Sunday 20 May 2018

Tohpati Ethnomission - Mata Hati (2017)


The second album from this Indonesian band.

The band was a quintet with a lineup of kendang percussion, drums, guitars, bass, tarompet and suling bamboo flute.

Exotic instruments in other words. The main man here is Tophpati who also releases albums under his own name Tohpati Bertiga and as a member of Simak Dialog.
The record label is MoonJune Records and that is a sign of quality.... and/or eclectic weirness.

The jazz, rock and fusion scene in Indonesia (and the death metal scene too) is pretty big and has got some good attention during the last five to ten years. And with good reasons.

Tohpati Ethnomission is at the more melodic end of the fusion scene. Tohpati is not going all out to impress here. He lets the other musicians both room and plenty of solos too. Their contributions to this album is very considerable.

Tohpati is off course hugging some of the spotlight on this fifty minutes long album with his very guitar playing.

The music is not hyper-intense or overly technical. Those into great playing will get their satisfaction from this album too. The album most of all sounds very exotic and not at all like an Euro or US fusion album. It sounds like an Asian album. And that is a good thing.

The music is good throughout this album. The xtra sparks and great music is missing here. But this is still an album well worth checking out.

3 points


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