Customer Reviews

Trance Gong

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I came to Gamelan Pacifica's page to see if they had another release aside from Trance Gong, which I own, and, lamentably, it's their only release. I've had a chance to sample various, Javanese and Balinese gamelan music, and I admit that finding "audiophile" recordings of these are quite rare. If you love the warm, glowing tones of this music and don't want to hear an excess of live concert noise that seems typical of this genre, buy this CD; I was pleased to find the quality of audio recording so high. Whereas a few tracks are of a fast tempo, most of the songs are of a quiet, pensive mood. Drawing upon the Javanese gamelan tradition and synthesizing their own, Trance Gong (based in the Northwest U.S.) occasionally inserts a wind or string instrument into their compositions. One of the last two tracks is my absolute favorite. I often hit *repeat* on the CD player and leave that song to play all night. It is what dreams are made of.

Quoting from the liner notes: "Gamelan Pacifica is a professional ensemble in residence at the Cornish College of Arts in Seattle. Inspired by the gong/chime orchestras of Java and Bali (collectively known as gamelan), the ensemble performs new and innovative music in an international style ..." To my western ears, traditional gamelan music is enjoyable, but a little goes a long way. Trance Gong contains music that has more stylistic and sonic variety than traditional gamelan, however, and the net result is an hour of unmitigated pleasure for the listener.