Space Gambus Experiment CD insert

text by me

Cinema in Paradiso?

Perak once again rings to the unique, and some might say quite mystifying, sounds of camera tracks being laid, spotlights being erected, dollies being pushed, best boys, props masters, carpenters, costume designers, an earnest producer wrangling and an eminent director directing. Yes, the illustrious and industrious film people are back in town.

For more than a delicious decade Perak has been a favoured spot for enterprising film crews, be they TV or cinematic. Malaysia’s lushly green and mountainous state draws eagle-eyed location hunters like bees to nectar, mainly due to its immense natural beauty, and because it still has enough antique buildings left standing to represent any number of bygone ages. Though, at the present rate of ‘renovation’ and upgrading, one wonders if Ipoh and its surrounds will have any aged buildings left the next time a film company comes to call.

Back in the early 1990s, a Gitane smoking, baguette munching French film crew descended upon Perak, bringing the illustrious, and, I for one, might also say quite delectable, Catherine Deneuve with them. There they made that masterpiece of French cinema – Indochine (1992). It is rumoured that a certain Robert Raymer, Malaysian writer- par excellence, also had a cameo role in that film. Time moves inextricably on and a little later the English film Director John Boorman brought Patricia Arquette to Perak, to shoot Beyond Rangoon (1995).

Anna and the King with Chinese actor Chow Yun –Fat followed in 1999. Local film maker Amir Mohammad made his, subsequently banned, The Last Communist, here, released unseen in 2006, while another local boy, local to Ipoh that is – Patrick Teoh, TV/movie star, writer and former radio personality, starred in Kinta 1881(2007), also made around Perak. In the very same year Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon man, Ang Lee, got us all hot and bothered by filming Lust, Caution (2007) in and around Ipoh’s old town. Maybe the kopi drew him.

Now it is the turn of local film and TV director Bernard Chauly, Red Communications and Astro TV, who are making an eight-part series concerning the Second World War heroine, mid-wife and resistance fighter Sybil Kathigsu.

Filming started recently in Papan, utilising local traditional houses as well as the actual building where Sybil had set up her dispensary and, later, free clinic. Bernard Chauly, known for his recent film Pisau Cukur (Gold Digger, 2009), and Goodbye Boys (2006) has brought Elaine Daly, former Miss Malaysia (2004), known for her numerous film and TV roles, to play the role of the brave Sybil Kathigsu. This is entirely fortuitous, as Ms Daly is a dim distant relative of Sybil’s.

The Astro Citra eight piece series, of one-hour episodes, which incidentally forms part of the Suatu Ketika (a Time in the Past) sequence, has a working title of Apa Dosaku (What is my Sin). This new TV series follows Sybil from the Japanese occupation of Ipoh, to its eventual liberation, by the British. The TV series comes after the enormously successful theatre production –Sybil, which was a two-act play directed by Dato Faridah Merican (2008) based upon Sybil’s collective memoirs – No Dram of Mercy (1954).

In October of 2009 a resounding call went out for local participants to appear at auditions in November. Actors, extras, Eurasians, Chindians, Malays, Indians and an assortment of other races were needed to appear in this new production of the Sybil story. Many came but few were chosen. One local enthusiast, Audrey Poh, Ipoh book club member, part founder of Perak Heritage Society, former committee member and secretary of the Perak Society of Performing Arts answered that call. In the Red Communications production for Astro Citra, Audrey girds her loins to play Sybil’s best friend, and the godmother to Olga, Sybil’s younger daughter.

Law Siak Hong, esteemed current president of Perak Heritage Society, creator and curator of the Papan museum for everything Sybil, has been working closely with producer Anne Rodrigues, director Bernard Chauly and their hard working film crew, to make everything run as smoothly as possible during the shooting for the production.

Contrary to what I have written above, the Red Communications film crew have been diligently subtle in their approach to film making, perhaps adhering to Star Trek’s Prime Directive (Starfleet’s General Order #1) of non-interference. Despite the film crew working in the town, Papan is barely disturbed. It is only the interior ‘shots’ which require some minute disruption to daily lives, with puzzled house residents looking on, perhaps somewhat bemused by the coming and goings.

