Aka/Darbari/Java: Magic Realism is a 1983 album by American trumpet player and composer Jon Hassell, released on the label Editions EG. It was co-produced by Daniel Lanois and features Abdou M'Boup on drums.[1]
Background
The album features Hassell manipulating and looping fragments of sampled sound.[2] In the liner notes, Hassell describes the album as "a proposal for a 'coffee-colored' classical music of the future."[3]
AllMusic's Brian Olewnick described the album as "an insinuating blend of early-'80s high tech with ancient Southeast Asia," calling it "an early high-water mark at the juncture between world and ambient musics."[1] For The Village Voice, Robert Christgau called it "dandy background music--more fluid and organic than Dream Theory in Malaya if also more amorphous than his first Eno collaboration."[3]
In his 1995 book Ocean of Sound, David Toop writes that on Aka/Darbari/Java "the perfume of ethnopoetics was supplemented by parallels with literature and the advanced technology of hyperreality."[2]
Tracklist
All tracks composed by Jon Hassell unless otherwise noted.