If melodic instruments are conduits of Venusian emotion, then percussion is their direct Martian counterpart. While a sax can wail and cry its way through a performance, an equally impassioned drum solo is usually described in terms of brute force: ferocious, cataclysmic, tumultuous.
Which may be why a little single, "Hana," from Japanese percussionist Asa-Chang and his group Junray has sent the London music press into a tizzy. And no, it's has nothing to do with garage-rock. If anything, "Hana," with its insinuating rhythms, poetic lyrics and gentle wash of burbling sound, is made for a lush garden or maybe a warm, soothing bath. The NME has called it "brilliant," and BBC DJ and tastemaker John Peel has featured it regularly on his radio show. The London-based Leaf Label will release a compilation of Asa-Chang's two albums this month.
Asa-Chang has described Junray (derived from the Japanese word for pilgrimage) as an attempt to summarize musically the entire experience of human emotion, or "kidoairaku." His main tool is the tabla. Sometimes shadowing the vocalist (Boredoms' drummer Yoshimi), sometimes almost conversing with her, the rhythms imbue the words with an intense emotional color.