Hana by Asa-Chang & Junray
Formats: Limited Edition 12" (DOCK 32)
Release Date: 20 May 2002
You ain't heard nothin' 'til you've heard this. An irresistibly fruity concentration of eastern percussion, toys, horns and obsolete analogue equipment, there's something breathtakingly 21st Century about the whole enterprise, as it oscillates wildly between urban contemporary and timeless spiritual, real and manipulated, serious and playful, pop and the avant garde. Isn't it about time we heard something this fresh?
The main track on this 12", 'Hana' (Japanese for 'flower'), had been circulating on white label and CDR, and has picked up a near religious following among the few that had heard it. 'Hana' is a bolt from the blue of intense, hallucinogenic sounds – one of those tracks you hear once and will never forget, we're confident that 'Hana' is quite unlike anything you've heard before...
'We respect the Indian tradition but wanted to offer something back, something different, something that even Indians couldn't do,' says Asa-Chang. 'That's how we developed the tabla-over-spoken-word style.' Spoken word hardly does the astonishing babelogue of Hana justice. His vision is to embody Kidoairaku, the Japanese word meaning the range of human emotions ' joy, anger, sorrow, relaxation. And then some. It should come as no surprise that Asa-Chang's first solo release was on Cornelius's Trattoria imprint.
This limited, vinyl only single precedes the release of Jun Ray Song Chang, an artist album that compiles all his Japanese releases to date. Get wild with your monkey!
