Description
Label Review.
2019 album. Korean artist. Also available on Vinyl.
Our Overview.
Park Jiha is releasing her sophomore album ‘Philos’ named after the Greek word for Love. Park Jiha’s debut album ”Communion” - released internationally by tak:til last year - drew well deserved attention to the young Korean multi-instrumentalist/ composer’s vivid soundworld. The widely acclaimed album graced 2018 critics lists at The WIRE, Pop Matters and The Guardian. It was characterized by a clear and distinct soundworld which merged traditional Korean instrumentation with a futurist aesthetic. The effect was strange and sublime, and her follow-up album ‘Philos’ continues in the same vein. If anything, there is a greater focus here, with drawn out rhythms intermingling with spacious soundscapes.
Her new album ‘Philos’- which she calls an evocation of her ”love for time, space and sound”- is every bit as inventive, elegant and transcendent as her debut. The 8 tracks in this album pulses and breathes like the cities she draws on for her soundscapes and convey sounds created by such various musical instruments Park Jiha plays as the piri, saenghwang and yanggeum, as well as layers of sounds derived from time and space. [Philos] is a culmination of Park Jiha’s continuous endeavor through different times without collaborating with other musicians.
“I play a traditional Korean instrument called piri which is like an oboe. Piri is a double reed bamboo flute so it can be quite loud. But I also choose saenghwang (mouth organ), yanggeum (hammered dulcimer), percussion or vocal according to the type of music I’m composing. Picking an instrument has to do with the voice in which I choose to talk. Just like human voice, every instrument has its own charm.”
The tracks include ‘Arrival’ that marks the arrival and beginning of every sound featured in the album; the gift of unexpected rain in the heat of midsummer in ‘Thunder Shower’; ‘Easy’ a poem written and recited by the Lebanese artist Dima El Sayed who visited Korea in 2015 to participate in the HwaEom Spiritual Music Ritual and was inspired by Park Jiha’s work; the title track ‘Philos’ created by overlapping sounds over a long period of time.
While the album has an ambience about it, to describe it as ambient would be incorrect. The album creates a world not quite at ease with itself, calling for pauses and spaces to be moments of reflection, not for inaction. In this sense, it possesses a more substantial spirituality and timelessness, creating a distinct soundworld that is both heavy with memory and possibility.