Brought to you by Flitterak2 Productions and “Suara Kupu Kupu”, this album combines Australian and Indonesian musical ideas through delicately crafted melodies, driving grooves and imagined sonic stories for a new cross-cultural listening experience. Colours of folk, jazz, funk and more are added to the sounds of Sundanese Gamelan to create a hybrid aural fusion. The listening experience lies somewhere between the streets of Bandung, the mixing desk of a contemporary audio studio, and an Australian landscape.
We bring you eight tracks, each with a unique combination of solo instrumentation and Indonesian gamelan. The album blends sounds and textures in ways that have rarely been explored before. Recorded in the Macquarie University studios, Sundanese instruments from Bandung are embellished with saxophone, violin, suling, piano and digitakt. Gongs, the bedrock of any gamelan ensemble, have been crafted so you can hear the tones of the earth itself, while kendang and kulanter add final shading. Listen with good speakers to get the full effect!
The Overview
In Kupukupuruk, Sundanese carukan (interlocking) is modified and punctuated with gamelan chordal colours, while a mesmerising suling (flute) melody imitates the imaginary sounds of butterflies. This gives us our name – Suara Kupu Kupu, “Voice of the Butterfly” – new sounds with delicate patterning and vibrant tonal colouring. Gehu Mamah GOR underscores our album’s Sundanese roots; contemporary melodies are brought from Bandung to Australia by one of Australia’s leading Indonesian composers, Efiq Zulfiqar. Zulfiqar’s suling draws on diverse modalities to create tonal contrast to the gamelan’s contemporary Sundanese groove. Robotekan then fuses Balinese kotekan with Sundanese carukan over a layer of funk, before firing up the engine room with rampak kendang (drum interplay). New styles of interlocking and dampening substitute for slap bass, while Sandy Evans’ soprano saxophone clarifies the chatter. Melodies soar through traditions of suling lyricism, Sundanese drumming, and modal jazz. Mudah Mudahan (hopefully) takes you on another melodic journey, one that throws new chordal colours into the mix, all with a playful reference to contemporary pop. Again, Evans’ saxophone floats across the bedrock of gamelan rhythmic play. By contrast, Piano Byar imagines the impossible. When a piano and gamelan meet, it’s usually not this fun and often very painful! Here, however, potentially jarring tuning dilemmas are resolved through reimagining the piano’s chordal texturing while demoting melody to the back of the mix. Gamelan pitches are combined with Andrew
Alter’s arpeggios and block-chord-stabs to remind you of Balinese reog while occasionally straying into the world of Karnatak solkatu. Sundali brings back melody. Here a folk aesthetic is combined with a suling sensibility in a world where Sunda and Bali meet. Carukan, always a part of everything we do, is complimented by Kerry Watson’s Celtic fiddle gestures to bring you new worlds of fusion. Then join us for Djayo – D. J. “Ayo!” – a sonic journey through the studio with Digitakt drum machine stirring up a banquet of sampled percussion sounds – some from our group, some from Geoff Limbert’s imagination, and others from places we have yet to visit. We end with – Gudril – which at first sounds like a return to our Sundanese roots. But here/hear again the gamelan garnished by Watson’s violin melody. It should sound easy, like the simplest butterfly darting between flowers. It’s never that easy! Join us to hear musicians spin their magic around new musical ideas that drift together from distant corners of our planet.
Official Bandcamp Page
https://suarakupukupu.bandcamp.com/album/voice-of-the-butterfly
Other Sites
https://soundcloud.com/gamelanguru
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1aYpEjsn2FNdTz09pQOPCQ
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lDyjOUrun7XQUvNIJygZSWl3tA8_NkyIc
https://music.apple.com/us/album/voice-of-the-butterfly/1868807216
The Group
Suara Kupu Kupu embraces the serendipitous possibilities of Indonesian modes, rhythms, and textures when the group meets contemporary popular idioms from OZ.