‘Apa Dosaku’ (What is my sin) airs on Astro Citra channel in March 2010. It is an eight-part series, of one-hour episodes, under the Suatu Ketika banner .

Who knows, maybe, someday, someone might make a film of Tash Aw’s The Harmony Silk Factory, set in and around the Kinta Valley.

Expressions in Three Angles?

The Malaysian National Art Gallery – Balai Seni Lukis Negara, which might otherwise be called a museum of modern art, currently hosts a retrospective of one of Malaysia’s most esteemed artists – Syed Ahmad Jamal; celebrating his eightieth birthday, and almost sixty years devoted to art and art criticism.

Born in Muar, Johor in 1929, Syed Ahmad Jamal, like many Malaysian artists of his generation, studied arts in England. Syed Ahmad Jamal studied architecture in Birmingham, England (1950), and later painting in the renowned Chelsea College of Art, London, notable for having Leonora Carrington and Edward Burra as alumni. His resume extends from teaching art, art teacher training, through to heading up the National Museum of Art (now National Art Gallery), as director (1981 – 1993). In 1995, Dato Syed Ahmad Jamal was honoured with the National Art Award and has become known as the Malaysian National Art Laureate.

Pelukis, the current Syed Ahmad Jamal retrospective, affords the National Art Gallery visitor with an uncluttered view of the artist’s professional and individual progression. The exhibition reveals paintings from the artist’s cubist and expressionist inspired 1950s works, through his more abstract phase in the late 1960s, and into the 1970s, right up unto the more spiritual, yet still expressionistic works in the 2000s. The artist’s work spans a time from Battersea Park II (1956) to M50 (2007).

This major retrospective does what retrospectives tend to do best – give the exhibition/gallery visitor a chance to witness, for themselves, the artists’ progression/growth into his craft. It allows the caller to observe the roads not taken, and the paths followed with the ‘becoming’ of a painter such as Syed Ahmad Jamal.

From the painter’s early works, executed during the 1950s, the links to both Cubism and Abstract Expressionism are self-evident. In Battersea Park II (1956) the colours and forms of German Expressionist and Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) founder Franz Marc are quite clear. Nipah Palms (1957), Mani Laut (Sea Bathers -1957) Padi Field Morning and Padi Field Night (1958), emerge from a fondness for the later cubist works, which slip quite easily into Abstract Expressionism, reminiscent of that father of Cubism Georges Braque.

A few years later, during the 1960s, Syed Ahmad Jamal is seen experimenting with more obvious forms of abstraction, edging out of Cubism with the neo-Expressionistic Hararpan – Hope (1962), until in 1967 he produces Pfft and in 1968 Windows in the Sky, then in 1970 - One Fine Day. To some extent both Windows in the Sky and One Fine Day are painterly breakthroughs leading the artist into fresh mode of expression, ground zero for the next thirty plus years of the artist’s image making. By the time Syed Ahmad Jamal has completed One Fine Day, the artist is forty years old.

Forty is a reasonable age, in some it is the age where they start to settle down, lose the anger of youth and approach life from a more considered, perhaps even philosophical viewpoint. It is a time when we stop searching for who we are. Instead, we begin to become who, and what, we are. We become aware of the differences between what we know about ourselves, and what others observe, what we present and what is hidden, as revealed in the Johari Window. We begin the true process of what Jung called ‘individuation’, or making ‘whole’. What we can observe in Syed Ahmad Jamal’s work from the age of forty onward, is a predilection for images of triangles and a growing visual, spiritual, symbolism.

Gunung Ledang (Legendary Mountain [Mount Ophir] 1978) may not be the first use of the triangle in the works of Syed Ahmad Jamal, but, without doubt, it is the most significant. Perhaps Catch a Falling Star (1967) is the first. In Gunung Ledang, using a triangle device, the artist presents his viewer with what may be described as a mountain, hence the Gunung of the title. Yet the triangle stretches from the base of the canvas through to the last third. Bars construct the triangle, which may be perceived stretching into the perspectival distance, representing a ladder. The ‘window’ device from ‘Windows in the Sky’ is now green. At the top of the canvas small green triangles ‘float’. This is one of a series of works, which the artist has painted about his birthplace, the myths and legends pertaining to there, while maintaining the depth of symbolism within the artist’s expressionism.

