Gamelan, the indigenous music of Java and Bali, remains a minority taste in Vancouver. Yet over time our three major gamelan ensembles have exerted a strong, if covert, influence on contemporary music in our region.

Their members and former members can be found on-stage with rock bands, chamber-music groups, and indie-folk units; some have even penetrated the higher ranks of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the CBC.

Gamelan-trained performers have done a lot to establish Vancouver’s reputation for open-minded, intercultural music-making, and that tradition is being taken even further in New Bronze Age, a two-part series that opens with an inventive collaboration between the avant-rockers in we just stole a car and the Vancouver Community College students in Gamelan Si Pawit. (The second installment is an outdoor performance by Vancouver’s Gamelan Bike Bike, which uses instruments made from discarded bicycle parts, at Guelph Park on July 7.)

Spearheaded by we just stole a car guitarist John Mutter and VCC instructor Jon Siddall, the project has been several years in the making.

“I met Jon at VCC, where I was a student, and so I joined the gamelan ensemble my first year there, and continued all three years I was there,” Mutter explains, in a three-way Skype conversation with Siddall and the Georgia Straight. “Most of our members were also in that ensemble, which kind of changed how I wrote music, because I was very inspired by gamelan music. I ended up writing this last album for we just stole a car, Chat Tambour, inspired by gamelan music, always with the hope of collaborating with the actual gamelan ensemble itself.”

Easing the process was that Siddall is both a fan of his former student’s hectic, polyrhythmic music and a pioneer in the world of hybrid forms. Most notably, he was a founding member of Toronto’s esteemed Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan, known for its work with electric instruments and electronics.

“In general, gamelan seems to provide an irresistible invitation to musicians to experiment,” he says. “I’ve been doing it for many years now, and one of the things that’s really struck me is that it just never loses its fascination. The depth of the fusion between those instruments and western instruments just keeps getting deeper. It’s like a layer cake. There’s been 30 or 40 years of this kind of stuff, so there are enough layers now that it’s become quite a tasty cake.”

The recipe for New Bronze Age involves the six members of we just stole a car playing items from Gamelan Si Pawit’s repertoire on electric guitar, electric bass, piano, saxophone, drums, and percussion; Si Pawit playing tunes from Chat Tambour on its Sundanese metallophones; and a couple of freshly composed collaborative efforts.

None of the music will be strictly traditional, and both Mutter and Siddall hope the feel of the event will be similarly exotic.

“I would love, actually, for this show to happen in a downtown Jakarta club,” Siddall says. “I think that’s kind of where its heart lies, and maybe that’ll happen some day. It’s kind of hot, sweaty, and clove-scented—so write that up!”

New Bronze Age takes place at the Western Front on Friday (June 12) and at Guelph Park on July 7.