Albums
Fajar Di Atas Awan
2008
Genre: Worldwide
Release Date: 2008
By Joshua Klein
Reviewed September 22, 2008
Originally released 10 years ago on RFI France, Indonesian band Suarsama's spiritual and gently free-spirited Fajar Di Atas Awan gets its belated U.S. introduction by way of Drag City.
The internet may be diminishing, if not outright destroying, the notion of obscurity. But from Alan Lomax to the folks at Sublime Frequencies, as long as there's someone driven enough to seek out new sounds, there will always be new sounds waiting to be discovered. The celestial jukebox is nowhere near full. Even Drag City has been on a global kick lately, via its Yaala Yaala imprint. Now comes the indie's reissue of Suarasama's 1998 Radio France Internationale debut , which is labeled a Drag City proper release. The disc could pass for something from (the Drag City-distributed) Language of Stone, or even another enigmatic project featuring D.C. house band staples Will Oldham and Matt Sweeney. But the passing resemblance of Suarasama's music to oft-cited psych or weird folk figures demonstrates that discovery works both ways. Just as music listeners in the West have spent the past several decades digging up strange, exotic sounds from the East, so are musicians in the East constantly discovering and digesting music made in the West, and from the rest of the world as well.