A Malay myth informs that the mountain - Gunung Ledang, previously known as Mount Ophir, in Johor, was where a beautiful princess (puteri) lived. Having rejected many suitors she eventually married Nakhoda Ragam, only for the marriage to end in disaster, the death of Nakhoda and the return of the princess to her mountain - Gunung Ledang.

The triangle from this point on, in Syed Ahmad Jamal’s painting, becomes a leitmotif, a recurring theme throughout his work. Symbolically, of course, the triangle may come to represent any number of things. Visually the triangle may depict stability, power, strength, inverted may denote dynamism. The triangle is the simplest figure to which all polygons may be reduced, and, for some, a representation of harmony because of that.

The artist’s use of the triangle may be an allusion to the Islamic symbol of consciousness incorporating the ‘knower’, the ‘act of knowing’ and the ‘known’. Further speculation may arrive at the triangle as ‘Taqwa’ (God consciousness), Ramadan (fasting) and Qur’an (guidance), the vital trilogy to lead a spiritually healthy and rewarding Muslim life. On the other hand, it may simply be, as others have noted before me, an image etched into the artist’s mind, forever forming part of his consciousness, growing up, as the artist did, under the shadow of the mystical mountain.

Of course, there is artistic precedence for overt use of the triangle in painting. From the works of Kandinsky (Composition IV, 1911), Kazimir Malevich (Suprematism with Blue Triangle And Black Square, 1915), Paul Klee (Ad Parnassum, 1932) the triangle is prominent. To some extent, this is also true of the father of them all – Paul Cezzane; when he demonstrates the harmony of the triangle with Large Bathers (1899-1906), with trees and ground arranged to form a triangle, in which the bathers sit.

It seems poignant that the triangle should appear, and keep reappearing throughout the body of Syed Ahmad Jamal’s work from his own middle age, in the late 1970s, until the present. As life slips from youth, into older age, spirituality plays an increasingly larger role in life.

Endau Rompin (1985) (one of Malaysia’s national parks, in Johor -the artist’s birth state) features a triangle of foliage with a rainbow highlighting one of the triangle’s sides, another is delineated by what appears to be rain, the third is marked by a river – the River Endau of the name.

Sirih Pinang (Penang’s betel leaf) (1986) comprises of four triangles, meeting at the canvas centre. It would be mischievous to try to explain the triangles as representative of the four elements, though without too larger stretch of the viewer’s imagination earth, water, fire and air could be discerned. Art Nouveau betel leaves tumble in the foreground while the sky is punctuated by small variants of the triangle.

In a similar mode Palestin is dominated by a central red triangle, the canvas a tricolour of black, white in the centre and green at the bottom. In the black third are red triangle shapes. Mercu Wawasan (1997) although dominated by the concept of the Petronas Towers, also reveals triangles, one bottom centre canvas stretching to the bridge linking the two towers, while another reaches from top right canvas down to one third of the distance from bottom left to bottom right. Semangat Ledang (1999) has as its centrepiece a triangle, though partially obscured with flashes of yellow and red light. The tip of the larger triangle is revealed out of ‘cloud’ while a burst of white triangular light is emitted from the large triangle’s center.

There are many more, but I should like to leave you considering this one last painting by Syed Ahmad Jamal – M50 (2007). M50 as its name denotes, is a celebration of Malaysia in its fiftieth year. Unlike other paintings M50 has more of a Miro feel to it. There are two triangles, neither too dominant in the picture, surrounded by the apparatus of technology and prominent symbols – a number 1, question marks and a fragment of the British Union Jack (flag). Has the triangle of harmony, strength, God-consciousness finally been eclipsed by modernity. Is the triangle mountain, and its legends, being overwhelmed by man’s technology. I will leave that for you to decipher.

Pelukis, a retrospective of the work of Syed Ahmad Jamal is on at the National Art Gallery, from 6^th October 2009 to the 31^st January 2010, Gallery 1A.

What is my Sin

The rain had stopped. My aging jeep eased into the quietly forgotten street of Perak’s Papan. I had expected to see the town inundated with the paraphernalia of filmmaking – tracks for cameras, huge spotlights threatening to fall on unsuspecting bystanders and a dictatorial director bellowing out instructions/orders vis-à-vis Cecil B. Demille.

