Asa Chang & Junray: ‘Jun Ray Song Chang’
July 18th, 2002 by freddie96
ASA-CHANG & JUNRAY
Jun Ray Song Chang
(Leaf)
While they may not be gracing any of this summer’s big events with any delectable treats from their roster, it requires no great stride of the imagination to trace the affinity the London-based Leaf label shares with the Big Chill. Both are entities that exist and function on the lifeblood of boundless creativity, whether it comes via the stimulus of beautiful, transcendental music, or through expansion into the possibilities of other challenging art forms: the spoken word, the treated visual.
This record, the most recent, ripest picking to have dropped from the Leaf tree, is arguably the label’s most ‘difficult’ yet, in terms of the conventional notion of an accepted scale of ‘listenability’. Previously the likes of Manitoba and Murcof, whilst undoubtedly producing complex, progressive music, have always retained an element of approachable melodic coherence, which, in each case, has simply added to the overall quality of the material. Asa-Chang & Junray’s ‘Jun Ray Song Chang’, on the other hand, appears to exist in a world where musical rules, be they of melody, metre or dynamic structure, are either largely ignored or remain unwritten, making the job of pinning it down into mere linguistic representation something of a challenge. To say the least.
Essentially, like the music of Talvin Singh, the pulse of Asa-Chang & Junray is the hypnotic polyrhythmia of a tabla drum. However, unlike the music of Talvin Singh, there can be no accusatory ‘coffee table’ sniping, as there is so much to pull this album away from such criticism it is barely worth entering into. Ridiculous, incongruous spoken overdubs invading sweet orchestral phrases (‘Hana’), colliery brass bands mixed with abrasive metallic static (‘Preach’), intense, bizarre vocal instrumentation followed by fierce blasts of synthesised squall (‘Jippun’) and the odd muted acoustic guitar are just a few features to be teased from the rhythmic rubble, but, really, there is little point in pontificating.
Whether Jun Ray Song Chang is your cup of Ginseng or not, listening to it is at the very least enough to remind one that music, in the sheer breadth of style and emotive content that has been produced in its name, is a truly remarkable, indefinable form. An obvious point, maybe, but one that should be remembered when attempting to locate the less-than-obvious appeal of this remarkable piece of work. And – as is almost always the case – given time, there is joy to be found.
Asa Chang & Junray, then; like the Aphex Twin Unplugged, very much drugged, and jamming with Nyman, Yokota and… Oh, you try and describe it then.
John Stevens