Suara Kupu Kupu is a contemporary Australian-Indonesian gamelan group who explore the sound worlds of Sundanese Gamelan combined with instruments from around the globe. Deftly navigating a diverse range of sounds, we bring you surrealist combinations and … maybe even the voices of butterflies.
SKK’s new album “Voice of the Butterfly” explores melody in a new harmonic atmosphere developed specifically from the ethereal sounds of gamelan. We create a new musical language outside the hegemony of equal temperament but squarely situated in the contemporary popular music world. Funk rhythms, modal jazz, world music experimentation, electronic synthesis – we’ve got it all: in small doses and with a huge sense of adventure.
The Performers
Andrew Alter has been playing gamelan for over forty years, first as an undergraduate student in the USA under Pak Sumarsam and then in the group Swara Naga at the University of New England, Australia with colleague David Goldsworthy. With Swara Naga he had the opportunity to not only work with colleagues but also with visiting artists including Pak Poediono and Wahyu Rohewande amongst others. In 2013 he established the Macquarie University gamelan ensemble before the ensemble morphed into Suara Kupu Kupu. He has played with a variety of other gamelan ensembles in Australia. Andrew’s interests span an eclectic mix of World Music choirs, Indian Classical Music and of course gamelan. He maintains a keen interest in modal systems around the world. These things undoubtedly influence his style of composition which adopts a playful lyricism within an exuberant celebration of music from diverse corners of our planet. Alter is the guiding force behind the production of “Voice of the Butterfly”, composing six pieces, arranging a seventh, and overseeing the recording and production process.
Efiq Zulfiqar is a superb musician, composer, performer and graphic designer from Brisbane, Australia and Bandung, West Java. He has performed in numerous festivals across Australia and the world including the Ubud Folk Festival, the Woodford Folk Festival and Japan’s World Expo 2025 (amongst many others). Zulfiqar contributes to this album by playing both suling (flute) and kendang (drum), providing Indonesian flavoured grooves tinged with spicing from Bandung, Brisbane, and beyond. His sensitivity for modal design in conjunction with gamelan is based on a deep understanding for Indonesia’s many varied musical traditions. His musicality shapes the album’s sensibilities in ways that make it a thoroughly enjoyable listening experience. His piece “Gehu Mamah GOR” (Track 2) draws on memories of the musical life of Bandung even while he now works as a freelance musician in Brisbane.
Sandy Evans is Australia’s leading saxophonist with an eclectic interest in the world’s many musical traditions. She contributes to two tracks on this album playing soprano saxophone on “Robotekan” (Track 3) and “Mudah Mudahan” (Track 4). This is Evans’ first foray working with Indonesian gamelan, but you’d think she’s been doing it her whole life! Her saxophone sensitively draws on West Javanese suling aesthetics while creating soaring melodies and counter rhythms over the top of the gamelan’s groove. Not surprisingly she brings deep modal understanding to the party in ways that introduce the audience to a new hybridity based on inspired melodic design and collaborative musical interplay. Nothing is too hard for Evans. Everything she tries is successful!
Kerry Watson is a fiddle player extra-ordinaire. She maintains an interest in Celtic traditions having played in numerous bands including her own group Trí who released their album Tunage recently. She brings to this project her huge experience in playing with bands from a variety of genres and styles. However, Watson also has a lengthy and deep understanding of gamelan music having played for over twenty years with Gamelan Swara Naga (as both an ensemble member and violinist) before starting her own ensemble. Not surprisingly, this lengthy association with gamelan allows her to magically mould her violin to fit the gamelan sound space – something that isn’t very easy! She does this on “Voice of the Butterfly” with an astounding virtuosity that completely integrates disparate sound worlds.
Geoff Limbert is a Sydney based musician who plays drums and keyboards. In this album he adds unique rhythmic innovation to the gamelan on bonang and other instruments that expand the popular grooves of the ensemble. He also weaves his magic on the drum machine (digitakt). He’s there when you most need him, adding the sparkle at the right moments or designing intricate interlocking patterns too hard to explain!
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