Javanese Court Gamelan Volume II (side A)

The style of 1977's Javanese Court Gamelan Volume II is subdued and calm.  The album contains two very short tracks and two very long ones—3 of the 4 have vocals.  The singing strikes me as an obvious influence on Sun City Girls' microtonal vocal excursions—it shifts and slides through a set of notes that seems like a scale, but it's clearly an unfamiliar one to Western ears.  The tempos are consistently slow, and the pieces give a sense of structure and composition.  The recording captures a nice balance, and I wish the photos on the back cover were larger.