REVIEW: Macha, See It Another Way (Jetset)
- Andrew Duncan
Athens, Georgia has seen a recent continental shift in the college town's musical palette. R.E.M. may have put Athens on the music atlas, but it is Macha who is turning the town into a global village.
Their debut release, appropriately titled See It Another Way, is an eye-opening experience from a group of musicians who are focused on playing their instruments. It is not their roots that make them so innovative, and it is not their talent either. It is, however, their passion for Indonesian music that gives them the motivation to correctly combine the gamelan art with hard rock to form a multi-cultural landscape filled with plush expressionism.
Besides the traditional instruments (guitar, bass guitar and drums), Misho and Joshua McKay, Kai Riedl and Wes Martin also play a selection of exotic instruments including a zither, Hammered dulcimer, vibraphone, Indonesian gongs and 'Fun Machine' (as exotic as a 'Fun Machine' may be).
Macha would be just another rock group if it were not for Joshua and Kai's Indonesian influence brought about by trips to Southeast Asia. They immediately fell in love with the music, and it immediately shows when the hammered dulcimer chimes uncontrollably on the opener, "Riding the Rails." Songs like "Mirror" and "Salty," although two unrelated tracks truly capture the essence with "Mirror" whisping through the airwaves like a puff of smoke coiling like a snake, and "Salty" radiating traditional meditative sounds.
Experience is not always a requirement for excellence and Macha proves it. They have enough devotion to override experience, and belt out a CD's worth of material that is an aural paradise. And with Macha's next release, who knows how far they will go.
