Label: Other Minds

ガムランの伝統的手法を敬意と愛情を込め否定&拡張した大推薦タイトル!!バリ島ウブド宮殿にて現在も演奏活動を行っているガムラングループの創設者である祖父の影響で演奏を開始、異端な作曲家たちの新世代を代表する存在となっているPutu Septa。バリ語で『反逆』『抵抗』『不服従』『否定』『逸脱』といった意味を持つ言葉[Piwal]をタイトルに冠した1stアルバムが、米Other Mindsから出版。タイトル通り、重鎮らに師事をしながらも長年確立されてきた作曲法や楽器編成を否定、エレクトロニクスや古典的ミニマリズムの手法を取り入れ型破りながらも非常にクールな録音に成功。今後のリリースにも非常に期待。







Other Minds is pleased to present Piwal by the Balinese composer and gamelan musician Putu Septa. Septa represents a new generation of maverick Indonesian composers, “evident,” as ethnomusicologist Oscar Murakami-Smith writes in his liner notes, “from the title of the multi-movement piece presented on this album—Piwal, a Balinese word which may be defined as ‘rebellion,’ ‘resistance,’ ‘disobedience,’ ‘denial,’ or ‘deviation.’”

Piwal is Septa’s attempt to square the traditional lineage of gamelan musicianship and composition with his interest in more experimental forms. The music swerves and changes codes with alacrity: traditional gamelan sounds suddenly give way to enveloping bass tones borrowed from avant-garde electronics. Other Minds is proud to present Putu Septa’s music on record, and to release it in conjunction with his appearance as part of the 29th Other Minds Festival, October 16th–19th at the Brava Theater in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Putu Septa was brought into gamelan by his grandfather, who was a founder of the gamelan group that currently performs in the forecourt of the Ubud palace in Bali. More recent mentors have been Wayan Gde Yudane and Dewa Alit, both of whom rebelled against state-sponsored control over gamelan composition by explicitly—and sometimes antagonistically—breaking long-established compositional and instrumental rules. Septa learned directly from Alit as a founding member of Alit’s experimental gamelan group Gamelan Salukat and continues these maverick tendencies but couples them with his internalized mastery and respect for traditional gamelan forms; the subtitle of Piwal is Garapan Tungguhan Konvensional Untuk Ekspresi Inkonvensional, or “the arrangement of conventional instruments/ensembles for unconventional expressions.”

Piwal is an ecstatic sonic journey that, similar to ‘60s and ‘70s American experiments with Indonesian music, redirects questions around gamelan composition from “what is traditional” to “what comes next?” Discover Putu Septa’s voice for a new generation of Indonesian composers.

"...Septa recognizes vast potential for the gamelan, evoking the most abstract swells and tones of experimental electronic music and classic minimalism (although neither is really deployed here). There’s a clear fluency in traditional gamelan music, so when Septa subverts that tradition, it’s with a mix of respect and love. That deep understanding seems to allow him to take all kinds of chances. Few things I’ve heard this year have been more transportive." —Peter Margasak, The Best Contemporary Classical Music on Bandcamp, September 2025