American clarinettist Tony Scott, an underrated trailblazer in jazz history, spent most of the first half of the 1960s in Asia, studying the spiritual and musical traditions of China, Japan and Indonesia; these cultures naturally ended up influencing his own work. 1964’s Music for Zen Meditation is the most famous record of this ‘Eastern’ period of Scott’s, but modern listeners may find it a little too ‘New Age’ for their tastes (I certainly did, and do).

Djanger Bali – recorded with a group of Indonesian musicians (including pianist Bubi Chen, described by DownBeat as ‘the Asian Art Tatum’) gathered under the Indonesian All Stars banner – is a more ‘straight jazz’ effort and thus far more stimulating. Some reviewers have criticised this approach, castigating Scott for relegating Indonesian tones and textures to mere background noise; but that’s unfair: here he successfully merged his sophisticated, hard-swinging jazz with the contemplative vibes and rhythms of gamelan: tracks like ‘Djanger Bali’ and ‘Gambang Suling’, with their guitar, flute and ketjapi textures, retain a mystical aura, and are two of the most successful examples of fusion between jazz and Indonesian music ever recorded; ‘Mahlke’ is a wonderful, swinging guitar-clarinet duet; and ‘Summertime’ begins with sparkling, dancing Javanese tones before exploding into some jaw-droppingly hard ensemble blowing.

As ever with MPS, the sound quality of this album (recorded not in the steaming jungles of Bali but in the Black Forest of Southern Germany) is remarkable. Serious audio buffs can also order the album on reel-to-reel tape – for a hefty price, of course – on the Horch House label.