Into the Light, Space Gambus Experiment's third album

Kamal Sabran’s Space Gambus Experiment (SGE)’s third orbital pass - Into the Light, fairly bursts into the woolly stratosphere of our collectively cloudy minds with all the pent-up sunshine and strident musical energy/excitement of an efficaciously euphonious explosion. 

Though, obviously, the third in an extant trilogy of musical albums -  think Return of The King, sooner or later SGE’s Silmarillion will appear and make us all redefine our knotted notions of fusion, music and harmonics. Until then, Into the Light brings us the continuing saga of progressive, spaced-out, music ala the equator’s very own experiment with gambus and space.

As an opening track, Pegembara cahaya vii flares into our consciousness with a steady, thumping, heartbeat of drums. This is masterfully overlaid with a melancholic gambus tugging at our heart and mindstrings. It is a rocking little number, reminding us all that SGE are, at heart, still rockers. As an opening track it is well designed to get us out of our seats …and dance? Dance perhaps like some equatorial, robotic, nuevo  Gary Numan. I am bound to say (as I did for their last album review) that  somewhere in the harmonics of this number is a vague reminiscence of Fritz Laing's uber Sci Fi film Metropolis, and the incumbent music of Gottfried Huppertz defining both modernism and expressionism. When the electrics grab hold - beware! It is as if the kings of krautrock - Kraftwerk, in league with some demonic Werner Herzog biting Nosferatu, have invaded Asia, as opposed to Peru, with their enigmatic, rhythmically pounding mellifluousness, setting about claiming the jungles as theirs with a post-modern sturm und drang Musique Concrete.

Like all good albums there are continuing refrains, musical links if you like, which hold disparate concepts together. In Only from the heart can you touch the sky, a solitary gambus sounds somewhere in space. This is curtesy of Mr Sabran’s archive of (literally) celestial sounds. It is the heart of sound, a heart full of sound and a heartful sound ricocheting from a space tuned and retuned as our senses adjust to an overdrive which seems interstellar bound and machined in silver.

For much of this remarkable third album, titillating tracks occasionally oscillate between Kraftwerkian krautrock, with an Asmovian stomp, and a subtler Tangerine Dreamery. At times there are pounding, robotic vocals, echoing as if through some futuristic Caves of Steel, in sync with the musical notions of Kraftwerk rather than Tangerine Dream, Amon Düül II or Can. At other times a gambus, now a solid symbol for the fusion of East/West harmonics, once again echoes amidst cosmic electric crackles. Is it gold buried Smaug or some deeply dreaming Troll King awaiting either a Bilbow burglar or a Per Gynt to awaken their echo deep inside some mythic, metaphoric mountain, or is it the soul’s memory.

Numbers like You have to breaking your heart until it opens; project a solid bass heralding virtually ecstatic electronics as we await the instructional ‘voice’ of a prototype model of some robotic voice synthesiser in this catchy, practically dance, number. Other tracks hold a gutsy beat which serves to meld this space melange together - threaded with the ubiquitous gambus. After listening I am left with the question -  just what is it that reminds me of early Hawkwind (before Lemmy’s leaving).

Altogether this album is a progression over the last two and, perhaps, we might still witness some melding of native vocals and poetry, with the celestial sounds, before too long. The robotic vocals do give this album an added depth, but SGE must be careful not to overuse such gimmickery in the future and move on from tributes to the golden age of progressive music, to creating more of their own uniqueness.

Contexts @ 69

‘Jalan Petaling - Ice Man at rest’  Azwan Mahzan

1839, Frenchman Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre presented photography (through his daguerreotypes) to the waiting world. It was a marvel, unique and astonishing. Since the 1820s Daguerre had been researching his invention, fine tuning the camera obscura, and dabbling with the diorama to bring his moment of truth to the Académie des Sciences. It was a triumph.

Last night we, once more, trod the long flight of steps down to the French owned Gallery Fine Art 69, this time lit by ‘night light’ candles. It was six pm and still light, nevertheless the thought was there, and those minuscule candles did not look out of place in that splendidly romantic garden. We, for once, were on time and a little surprised to see that we were some of the first to arrive for the opening of the CONTEXT photography exhibition.

