Taman Suara comprises two pieces, buluh and pontianak, composed by Robert Casteels in 2007 for a series of concerts entitled Music, plants and food. This interdisciplinary event explored man’s relationship with the environment, first through the performance of pieces of music inspired by food or about food, then through the creation of two new installations by Bob Verschueren, and finally, through the interaction between the audience and the ambulant kitchen by Thorsten Baensch and Christine Dupuis.

Banana trees grow successive sheathes of leaves around a central tender core. In installation VIII-07 Verschueren skillfully removed the vegetal layers of the banana trees, allowing subsequent oxidation to create strange and gradually changing colours.  Based on this process, Casteels composed pontianak by creating 20 cycles of music that are gradually and successively shortened, accelerating towards its final and explosive climax. With its wails, sighs and sweet harmonies, the central part of pontianak describes the Pontianak, a well known vampire in Malay folklore. Women who pass away after giving birth are said to become maleficent spirits that haunt banana trees in day time. They metamorphose into frangipani-scented ladies, the Pontianak, seducing and castrating men, causing miscarriages and devouring newborn babies. In contrast, testosterone levels run high during the outer musical parts of pontianak. The audience begins to believe that the energetic discourse of electric guitars and saxophone fuelled by the relentless drum has managed to overcome the Pontianak spirit, yet it is then revealed that the enchanting voice of the theremin has the last word. The full score lists the 37 ways Verschueren imagined to create sounds from bamboo stems and banana leaves. Structurally, Buluh and pontianak form a convex-concave dyad, a sound garden.

Quote
Taman Suara utilises instrumental forces drawn from pop rock and jazz. A combination of the unmistakable rock sound of electric guitar, the endless streams of sounds characteristic of avant garde jazz, and twentieth century post-tonality reflect Casteels’ distinctive eclectism.
Lee Shin-Kang, Singapore