Electric Kulintang

Avant-garde jazz drummer Susie Ibarra made Electric Kulintang happen. Ibarra, a Filipina-American who grew up in Texas, was raised playing the kulintang, an eight-gong instrument from the Philippines. But as she pursued jazz drumming, she left traditional music behind -- that is, until she married fellow percussionist Roberto Rodriguez and the two took a trip to the Philippines. Inspired by the local music, the duo came back and used laptops, sound snippets recorded on the islands, and electrified kulintang, among other things, to create the band's strange, hypnotic hybrid of a sound. Ibarra's free music collaborator Thurston Moore has played live with the project and also appears on the album.