Bernard Chauly, of Red Communications Sdn Bhd, is a much quieter director, who seems to believe in keeping the filmic disruption to a bare minimum. He, his producer Angela Rodrigues, their team of talented actors and crew came together at Papan, to reveal the story of that town’s Second World War heroine – Sybil Kathigasu.

TV channel Astro Citra (available in the Mustika pack) commissioned Red Communications, as part of their ‘Suatu Ketika’ (a Time in the Past) series, to make an eight-part drama, of one hour episodes. This story follows the extraordinary account of Sybil Kathigasu (played by Elaine Daly), from the moment she hears of the Japanese invading, through her experiences in the anti-Japanese resistance movement, and beyond. The series closely follows her collective memoirs, first published in 1954 as ‘No Dram of Mercy’.

Sybil Daly, a Eurasian mid-wife, born to an Irish-Indian planter father and French-Armenian mother, was married to Dr Abdon Clement Kathigasu, in 1919. She ran a clinic at 141 Brewster Road (now Jalan Sultan Idris Shah), Ipoh. When the Japanese invaded Ipoh (December 1941), Sybil escaped to run a shop-house dispensary at 74 Main Road, Papan. It is there that Sybil’s story really begins.

As time, and the Japanese occupation, wore on, Sybil’s dispensary, which by then doubled as a free clinic, eventually gained access to a shortwave radio, tuned into BBC broadcasts. From that time, the dispensary slowly became the central point for information and local dissidence.

Over time Sybil, in her husband’s absence, tended injured guerrillas, brought to the clinic at night. She was pro-colonial and disagreed with the ethics of the burgeoning communist guerrillas, but was a staunch humanitarian and realised that the guerrillas and she had a common enemy – the Japanese occupation force.

First her husband was arrested by the Japanese, next came Sybil. Expert Japanese interrogators, who were trying to extract vital information about the Chinese communist guerrillas, tortured Sybil. She was beaten, malnourished, sleep deprived and generally maltreated in the Japanese quest to learn more from her.

As if was not enough, Japanese interrogators arrested and tortured Sybil’s children too. In their quest for information, Sybil’s youngest daughter Dawn (aged 7) was hung from a tree, suspended over a fire while Sybil watched and was severely beaten. Luckily, Dawn survived her ordeal. Sybil, sentenced to death, had her sentence commuted to life imprisonment in Batu Gajah Prison - her husband, and adopted son William, imprisoned in Taiping Prison.

The British liberated Malaya in 1945, releasing Sybil from her incarceration, her near fatal wounds treated in Batu Gajah Hospital, Perak. Still in pain, Sybil spent her last days in England, undergoing operation after operation to salve her pain-racked body. Sybil Kathigsu, awarded the George Medal for bravery in 1947, died in England, still in pain, June 1948.

It is only fitting that the actress who plays the role of the heroine Sybil in the eight part TV series, is none other than Elaine Daly – a well-known Malaysian actress, former Miss Malaysia Universe, and a distant relative of Sybil’s.

I drove away thoughtfully. I was considering my day - whether to take director Bernard Chauly up on his offer of a one-line speaking role, or not. On reflection, maybe Malaysian TV is not quite ready for me – yet.

Working title – ‘Apa Dosaku’ (What is my sin) airs on Astro Citra channel in March 2010

Shadow Play

Rhythm of the 21st Century -Monologues of Raja Shahriman, Galeri Petronas, KLCC
29th October 2009 to 24th January 2010.

Galeri Petronas, at KLCC, is currently (at the time of writing) holding an extensive exhibition of Raja Shahriman b Raja Aziddin’s more recent work, including the paintings and sketches which help form a body of knowledge regarding his contemporary dynamic black metal sculptures.

The gallery visitor will see that Raja Shahriman’s sublimely martial black painted metal sculptures, in their concreteness, exist somewhere between the German H.R.Giger’s alien grotesques and those mythological sculptures of the British artist Michael Ayrton. It is between the menace of Giger’s fantasy grotesques and the forceful beauty of Ayrton’s mythological sculptures that Shahriman’s figures are allowed to exist, beautiful, but deadly, bullet bandoliered, starkly creatures of violence and destruction, extant in a poignant anti-war epiphany.

