Space Gambus Experiment: Kamal Sabran quests on the fringes of ‘noise’ and ‘melody’ to bring us this unexpected gem of a CD - Yusuf Martin

A new music CD, launched December 2009, introduces the mesmerising sounds of The Space Gambus Experiment to an expectant audience. This landmark work is the result of a unique collaboration, not only between the two presenting musicians – Mohd Zulkifli Ramli (Gambud/Oud) and Kamal Sabran (electro – acoustic) but also between the traditional and the contemporary in modern Malaysian music.

For this ‘experiment’ Kamal Sabran has engaged the talents of Mohd Zulkifli Ramli, to bring the uniquely symbolic music of the Malay gambus (a lute like instrument), into play, perhaps with the intention of playing point, counterpoint to Kamal’s adventurous sound making.

An observant reader will have noticed the word – Space in the title of this CD, as in The Space Gambus Experiment, and maybe scratched an itchy follicle or two on its significance. To put your inquisitive minds at rest, I am not referring to some post-hippy, pseudo-psychedelia, but in this case – real Space, as in ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’, the National Space Agency and the planet Jupiter.

Among Kamal’s many projects as an artist and musician, and following his partiality to meld science with art, Kamal had worked as an ‘artist in residence’ at the Malaysian National Space Agency, between 2005 and 2006.

There he developed ‘Sonic Cosmic Music from Outer Space’, which was later performed at the planetarium. It was at the National Space Agency that Kamal began experimenting with radio waves, received through the radio telescope, from the planet Jupiter as it was orbiting over Malaysian skies. Some of that celestial material, along with the more traditional gambus music, graces this present album.

With a world rapidly churning out the latest talking blues gangsta rapper, wannabe TV starlet/singer or bootilicious boy/babe dressed hot to kill, it has become a case of never mind that he/she cannot actually sing but look at that boy/girl go.

It therefore comes as a great relief that artist/designer/musician/academician Kamal Sabran quests on the fringes of ‘noise’ and ‘melody’ to bring us this unexpected gem of a CD – The Space Gambus Experiment. Co-incidentally, Kamal, rapidly becoming a Malaysian renaissance man, has also designed the layout and cover of this visually, as well as musically, exciting CD.


Those of you who have been intently following the contemporary arts scene, or who have been nose-diving into arts listings or even shrewd enough to access on-line Malaysian arts reviewers, recently, will have seen Kamal as part of 15 Malaysia.

15 Malaysia was a project consisting of a series of 15 short films, concerning the realities, and some fantasies, of life in Malaysia. Kamal’s entry – LUMPUR (mud), is about, strangely enough, mud, or rather what it comprises of. This short film explores people’s association with land, ownership, water and earth, leaving the audience pondering these subjects.

‘Lumpur’ saw Kamal as film director, editor, musician and composer, along with the legendary Pete Teo as overall producer.
Music from ‘LUMPUR’ - Ruang Kosong Remix, containing sounds taken from soil and water, add an ‘organic’ element to the soundtrack, and appears on the CD The Space Gambus Experiment.
Out of the canon of Kamal Sabran’s musical enterprises, this CD offers what may be his most accessible compositions, with a more direct focus on instrumental melodies, intertwined with electronic abstract resonance. Certainly, with this innovative CD, Kamal has moved, ever so slightly, away from the more distinctly avant-garde Terry Riley, or, perhaps Max Neuhaus inspired sound experiments he is known for - towards a more rounded sound imagery, infinitely more palatable for the general, lay public, as well as proving stimulating for the discerning music lover.

-Yusuf Martin
Englishman writer,poet and art critic live in Malaysia