The first thing you notice about In Nem is that there are 96 seconds of silence between each of the three tracks. How powerful can this music be, you wonder, to require this kind of recovery period? And why 96 seconds specifically? In fact, if it's a sonic punch-up you're after, you’d be better off looking elsewhere – this is a disc to put your headphones on for and trance out to. Traditional gamelan is a major influence on Western minimalism. Here, Javanese musicians return the compliment, playing minimalist music on gamelan percussion. Each piece borrows the structure of Terry Riley's classic composition ‘In C’. The melodic fragments and their order is preordained, but not how many times they are played, or how fast. The players also improvise around the themes, just as they do in traditional gamelan. The effect, however, is more ambient than minimal. It's a lovely sound-world in which to spend time, and there are some great moments (a Javanese gong dropped on top of churning percussion ostinatos is a guaranteed spine-tingler), but the pieces somehow miss the trick of the best minimal music – of producing huge effects out of tiny changes.

Very different, and more successful, is the album by Endah Laras, a 35-year-old singer from central Java. Her album's 13 tracks run the gamut of Javanese styles, and, without compromise or gimmicks, serve them up in forms that ought to snag Western ears. The variety is down to the remarkable versatility of Laras’ voice. She's capable of the reedy tones of traditional gamelan singing, but also lets rip in full-throated, soulful fashion on the unaccompanied opening track ‘Gandrung Temenan’ (where she almost sounds like Lulu belting out the opening of ‘Shout’.) She slips into something more comfortable for the sweetly romantic kroncong style, descended from the songs of Portuguese settlers and accompanied here by a ukulele. The seven members of the Dedek Gamelan Orchestra give able support on gamelan percussion, augmented on some tracks with violin.