David Parsons - Ngaio Gamelan

“After nearly five years of traveling, including 11 months on the road in one year, the Parsons family returned to New Zealand in 1997. Parsons finally returned to his own music. Consciously, he says, his approach hadn’t changed. He was still working intuitively, still picking up the sitar when he needed a burst of inspiration. But subconsciously, he suspects a profound influence. “I couldn’t believe the precision of the rhythms we heard while we were traveling,” he says. “So my approach didn’t change, but the materials and ideas did.” Drawing on the melodies and instruments he had recorded around the Eastern Hemisphere, Parsons set to work on a project that would bring the amazing experience of the world’s ancient acoustic traditions into an electronic setting. It would become the record Ngaio Gamelan“ “Using samples of his hours of recordings of instruments like the Armenian duduk (an oboe made of apricot wood), the Iranian kemanche (a spike fiddle), and the sarangi (the Indian box cel