Asa Tone

Music From Memory presents ‘Mutualkind’, by Asa Tone, the collaborative project of Melati ESP, Tristan Arp and Kaazi. Written between Indonesia, Mexico City, Berlin and New York, the record unfolds through a process of continual exchange, where distance itself becomes part of the group’s music formation. At the centre of the album is the idea of a shared language, formed across differences in geography, experience and musical approach. Voice becomes percussion, rhythm becomes melody, and the lines between individual contributions begin to dissolve. Some pieces, including ‘Water Talk’ and ‘Second Language’, were recorded live in a single take, while others were assembled gradually through remote exchange. During the final sessions in Indonesia, Balinese percussionist Putu Septa contributed kendang to two tracks, bringing the instrument into dialogue with modular synthesis, FM textures, electronic drums, MIDI wind instruments and Melati’s shifting vocal forms. Sounds are slowed, stuttered and reorganised, reflecting a world shaped by illusory borders, vanishing landscapes and glitching ecosystems. Yet the album remains rooted in the act of tending to something shared: a musical field built through listening, improvisation and repeated moments of reunion. ‘Mutualkind’ seeks to blur boundaries without erasing the identities that meet across them, providing a space in which voice and instrument, self and other, separation and togetherness can briefly exist at once.