asa tone: mutualkind
Francisco Espregueira
Asa Tone bring together Melati ESP, Tristan Arp and Kaazi, three artists whose work often sits somewhere between electronic composition, experimental sound and rhythm. Their debut, Temporary Music [Leaving Records, 2020], introduced a shared approach built around unusual textures and sounds that seem to shift shape as you listen. Now, the group joins the incredible Music From Memory catalog with their album Mutualkind. Written between Indonesia, Mexico City, Berlin and New York, the album grew through remote exchanges, live sessions and ideas passed between its members. In this project we don’t hear a simple layering their separate styles, instead the trio looks for ways to make them interact.
The album’s eleven tracks shift between pieces captured live in one take and others assembled over time. “Second Language” and “Watertalk” retain the immediacy of a shared performance, while “Jalur-Jalur” and “In Vanishing Landscapes” explore how patterns can stretch, break apart and find new shapes. During the final sessions in Indonesia, Balinese percussionist Putu Septa added kendang to two tracks, bringing another rhythmic tradition into the mix. Asa Tone continue to explore how sound can grow from a particular place without being tied to it. On Mutualkind, that idea takes on a more collective form, but it doesn’t erase identities. It lets them meet, overlap and briefly speak the same language. Available on vinyl.