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ARTIST
TITLE
Ocean Cage
FORMAT
LP

LABEL
CATALOG #
RAUM 008LP RAUM 008LP
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
6/26/2026

Ocean Cage is a live recording of Tianzhuo Chen and Siko Setyanto's performance Moyang and Seaman -- a forking stage work that evolved from the immersive theatre performance project Ocean Cage, sharing the same title. Directed by Tianzhuo Chen, aka Asiandopeboys, the immersive performance Ocean Cage merges scenography, installation, choreography, and live music into a unified whole. Inspired by the complex whaling traditions in Lamalera, an Indonesian village that preservers ritualized whaling practices and ancestral beliefs, the work unfolds through interconnected trinities. It tells a porous story of unlocking the cage of the ocean: receiving ancestral blessing while becoming entangled with misjudgement, misunderstanding, ecological grief, and temporal displacement, until the sacrifice and life cycles move toward equilibrium. Evolving from this larger narration, Moyang and Seaman shifts into a frontal, meditative dialogues between ancestor and seaman. Inspired by Japanese Noh theatre and deeply rooted in Nusantara traditions, the performance integrates music, dance, and stage art into a mutable and fluid process, continuing to explore ancestral presences, cyclical time, and spiritual transformation. The album features music by KADAPAT and Nova Ruth, interwoven with Siko Setyanto's narrations and monologues. KADAPAT's electronic-gamelan practice moves through interlocking rhythm and cyclical time structures, extending asymmetrical Balinese ancestral yet modern sonic with digital signal. Bamboo and metal, folk and sacred, horizontal and vertical forces collide and co-exist, forming layered pulses that shift and reform in motion. Born and raised in Java, Nova Ruth's voice emerges from lived cosmology of oneness, where beings are interdependent and entangled. Singing becomes vibration from her body, carrying ecological awareness through shifting currents of fluxes and forces. Siko Setyanto describes his practice as "bodily musicality" -- a choreography in which movement and monologues interweave seamlessly with music, allowing the body listen, respond, and compose in real time. On the album, his voice retains that immediacy -- a trace of bodily musicality translated into sound. Ocean Cage also records the reciprocal, communal, improvisational, polymetric, and relational collaborations among Nova Ruth, Siko Setyanto, KADAPAT and Tianzhuo Chen. No role is fixed; no expression remains confined to its original context. In this sense, Ocean Cage becomes an assembled living being. This limited-edition deluxe vinyl edition features a gatefold sleeve with a sewn-in 16-page booklet, including scenario sketches by Tianzhuo Chen, articles by Dr. Freda Fiala and Milia Xin Bi, and performance photography by Nathaniel Brown and Camille Blake.