I have always had an ambiguous relationship with photographs. For the philistine that I am, when it comes to photography, photographs have to be great in tone, sharpness, colour or subject matter to impress. Man Ray knew this, and produced some excellent images to puzzle, entertain or simply to awe at, particularly his portraits of Kiki. Henri Cartier-Bresson too knew his relative aperture from his shutter speed, and produced some of the most memorable photographic images the world has seen, but last night we were left, decidedly, wanting.

It was an exhibition of three photographers, judicially arranged to include all three major races in modern Malaysia - Chinese, Indian and Malay, and entitled Context. As the visitor stepped into the gallery, they stepped into the half space exhibition of Mahen Bala (Indian), opposite was the work of Azwan Mahzan (Malay), and down the steps, in a much larger space, was the exhibition belonging to Alecia Neo (Chinese, but from Singapore). From the knowledge of the distribution of the relative exhibition spaces, there seemed an imbalance highlighted, later, by the arrival of the Singapore Ambassador to Malaysia, technically a High Commissioner though called Ambassador several times throughout the evening.

part of Tokyo Serie by Mahen Bala

Mahen Bala’s works were in black and white, or should I say in varying shades of grey, not unlike the infamous book series by E.L.James, but without the sex and were taken of and in Tokyo. On first glance, ‘Tokyo Serie’ was an unprepossessing collection of grey images,  with a larger image to offset the smaller. There was a distinct lack of contrast in those images and, at times (as in the larger) a struggling to determine the subject. My wife guided me back after a cursory unimpressed glance, to let me gaze a little longer, and take the images as a series. That worked better. ‘Tokyo Serie’ is indeed a series, practically a Manga, of sequential photography, working only as a collective, and not individually. I was unsure if the lack of contrast was due to the digital nature of the images - digital photography does have a tendency to flatten out the tones; or a distinct statement on the flatness of Salaryman’s (Sarariman) lives in the city of Tokyo, and therefore an irony.

Home visits by Alecia Neo

Alecia Neo’s plentitude of works were in distinct contrast to those of Mahen Bala. They were bright, colourful - and staged. It was a style of photographic portraiture which seemed to come into being sometime during the 1980s and which, unfortunately, is rapidly become trite. There was a similar exhibition of portraiture in Phnom Penh before Christmas, by a female Vietnamese photographer portraying the ‘real’ (staged) lives of gay couples in Vietnam. The stillness and the colourfulness were there, as was Alecia Neo’s sense of isolation or loneliness, but there was an added attraction of prying into the lives of those living on the fringes of society, which gave those Vietnamese images a depth greater than those displayed by Alecia Neo. As entertaining as her images of Chinese individuals and others are, they lack symbolic depth and had me fairly running sent back to the images captured by Azwan Mahzan, up the stairs and opposite those of Mahen Bala.

Jalan Petaling self portrait Azwan Mahzan

Azwan Mahzan has a keen eye for texture, and for not doing the obvious in his photography. Like the other two photographers in the exhibition, Azwan Mahzan uses digital photography. At times he captures life as it is presented to him - no obvious studio lighting to gain ‘romantic’ or ‘isolated’ ahhhhs from his audience, and at other times Azwan Mahzan indulges in the odd bit of photoshopic trickery to shake us up a little, as in ‘Jalan Petaling, self portrait’. Both ‘Home from the Market’ and ‘Jalan Petaling - Ice Man at rest’ demonstrate an unselfconsciousness absent in the works of Alecia Neo’s work, plus, and this is a big plus - lots of lovely texture - green walls with red stain or white walls with dirt black stains, both are exquisite demonstrations of city life. If I were prodded with a hot telephone lens, I would have to comment that I found one or two of those images in need of a little sharpness, to bring out the texture a little more.

Context was an apt name for this exhibition. All three photographers were shown within the context of their spaces in the gallery, albeit larger (Alecia Neo) or smaller (Mahen Bala and Azwan Mahzan). Mahen Bala’s works, worked only within the context of sequentiality, whereas those of Alecia Neo continued a popular trend in photographic portraiture, putting her work into that staged context, whereas the works of Azwan Mahzan drew their strengths from the contexts of their environment. There was, therefore and perhaps, something for everyone as there should be in any group exhibition worth its compressed weight in digital megabytes and perky pixels. 

