Review: Of Deities and Demons – Australian Art Orchestra and Baliphonics, in ecstatic trance

Of Deities and Demons grew directly out of AAO Artistic Director Peter Knight’s meeting with drummer and Baliphonics leader Samudi Suraweera during a visit Knight made to Sri Lanka. The conversations and the friendship that grew between these two musicians led to the idea of meshing the experimental inclinations of the AAO with the yak bera (demon drum), and other traditional instruments of Sri Lanka.