The Squid's Ear Magazine


Kwang, Goh Lee: The Lost Testimony Of Rashomon (Herbal International)

A diverse set of electronic compositions from hauntingly beautiful to tormented soundscapes, composed by Goh Lee Kwang for a multimedia stage work based on Rashomon, a short story about moral ambiguity written in 1915 and based on a 1000-year-old Japanese tale.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Goh Lee Kwang-composer, performer


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Label: Herbal International
Catalog ID: 11XX
Squidco Product Code: 20801

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2011
Country: Malaysia
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold 3 Panels
No recording data listed.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Music for a multimedia stage production loosely based on Rashomon, a short story about moral ambiguity written in 1915 but based on a thousand-year-old tale from a Japanese collection of thousand-year-old tales. It is far more well-known and celebrated around the world as a classic film by Akira Kurosawa, though he borrowed only the name and a fragment for his story about the subjectivity of memory.

Kuala Lumpur based Goh Lee Kwang is one of southeast Asia's most fascinating and prolific multimedia artists. He produced this score for Nyoba Kan, a postmodern dance company that "showcases ugliness and indecency, while integrating it with philosophies of yoga, Buddhism, qigong, modern dance and other forms in its ongoing meditation on inner wisdom and universal compassion and mercy".

The Lost Testimony of Rashomon proves to have a life beyond the stage, as his ambient soundtrack relates the tale with vibrant detail and great restraint - Goh is otherwise not normally shy about making quite a racket. "Rain" and "The Spirit of Rashomon" are light and beneficent, but then things turn ugly. "Masago - Extorting a Confession" is twelve minutes of deliciously drawn out and tortured tones, death by a thousand cuts in stereo. Goh proceeds to ingeniously harness the muscle of Anglo-European industrial music in order to conjure a coven of "Witches" glimpsed distantly across wastelands and through thick fog. "The Judge" is a pitch black, unrelenting, stentorian rebuke; finally, a thunderstorm washes it all away. When listening to music written specifically to accompany images on stage, screen or video monitor, the original story is reduced to fleeting shadows and the music is forced to recall its own version of events. Goh's recording succeeds admirably as a vivid parallel cinema of sound."-Stephen Fruitman, Cyclic Defrost


Artist Biographies

"Goh Lee Kwang is a Malasian artist who creates sound installations, performs electro-acoustic improvised music, makes tape music and composed soundtracks. His works focus on the various possibility of both the realistic & abstract, crossing the boundaries of digital & analog, electronic & acoustic, go beyond language & expression. He is the founder of Switch ON, platform for electronic arts, and the founder of the Herbal International label."

-Bandcamp (https://gohleekwang.bandcamp.com/)
3/27/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Rain 2:34

2. The Spirit Of Rashomon 8:40

3. Masago - Extorting A Confession 12:38

4. The Witches 13:45

5. The Hair Stealer 5:24

6. The Judge 11:46

7. Rashomon Struck By Lighting 1:56

Related Categories of Interest:


Electro-Acoustic
Organized Sound and Sample Based Music
Sound, Noise, &c.
Soundtracks, Movie Scores, &c.
New in Experimental & Electronic Music

Search for other titles on the label:
Herbal International.


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