The NEW Dusun Quarterly 1

NEW BOOK LAUNCHED DECEMBER 2013

My NEW book is finally out

DECEMBER 2013

Launched in Manila, the Philippines

 Concerning

the irascible Filipino artist

Toro

fresh from the printer

proud parents

myself (writer and designer) - left, Toro (artist) - centre, Ignatius Yeo (artist agent) - right

Lim Kim Hai, Solo, 69 Fine Art Gallery

As we jovially walked down that antediluvian equatorial brick staircase, moss and tree ferns grew silently in the romantically dim gardens of 69 Fine Art Gallery. Anticipating the exhibition, I recalled the hazy, golden, apple orchards of my youth. At age 10, I had run free through hundreds of acres of apple trees whose names, except a few, have returned to the teacher. 

I slowly grew amidst Cox’s Orange Pippin, Discovery, D’Arcy Spice and so many more varieties of Eve’s fruit. Apples framed my pubescent years. Rotting, cider bound fruits scented my growth, just as they had scented the insides of Tolkien’s Hobbit barrels. Apple blossom graced my summers. I was too young for Rosie and cider. I was just some Arthur Ransome character wannabe, all apple bound and confined by creeping Englishness. 

In my latter years apples became designed by The Fool (Dutch artists Simon (Seemon) Posthuma and Marijke Koger), for The Beatles, and by Rog Janoff - as a logo for that infamous computer company.

Back in the tropical warmth of Malaysia, and exiting those exquisitely rambling nightly gardens, inside 69 Fine Art Gallery we were welcomed by bright lights and cool air conditioning. Having been washed by gallery currents, I nearly passed out (Tomber dans les pommes) as we were welcomed by a triumvirate of charming French expatriates. Firstly, a most seductively inviting Frenchman who could put Charles Aznavour to shame, smiled as wide as any Cheshire cat, and was accompanied by two even more enchanting and alluring French women - my mind swept to Catherine Deneuve and Jeanne Moreau, me being of that age. The evening had begun very well.

We were there, at the opening of an exhibition by Chinese Malaysian artist Lim Kim Hai, aka the Apple Man for reasons which shall become obvious. I had been introduced to his work some time previously, in some small selling gallery in the wilds of Kuala Lumpur. I had been curious as to why a Malaysia artist had taken apples as his subject. The answer was in this exhibition.

Lim Kim Hai initially had studied in Singapore’s Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, before heading off to France’s ecole Nationale Superieure Des Beaux Arts, in Paris. There was a moment of ‘eureka’ as I realised that France, an apple producing country, has nurtured artists with a great love of painting apples (pommes). Two exceptional French artists - Chardin and Cezanne had both delighted in still life paintings of apples. You might recall Dish of Apples by Paul Cézanne (Aix-en-Provence)1876–77, Still Life with Jar, Cup, and Apples (Aix-en-Provence) 1877 or Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses (Aix-en-Provence)1891–92. Likewise Chardin’s series of Apples (and Oranges), combining modernity and sumptuous beauty in one of the most important still lifes produced by the artist in the late 1890's. Even neighbouring Belgian Surrealist painter René Magritte, in Son of Man (1964), had a shot at painting that pomaceous fruit.

As we sauntered the gallery, walls of apples tumbling, falling, rising, sitting as subjects made me think of Bilbo, The Hobbit and Lake-Town, though not necessarily in such a negative sense as Fili (from the book, not the film).

Though Malaysia had never been known for growing apples, it being too moist and far too hot, the Sarawakians in Ba’kelalan have laboured long and hard to, at last, bring Eve’s fruit to Malaysia. So maybe it is timely that a French art gallery founder (Patrice Vallette), in Kuala Lumpur, should also present apples to the equatorial public. Perhaps, then, it is timely to bring a Malaysian artist, who has reveled in painting apples as his subject during his lengthy sojourn in France, to a Malaysian audience becoming increasingly familiar with the fruit.

Alluring Angkor and the recent works of Yeo Eng Hin

There is an intriguing interiority and an exciting exteriority to the recent paintings of Yeo Eng Hin. Intimations of French Impressionism and nuances of an emotional, and spiritual, Expressionism grace the acrylic and oil (mixed media) canvases of this gentle man painter. Yeo captures the essences of his subject well, and transports us, his viewers, into a land both venerable and seemingly superbly supernal - that of Cambodia’s ancient Angkor.

