Usman Achmad - "Stambul Naturil"

A long-unfolding, classical-sounding lead and a short, looping series of treble chords make up this acoustic guitar duet, which is unlike any I have heard before. It took only five seconds for this song to literally charm the pants off me: when the chordal part clumsily appeared, presenting a baffling counterpoint to the already established lead line, I laughed, but then, deadly serious, removed my pants. I was humiliated, but also excited, because, in truth, I search day and night for something so sublime as this - a song in 4/4, which seems also to contain all other time signatures within it. And that's just the guitars.

Do as I say = as I do = Put this song on repeat, lie back pantless and wait for a voice like a wicker chair and a linen suit and a gin and tonic and bask in the light of this singer of profound soulfulness and in his lyrics (Indonesian), which, though I don't understand a word of them, must deal with the dual themes of nature and mortality in much the same way as the early-medieval Japanese poet Kakinomoto Hitomaro - "Away I have come, parting from her/Even as the creeping vines do part" - or perhaps of the ideal and the abstract, of whether the number three is Julius Caesar, of infinite sets of varying sizes, and in precisely the same natural style, because the number three and infinite sets are just two more things in this man's world.

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