For those unaware, Myths of Origin defies mainstream society’s enduring fetish for Orientalist fantasies, a history woven inextricably into unconscious biases that can, as evident by the increase of hate crimes against Asian Americans during the pandemic, progress into explicitly racist violence.

Myths of Origin forges a unique language free from the expectations of ethnicity and genre, to revolutionize our relationships to each other.

Jason Kao Hwan utilizes a lexicon of gestures to conduct and empower improvisations that engage my notated score. The musicians infuse their individuality into a flow of spontaneous moments that illuminate possibilities for the journey ahead by revealing truths of who we can become.

For to be transformed by possibilities grounded in truth, is to transcend all Myths of Origin.

1. The Collapse of Gravity
2. Spin Fast and Burn
3. Multiply and Rise
4. Dust Gathers Around Sleep
5. Landmarks Vanish
6. Where Fools Fear
7. Ancestors of Light
8. Anthem of Knowing
9. Never Forgotten

Whether evoking the ancient sounds of Japanese gagaku for some listeners or the modernist sonorities of a Penderecki threnody for others, depending on cultural frames of reference, the new recording opens on the jaggedly crystalline fare of The Collapse of Gravity and then we get the more upbeat and free flowing Spin Fast and Burn, the staggeringly effective Multiply and Rise and the more languishing affair of the almost cinematic Dust Gathers Around Sleep.

On an album that defies orientalist fantasies by inhabiting multiple worlds of sound, and which was recorded live at the 2022 Vision Festival in Roulette, Brooklyn, NY, along next is the organically sculpted Landmarks Vanish which is in turn backed by the beautifully exercised Where Fools Fear, the impassioned Ancestors of Light, rounding out on the spirited affair Anthem of Knowing, closing on the musical colossus Never Forgotten.

www.jasonkaohwang.com