Australian drummer and composer Will Guthrie has often worked with musicians that refuse to be categorized, for example Roscoe Mitchell, Mike Patton, Oren Ambarchi, Ava Mendoza, and Mark Fell. From his residence Nantes he runs the Ensemble Nist-Nah, a ten-piece group with equally broad-minded percussionists from France. In this ensemble he applies his deep knowledge of gamelan, the Indonesian percussion music that can sound either shimmering and meditative or raw and trance-inducing.
The ensemble uses the metallophones, hand drums and gongs of the traditional Gamelan ensembles, alongside drums and other percussions, classic, found and junk. The music presented is grounded in Guthrie’s travels in Indonesia and his studies of various forms of Gamelan music, such as the stately Gamelan Sekaten and the trance ritual Jathilan, both from Java, and Gamelan Salukat of contemporary Balinese composer Dewa Alit. These influences are combined with the eclectic backgrounds of the group members in noise, avant-jazz and electro-acoustic music.
Sakina Abdou, Prune Becheau, Charles Dubois, Thibault Florent, Colline Grosjean, Will Guthrie, Amelie Grould, Mark Lockett, Sven Michel, Arno Tukiman