Park Jiha – Philos
Tak:Til/Glitterbeat – 14 June 2019
Park Jhia’s debut LP ‘Communion’ drew plenty of plaudits in 2018, finding itself on the end-of-year lists on The Wire, The Guardian and Pop Matters. 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. The album pulses and breathes like the cities she draws on for her soundscapes, like on the track Walker: In Seoul. It is resonant with memory but with an otherworldliness that hints to an eerie future. The album is all about the spaces between things, pauses and thoughts, revelling in transience.
The choice of instrumentation plays a large part in this. In the liner notes she explains:
“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.”
And the charm of each instrument is the combination of inhumanity and humanity each possesses. On Arrival and Philos the piri sounds resonant of the transcendent melancholy sax used by Vangelis on the Blade Runner soundtrack, but here it takes on a more foreboding tone, melancholy replaced with a more foreboding sense of angst. On When I Think Of Her the yanggeum and saenghwang interlocute mournfully, heavy with memory, but both sound as though they come from a place far away, issuing emotions from a far distant time that is neither future nor past.
It is otherworldly and yet formed with sounds and spaces familiar form our world. Thunder Shower delves in rain-sodden reflection, using the gong-like yanggeum to elevate it to a spiritual dimension. Walker: In Seoul delves in the loneliness of the individual within the expanse of the city but sounds equally as though it could recollect a seaside childhood holiday, the city traffic undulating like the tides. On Water slowly ripples, with xylophones and piri twinkling like raindrops.
Park Jhia is after something universal and timeless here. She names the album after the Greek word for ‘Love’ after all. In the album notes she explains:
“When I am working on music, I put a lot focus on what I am doing. I think in the end that is love. ‘Philos’ is about the process of intense repetition. That is a very powerful love, especially on this album, where I worked on all the tracks by myself. This is why I called the album ‘Philos’.”
This eloquently described ‘love’ is indeed more substantial than the more banal uses of the word. Anodyne worldviews are something the album strikes out against on centrepiece track Easy. Here she features the Lebanese artist Dima El Sayed, who recites a poem over a concrete musique, ASMR-sounding backdrop, in which she denigrates a vacuous ‘new age’ notion of spirituality as ‘taking it easy’, noting that there’s nothing ‘easy’ about refugee crises or impending climate catastrophe.
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.
Photo Credit: Kim Jaewoo