the kindness comes from the wire!
To get a more complete sense of Corner’s experiences in the Far East, however, the Pana Y Rosas website offers the Java Improvs as three sets of downloads recorded in Surakarta and Jakarta between April 1996 and May 1997. Although roughly contemporaneous with Two In Thailand, these are far more relaxed and exploratory sessions with local musicians – from the gently informal collaborations with percussionist Yasudah using homemade instruments and kitchen utensils to the intense vocalizing experiments with singer and dancer Restu Kusumaningrum. There’s more than three hours of material in these boxes; once again Corner lets the microphones pick up everything that happens and accepts it as part of the performance. Captured here is the whirring of night insects, the voices of performers winding down from a session just before the recording device is switched off, the sounds of water running, and a sudden downpour of rain.
“We are looking back at, and longing forward to, a world of artistic cooperations without artificial boundaries,” Corner said of his time with Fluxus. Even as a name it could perhaps only ever be a starting point, as his remarkably wide-ranging travels would indicate.
get the album here!
