Arrington De Dionyso

Malaikat Dan Singa [KLP215] is a collection of throbbing, hallucinogenic, trance-inducing trans-utopian cosmic post-punk sounds from Old Time Relijun’s Arrington de Dionyso. It was recorded at the Dub Narcotic Studio in Olympia, Washington, by Karl Blau. Never one to compromise in pursuit of his twisted visions of the future of music, Arrington not only rattles listeners with heavy grooves but he also sings every song on this album in Indonesian. What? Arrington tells us that some of the lyrics are lifted from the poems of William Blake and passages from The Zohar.

The digital version of this album is available from Bandcamp.

Musically speaking, despite the Indonesian influence, de Dionyso doesn’t survey continents in search of exotic sounds. Instead he drills holes through them with a contemporary urgency. Malaikat Dan Singa is an album of translated and personal mysticism that sounds like it was dug up from the Earth. Left here from a future time, unknown to us in the present.

Vast tracts of the uncharitable cavernous underground is exposed in this imagined musical Pangaea by using microtones, polyrhythms, throat singing, echoplex, bass clarinet and reverb in addition to drums, guitar and bass (three of the songs on this album include the Old Time Relijun line-up). Although there is a familiar and foreign rhythm with its mixture of post-punk and Gamelan tendencies, Malaikat Dan Singa is really Future World Music. Maybe it will be used to sell transportive vehicles in 2369. Or a DNA replacement cream. And you can dance to it.

Some artists push the envelope, de Dionyso eats the envelope and spits out an origami of sound. And he says he recorded this album to impress a girl. It was followed up by another excursion into Indonesian dance raga by Arrington de Dionyso's Malaikat dan Singa, Suara Naga [KLP226].

Press

“Arrington de Dionyso’s … ravishingly alien sound [is] deep, guttural, trance-inducing and overpoweringly physical.” - Plan B Magazine

"This is a great record--who else is going to be crazy enough to do an entire American release sung in Indonesian? It's as if Arrington stole Tom Waits' old band, dragged them to 1974 Bandung, slipped them some mescaline, made them listen to BROERY at maximum volume until they begged him to stop the cassette and then took them to record the whole thing in a cloud of burning smoke on the lip of Krakatoa." - Alan Bishop, Sublime Frequencies/Sun City Girls