Yet Raja Shahriman’s forms, differing from those of H. R. Giger, replete with cartridge belt spines and masks, which render them terrifyingly anonymous, seem to represent, more accurately, the frighteningly vicious nature of man, against man, in brutal warfare. And, although Raja Shahriman’s constructs, to some extent, bear a mythos and a weight similar to those of Michael Ayrton – Ayrton’s minotaurs, or figures of Daedalus, show a gravitas and groundedness not apparent in those of Raja Shahriman, where cold steel is twisted to depict nightmarish warriors of evil.

There is an undeniable uncanny grace to Raja Shahriman’s sculptures’ lethal poses. At times, they appear as ferocious manga ninja, frozen in violent combative acts, twisted black metal shards and spikes piercing into the visitor’s subconscious, bringing, perhaps, the minutest of shivers down spines composed not of braces of bullets, as are those of Raja Shahriman’s figures, but of fragile flesh and bone. At other times, those figures resemble warmongering metal automatons; contemporary Robocops; Star Wars Battle Droids or bizarre metal skeletons, constructed perhaps by Ray Harryhausen for some, yet, unmade film.

The obvious strength of the sculptures, their hard metal musculature, their surreal/art noveau curvatures, poise, bandoliers of bullets all combine to impose their obviously martial nightmare imagery onto the innocently unsuspecting audience, with great success.

While the actual weighty metal sculptures stand, rooted to their plinths, the interplay of gallery lighting throws (Jungian?) shadows onto the gallery floor, and across grey painted walls. They are impossible to miss. A discerning visitor might get the feeling that is where the real story lies, not with posed metal, but with stark, projected, contorted shadows.

Creative shadows cast from Raja Shahriman’s commanding sculptures, born literally of light and dark, creep as dark figures rising from Disney’s Night on Bald Mountain (Fantasia 1940), or Ring Wraiths from Ralph Bakshi’s animated Lord of the Rings (1978).

In Disney’s Night on Bald Mountain, a huge dark-winged figure rises from the mighty mountain, spreading shadow over a sleeping village, drawing souls into Hell. Once there, silhouetted figures cavort, dance until the winged figure gathers them up, once more, and then casts them down, into Erté-like smoke and Faust-like furnaces.

Raja Shahriman’s shadows give the appearance of cavorting, dancing, twisting, curling, bending to reveal the archetypal black soul of war mongering sculptures. A slightest movement of light, a tremor, shudder, has shadows squirming, shifting, and moving across the gallery, shape shifting in their own repressed delight of nascent evil.

Wandering the Galeri Petronas there is the shadow of the object – Wira Perkasa (Brave Hero), creeping, peeping over its plinth, seemingly ready to make an attack on the hero who stands profound, unaware that his legacy of violence forever ties him to the shadow, and to his spine of war. Then, again, with Kancah Kashmir (Kashmir’s Arena) (2008), but this time three subconscious shadows break out into the gallery, unnervingly piercing, thrusting towards the other plinths, stealthily feeling their dark way towards them, but, then, also towards the innocent visitor, writhing in some deathly surreal dance towards them.

Observing the dark of the shadows springing from objects they had once been bound to, is thrilling, but unnerving. The gallery dances to a very different dynamic. Objects posed for visitors while shadows free themselves to challenge, question and, ultimately like the gladiators they undoubtedly are, fight in the new arena of Galeri Petronas.

Like vicious wayang kulit (traditional shadow play puppets) rhino- horned shadows, thrown against grey walls, pierce into the gallery. Others stab, cutting into the space between plinths, between walls, floors and visitors - nowhere seems safe from the forms, formed from fractious footcandles of light.

Gejolak Api (Fire’s big flames) and Maharajalela (Rampage) stand, opposing each to the other in one small offshoot from the main gallery. Sculptural Daliesque hands/arms extend, one challenging figure towards the other, twisted shadows displaying root/tendril-like curvatures thrusting writhing towards each other.

A startled gallery visitor, seeing the combative challenge might expect an engagement at any moment, and the spewing of black metal amidst the dark gallery flames, yes; it was to come, but only in our enriched imaginations.

