Macha: See It Another Way

There's so much music in the world, yet so few Western artists ever look much further than their own backyard for inspiration. Consequently, when high-profile groups such as The Beatles add a sitar to a song, or when someone like Paul Simon hires South African session musicians, the moves appear downright revolutionary. But for the most part, rock—punk, pop, indie, whatever—still treads the same ground on which it's always stood. Athens, Georgia, may be the artistic Mecca of the south, but it's still not much of a cultural melting pot. Perhaps that's what sent Macha's Joshua McKay on a trip to Indonesia, where the gamelan music of Bali lit up a nascent light bulb. The band's self-titled debut featured such non-traditional (for rock) instrumentation as Javanese zithers and Sumatran gongs to go along with the usual guitars and drums. What made that album so distinctive, and what makes See It Another Way even more compelling, is just how well the ingredients are mixed: It's hard to say where one world stops and another starts. It helps that Indonesian music isn't especially in-your-face, at least not by Western standards; Gamelan music is renowned for its relaxing properties, in part because much of it sounds like wind chimes. Given the Zen-like music patterns of Indonesia, when the zithers of "Riding The Nails" collide with the band's fuzz bass, hypnotic drums, and whispered vocals, it all actually works. "Until Your Temples Are Pounding" may or may not be a pun, as the instrumental proves a perfect blend of driving indie-rock and pensive Eastern melodies, while the dramatic "The Nipplegong" (don't laugh at other cultures!) finds power in the same properties that originally inspired minimalists like Steve Reich and Philip Glass. While Macha's identity as world-hopping college kids occasionally comes off as a bit pretentious, it's nice to hear someone at least trying something different. The group stands as a glaring example of just how many ideas have yet to be explored, and just how much the outside world should inform American culture, rather than the other way around.