Electric Kulintang

Electric Kulintang finds its way through the streets of the Philippines and the past and the present, with the help of a laptop, recorded sounds and, of course, the kulintang itself -- a ringing, eight-gong musical instrument that lives somewhere between gamelan and wind chimes. The avant-garde percussionists who make up the band know what they're about: they're exploring the apparent chaos of gong music, its mutability and its open-endedness, which provides a stark contrast to Western music. In the process, they've made a hypnotic hybrid of an album. Thurston Moore appears on a few tracks.