Further around the gallery, with some nameless victory won - the figure Panji Hitam (Black Flag) mightily raises a flag to strike into its own wooden plinth, no doubt symbolising an ending of warfare, its bandolier of bullets, so pronounced in the figures of others throughout the gallery, absent.

The formerly repressed shadow of Panji Hitam , however, reveals that the flag is no full stop to conflict. It is simply another weapon, for the blackness is throughout, regardless now, of whether there are, or are not bullets, for now any weapon will do, as the formerly repressed shadow becomes liberated. For humanity, long suckled on war and violence has become addicted to the trill, the power and, ultimately - the mayhem.

Raja Shahriman b Raja Aziddin’s work, exhibited at Galeri Petronas is a triumph, not just in the creation of the works themselves, but also in the craft of their display. It is the carefully considered display of these sculptures, especially, which enhances the poignancy of the works, with deftly placed lighting, which adds the extra dimension and final touches to the overall exhibition, and reveals the soul of Raja Shahriman’s works.

Talented Perak

If you look very, very carefully there is a long list of very talented people associated with the enigmatic silver state of Perak. From the ubiquitous literary talents of Tash Aw (writer) to the eminently delectable actress Michelle Yeoh, their stars forever shine in the heavens of the international firmament.

Aside - In my haste to impart this, I am not, of course, forgetting either my old mate, the silver-tongued Patrick Teoh (broadcaster, acerbic writer and thespian), or fellow writer, and thoroughly nice individual, Preeta Samarasan.

However, what you may, or may not know is that there are still many mega-talented people, who actually prefer to live in the silver state, rather than write about it from afar. They are brave, hearty souls who shun the bright lights and big cities to live in the comparative quiet of a rural setting, wherein they may listen to their hearts and comprehend their muse – not read the SMS screen and facebook themselves out of existence.

It was recently, having well girded my loins - not lions you notice or any other predatory feline, I actually got out from under a whole herd of water buffalo; stepped out from my misnamed studio, kick-started my monolithic jeep and reached out to the cowering world at large, to meet with some (hopefully) fellow humans.

In my questing I was hugely fortunate enough to meet with two charmingly gifted sons of Perak – Raja Shahriman b Rja Aziddin (aka Raja Shahriman), sculptor, painter and all round nice guy, and, equally as nice, contemporary artist, musician and academic Kamal Sabran.

To be fair, I only met Raja Shahriman en passant as it were - while he was accompanying my buddy, the artist Rafiee Ghani, in Kuala Lumpur, but shortly excused himself to return to his beloved state and family. I sincerely hope to meet more fully with Raja Shahriman at a later date, perhaps in his residence at Kuala Kangsar, where he creates the sculptures he is known for. Kamal Sabran I met, in Ipoh, at a makak restaurant to talk about his forthcoming music CD entitled The Space Gambus Experiment - more of that later.

Raja Shahriman currently has an exhibition of his profound sculptures, paintings and sketches at the Galeri Petronas, KLCC, Kuala Lumpur; profound, in the sense that within the painted, twisted metal forms lays a greater depth of meaning, and signification too.

While it is the three dimensionality of Raja Shahriman’s sculpted forms which greets the visitor at first glance, on second spine tingling glimpse they notice the intricate play of light on the works, and, obviously, the vividness of the shadows. For it is within the forms of those pronounced shadows, spread from the sculptures that give them life, which the artist’s greatness comes into play. Through Raja Shahriman’s mastery of his medium, he deftly reveals the vicious shadow creatures, which inhabit the rabid consciousness of the brutal warrior - his martial spine a bandolier of bullets.

People of a nervous disposition might stand in the corner of one of the galleries, staring at Raja Shahriman’s sculptures, waiting for the blatant shadows to come to life, so eerily real are they, in an abstract way. These same visitors, out of the corner of one eye, may see shadows, as if in a wayang kulit play, engage in their incipient warfare, rising out from curved metal flames and doing battle with tendril-like hands and protuberances, which may in our imaginations, be fashioned as swords.

While the shadows of Raja Shahriman’s sculptures eerily poise for battle, Kamal Sabran’s music CD soothes those parts that other music CDs cannot soothe, with its unique blend of sounds from space and music from the traditional Malay gambus (a lute like instrument).

