, this weekend in Los Angeles it's a steel-cage death-match between two California prize eccentrics whose idiosyncratic music is performed on theatrical home-made instruments.

In this corner: Harry Partch, dead, former hobo who spent the '30s and '40s hopping trains, traveling around the country in pursuit of a buck and a meal, composer of songs that sometimes reflected this background, creator of fantastical micro-tonal instruments, the subject of a concert this Fri and Sat downtown at the REDCAT performed on said instruments, lovingly restored.

Harry Partch: "Barstow: Eight Hitchiker Inscriptions"

from the out-of-print '60s classic "The World of Harry Partch," tho a remake from 1982 by his ensemble can be found on "The Harry Partch Collection, Vol 2."

And in this corner, Llyn Foulkes, alive, one of the "Visionary Artists From L.A." featured at the Hammer Museum in Westwood whose non-conformist attitudes have kept the art-world from embracing them, who will be performing original songs inspired by his Spike Jones and swing-infused youth this Friday night on his "Machine," a one-man band riot of honk-horns, percussion, organ pipes, and a bass string.

Llyn Foulkes: "Top of Topanga"
from the mini-album "Lyn Foulkes and his Machine Live!"

"Barstow" is a classic gateway-drug to strange music: catchy melodies, fascinating lyrics and back-story. Play it for your Top 40-brainwashed loved ones.

So, now you know where I'll be this weekend. Who will be the winner? You!
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Electric Junkyard Gamelan

Electric Junkyard Gamelan are a veteran quartet that build their own fanciful instruments and play fun, accessible original compositions on them. It's largely the project of New York madwoman Terry Dame who was initially inspired by Indonesian gamelan music. While some of their songs do indeed resemble the hypnotic percussive melodies of a Balinese/Javanese gamelan orchestra:
Electric Junkyard Gamelan: The Nutbutter Challenge

...other tunes definitely strike out into new, distinctly urban American directions, like this funky jazzy groover:
Electric Junkyard Gamelan: Ode to Fred Beans (excerpt)

Instruments are "fashioned from coat hangers and rubber bands, bed frames, old farm equipment, turntable platters, clay pots, saw blades and truck springs." The "Big Barp" rubber-band harp makes a particularly unusual sound:

Electric Junkyard Gamelan: The Big Barp
They have some mp3s and videos on their site, as well as two albums for sale.Too bad they don't seem to get out to the West Coast. You Easterners are lucky - they play a lot. But don't cry for me Argentina, there's plenty to do here in Los Angeles, including the return of the annual Microfest, a series of concerts featuring microtonal music. Can't tell if Electric Junkyard Gamelan uses microtones - that realm of infinite possibilities in between the standard Western do-re-mi 7-tone scale - but the "American Gamelan" concert coming up this May 11 does. (The May 29/30 show dedicated to Harry Partch is highly recommended, and I'll most def. be talking about that later.)