In 1979 Malaysian drummer/percussionist Lewis Pragasam started the Asiabeat Project. It initially started-off as a percussion group… experimenting with various combinations of ethnic Asian instruments and rhythms.

In 1980 Lewis organised a concert to officially launch the Asiabeat Project, which comprised an ensemble of over 60 musicians. This was an historical event for Malaysian music as it was the first time the different cultures were brought together under one roof to perform ‘live’.

The concert was a huge success and billed as ‘Concert of the Year’ by all the media.

In 1982, the Asiabeat debut recording was released featuring an all Malaysian ensemble with special guests American/japanese ‘Shakuhachi’ exponent John ‘Kaizan’ Nep-tune and South Indian percussionist Tirupat Raja.

In 1984, “DARE to DREAM” was released, featuring pretty much the same core line-up as the debut, with some additional guest musicians. Neptune played a pivotal role in the music and production of this recording.

Since then the project has released three other recording projects, namely SPIRIT of the PEOPLE, DRUMUSIQUE and MONSOON. All these recordings were released internationally to critical acclaim.

The latest offering Urban Beyond was released under the Indonesian label Omega Pacific Productions (OPP) in 2007. During the period (2005 -2007), Lewis' travel/work schedule brought him to Indonesia quite a bit and met Gita Wirjawan (owner and C.E.O of OPP). The music for this project was recorded in 8 different countries, namely; Indonesia, Vietnam, China, India, Singapore, Australia, Argentina and Malaysia, featuring a host of musicians and vocalists. The idea is to collect snippets of music, sounds, textures every time he finds or hears something he likes. Some of this material, which was recorded in hotel rooms, garages, in the street..wherever, then pieced together in the studio to form full fledged musical arrangements. This album differs from most of the other recordings as it features quite a few vocal tracks. Such a wide variety of musical styles are portrayed..it almost feels like a natural musical culmination of all the previous recordings. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.