Just back from Kuala Lumpur, promoting his short film – LUMPUR, for 15 Malaysia, Kamal Sabran spoke with me about his collaboration with Mohd Zulkifi Ramli, and the unique music they have created for the CD The Space Gambus Experiment.

An observant reader will have noticed the word – Space in the title of this CD, as in The Space Gambus Experiment, and maybe scratched an itchy follicle or two on its significance. To put your inquisitive minds at rest, I am not referring to some post-hippy, pseudo-psychedelia, but in this case – real Space, as in ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’, the National Space Agency and the planet Jupiter.

Kamal Sabran developed ‘Sonic Cosmic Music from Outer Space’, while he was ‘artist in residence’ at the National Space Agency and some of that celestial material, along with the more traditional gambus music, graces this present album. It is therefore a credit to both Kamal Sabran and to Mohd Zulkifi Ramli, that together they have been able to create such a distinctive and richly melodic sound.

The Space Gambus Experiment

A new music CD, launched December 2009, introduces the mesmerising sounds of The Space Gambus Experiment to an expectant audience. This landmark work is the result of a unique collaboration, not only between the two presenting musicians – Mohd Zulkifli Ramli (Gambud/Oud) and Kamal Sabran (electro – acoustic) but also between the traditional and the contemporary in modern Malaysian music.

For this ‘experiment’ Kamal Sabran has engaged the talents of Mohd Zulkifli Ramli, to bring the uniquely symbolic music of the Malay gambus (a lute like instrument), into play, perhaps with the intention of playing point, counterpoint to Kamal’s adventurous sound making.

An observant reader will have noticed the word – Space in the title of this CD, as in The Space Gambus Experiment, and maybe scratched an itchy follicle or two on its significance. To put your inquisitive minds at rest, I am not referring to some post-hippy, pseudo-psychedelia, but in this case – real Space, as in ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’, the National Space Agency and the planet Jupiter.

Among Kamal’s many projects as an artist and musician, and following his partiality to meld science with art, Kamal had worked as an ‘artist in residence’ at the Malaysian National Space Agency, between 2005 and 2006.

There he developed ‘Sonic Cosmic Music from Outer Space’, which was later performed at the planetarium. It was at the National Space Agency that Kamal began experimenting with radio waves, received through the radio telescope, from the planet Jupiter as it was orbiting over Malaysian skies. Some of that celestial material, along with the more traditional gambus music, graces this present album.

With a world rapidly churning out the latest talking blues gangsta rapper, wannabe TV starlet/singer or bootilicious boy/babe dressed hot to kill, it has become a case of never mind that he/she cannot actually sing but look at that boy/girl go.

It therefore comes as a great relief that artist/designer/musician/academician Kamal Sabran quests on the fringes of ‘noise’ and ‘melody’ to bring us this unexpected gem of a CD – The Space Gambus Experiment. Co-incidentally, Kamal, rapidly becoming a Malaysian renaissance man, has also designed the layout and cover of this visually, as well as musically, exciting CD.


Those of you who have been intently following the contemporary arts scene, or who have been nose-diving into arts listings or even shrewd enough to access on-line Malaysian arts reviewers, recently, will have seen Kamal as part of 15 Malaysia.

15 Malaysia was a project consisting of a series of 15 short films, concerning the realities, and some fantasies, of life in Malaysia. Kamal’s entry – LUMPUR (mud), is about, strangely enough, mud, or rather what it comprises of. This short film explores people’s association with land, ownership, water and earth, leaving the audience pondering these subjects.

‘Lumpur’ saw Kamal as film director, editor, musician and composer, along with the legendary Pete Teo as overall producer.
Music from ‘LUMPUR’ - Ruang Kosong Remix, containing sounds taken from soil and water, add an ‘organic’ element to the soundtrack, and appears on the CD The Space Gambus Experiment.

Out of the canon of Kamal Sabran’s musical enterprises, this CD offers what may be his most accessible compositions, with a more direct focus on instrumental melodies, intertwined with electronic abstract resonance. Certainly, with this innovative CD, Kamal has moved, ever so slightly, away from the more distinctly avant-garde Terry Riley, or, perhaps Max Neuhaus inspired sound experiments he is known for - towards a more rounded sound imagery, infinitely more palatable for the general, lay public, as well as proving stimulating for the discerning music lover.