The imposingly graceful Angkor, magnificent city of hewn stone temples, was created by skilled craftsmen during Khmer (Cambodian) Empires from the 9th to the 15th centuries. It was revisited by French naturalist and explorer M.Henri Mouhot in 1860, and noted in his travel journals. Angkor is an imposing city comprising of Hindu and Buddhist temples which cover 400 glorious square kilometers, outside Siem Reap, Cambodia. The intrepid painter Yeo has sojourned in Angkor numerous times to internalise, and reveal, the gentleness, tranquility and deep seated spirituality of that wondrous city. Angkor has the sagacious reputation of turning writers into poets, adventurers into acolytes and painters into masters, and such is the case with Yeo Eng Hin. 

So seldom does the rendering of a subject fuse so perfectly with the psyche of the subject itself. It is as if Malaysian painter Yeo has absorbed some of the peaceful tranquility from that great Khmer city and rendered it, and his reflections upon it, for we exhibition visitors to marvel at. And marvel we do.

Nanyang (Singapore) and Paris trained Yeo has evidently come of age in his astute Angkor paintings. Skillfully blending an ethereal, impressionistic, haziness, acute architectural perspective with splash painted Expressionistic texturing, Yeo brings all the grace and otherworldliness of ancient city of Angkor alive. Drifting cantaloupe coloured monks stray like benign specters amidst aged and ancient stone. We onlookers become uncertain if these monks are unsubstantial echoes, ghosts in time, or present day samaner (novice monks), wandering in silent magnificence. As we gaze, we can feel the immense solidity of weathered stone cubes, hand carved, crafted to form pillars, now beset with all colours of aged lichen. Yeo’s painterly skill reveals the grace of balletic Apsaras and scalloped Buddhas; their hands pressing palm against palm in the sampeah - a welcoming salute to we who view.

These Angkor paintings are no mere capriccio, but a Turneresque dream of Eastern enlightenment and sublime enchantment. We witness and wonder, as Yeo skillfully blends cool and warm colouration to enhance our experience of the grandeur, and humbleness of his noble subject. As we stand before these paintings we become gently lulled, as if in a smoky miasma, drawn into a peaceful serenity greatly uncommon in the hustle and bustle of Malaysian modernity.

With an artist’s vision more acute than digital photography, Yeo Eng Hin, as visionary painter, presents us with both impressions and with expressionistic feelings. Feelings are invoked by the skill of the adept painter, his masterful layering, sleek stroke-making, poignant paint splashing. Light and dark are woven,‘manipulated’, to give birth to the illusion of depth and the depth to illusion. Bright, dark or sun-rising skies bring warmth or cool to our perceptions of the painter’s Angkor. Impressions are rendered in fleeting glimpses of mid-ground and background, seemingly inconsequential trees, and brisk bushes. Our vision becomes constantly guided. Yeo is our painter tour guide. He leads us into his perspectives, as we become unhurriedly herded by his skillful brushwork. In the land Yeo has created, ethereal monks and mysterious gateways arouse our curiosity. They become revealed by Yeo’s thaumaturgic, painterly, enchantment and suddenly appear to delight and astound.

If there were to be criticism of these works, it would of scale. I should delight in much larger works, works to truly get lost in - like some aging Alice in a dream that is a Cambodian wonderland.

Poem for Zhe Xuan

Dorothy

Replendant

in ruby slippers

Toto

leading her on

Went

one day

over the rainbow

and discovered

she was already home

Zhe Xuan

has taken that rainbow

coloured it 

with his look

caressed

paint onto

canvases

opening his

mindful

book

Flurries

Of decorative leaves,

and white/blue

powder puff

clouds

draw

his unsuspecting

audience

to wondrously exclaim 

aloud

surprised

unable

to take their eyes

off

ducks in wellington boots

and

thoughtful

birds who stare

with deeply 

quizzical looks

For Zhe Xuan

looks inside us

telling it like it is

telling his devoted

audience

of the charms 

that are

irrevocably

his.

Come tarry

with us

in this gallery

stand with us 

a while

Take a good look

my friends

at all of Zhe Xuan’s pictures

as just see 

if they

don’t 

make you 

smile.

poem for Zhe Xuan's gallery opening