박지하 [Park Jiha]
Communion
★★★
A unique and contemporary dive into the world of Korean music as well as minimalism. My experience with Korean folk music, or the folk music of any East Asian culture, is fairly limited. So I could not tell you how this compares to a more traditional setting or recording. The use of traditional Korean instruments such as a mouth organ and hammered dulcimer make this an organic and warm listen. Much of which is densely layered and filled with sweetness in between each of those layers, like a simple but flavorful and honey sweet cake. It’s also impressive and brave to an album of this nature as it stands quite alone in all of the genres it touches, with no companion pieces or prior albums to lean on. And that attribute helps elevate the music into something that seems culturally and personally important to Park but also any listener.
I was fairly surprised when I discovered there was no electronic manipulation or additions pushed into this album; it’s acoustic nature is wildly important to how effective the meditative loops and repetitions sound. The opening track “Throughout the Night” was no real attention grabber or hook for me but by the time you hit “Accumulation of Time” it’s a different story. The hammered dulcimer creates a slowly building atmosphere that would fit perfectly within any New Age release worth its salt, and it gets louder and louder without you noticing at first. “Communion” is the most emotionally potent song in here and it tugs at your heart first, with her breaks for breath and lyrical but almost mournful horn playing. The rhythm is intoxicating and open, like staring at a completely open grassy field at the dead of night. Haunting.
As beautiful as that song is, it’s about the peak for me. Park dabbles within the more extreme realms of free improvisation with her traditional instruments which ends up with a unique, if not slightly jarring, result. The song that comes to mind is “All Souls’ Day”, which sounds stuffy and humid, and a bit obnoxious at points, until it settles with some classical minimalist playing near the end. An effective use of that Reichian minimalism is on the song “Sounds Heard from the Moon”, where the dulcimer and other instruments create sounds which are reminiscent of a symphony of wind chimes performing an orchestral piece in the rain using only the power of a slight breeze.
Judging by the cover you’d expect some electronically tinged R&B with maybe some jazzy beats. Perhaps an art pop album that’s a bit downtempo. Either way that’s the case, if it was on a label like ECM. It would take the equivalent of that, and by the way it’s recorded, one could almost mistake it for a release from that famous contemporary jazz and world music label. It’s all organic and straight from the human mind, with no barrier or catalyst to alter that original creation. That certainly is attractive for me personally, but sometimes I think this album oversteps and stumbles. I appreciate the stretch and ambition but there has to be a buildup towards that, and it all feels too sudden and without any context.
Favorite Song: Communion
I was fairly surprised when I discovered there was no electronic manipulation or additions pushed into this album; it’s acoustic nature is wildly important to how effective the meditative loops and repetitions sound. The opening track “Throughout the Night” was no real attention grabber or hook for me but by the time you hit “Accumulation of Time” it’s a different story. The hammered dulcimer creates a slowly building atmosphere that would fit perfectly within any New Age release worth its salt, and it gets louder and louder without you noticing at first. “Communion” is the most emotionally potent song in here and it tugs at your heart first, with her breaks for breath and lyrical but almost mournful horn playing. The rhythm is intoxicating and open, like staring at a completely open grassy field at the dead of night. Haunting.
As beautiful as that song is, it’s about the peak for me. Park dabbles within the more extreme realms of free improvisation with her traditional instruments which ends up with a unique, if not slightly jarring, result. The song that comes to mind is “All Souls’ Day”, which sounds stuffy and humid, and a bit obnoxious at points, until it settles with some classical minimalist playing near the end. An effective use of that Reichian minimalism is on the song “Sounds Heard from the Moon”, where the dulcimer and other instruments create sounds which are reminiscent of a symphony of wind chimes performing an orchestral piece in the rain using only the power of a slight breeze.
Judging by the cover you’d expect some electronically tinged R&B with maybe some jazzy beats. Perhaps an art pop album that’s a bit downtempo. Either way that’s the case, if it was on a label like ECM. It would take the equivalent of that, and by the way it’s recorded, one could almost mistake it for a release from that famous contemporary jazz and world music label. It’s all organic and straight from the human mind, with no barrier or catalyst to alter that original creation. That certainly is attractive for me personally, but sometimes I think this album oversteps and stumbles. I appreciate the stretch and ambition but there has to be a buildup towards that, and it all feels too sudden and without any context.
Favorite Song: Communion
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