Korean multi-instrumentalist and composer Park Jiha’s fourth album sees her flip the sonic philosophy of her 2022 album The Gleam, which utilised unusual methods of playing the many instruments present (all played by Park and overdubbed in the studio) while keeping the natural sound. On All Living Things, Park again creates every sound present and meticulously overdubs through the mixing, but here, she keeps the playing of the traditional Korean instruments straighter and uses subtle electronics to manipulate and weave her mesmerising, often calming web of sound.
The objective of All Living Things was to create an album of music appreciating and revering the miracle of life and its cycles. Park does this in part by composing cyclical, spacious melodic undulations that are patient in tempo and anodyne on the ear. The addition of electronics actually softens the timbre here from the more metallic sound of The Gleam, maintaining the space that is so important in Park’s work, but bringing in a slightly fuller and more luxurious edge. This is present on songs like Grounding, a piece with the Korean yanggeum, a hammered dulcimer, at its core, providing a melodic refrain that the piri, a kind of oboe, sweeps around. The loosely cyclical nature of that core melody is stunning and has a hypnotic effect, accentuated by a subtle drone hanging over the tune in places.
The star of songs like Bloom is the saenghwang, a Korean free-reed mouth organ. The higher notes of this blend beautifully with a haunting flute line, evoking the fragility and innocence of spring. More dramatic in nature are pieces like Growth Ring, which uses sharper overdubbed piri lines and bright electronic drones with spare percussion to create an eerie and unsettling atmosphere.
Songs like Breathe Again stay in this vein, with a quietly gorgeous yanggeum line stoic among swirling electronics and slow saenghwang playing. As this one develops, the sounds come at us gradually, with sharp bowed notes spectral and the mouth organ haunting. The effect is akin to a twilight forest, with beauty and mild trepidation mesmerising. It’s a fantastic piece of work and very different in nature to songs like closing track, Water Moon, which uses glockenspiel, a clear sound evoking childhood innocence, to create an altogether less ambiguous soundscape. Brighter electronic sweeps and subtle vocal notes also help bring forward a childlike sense of life and hope, making it a perfect choice to end a journey of an album, both mysterious and joyous.
Park Jiha is a master of creating conceptual soundscapes that evoke the feel of what she is focusing on. With The Gleam, she managed to conjure a range of sounds impersonating different qualities of light, and with All Living Things, the beauty and savagery of life and the natural world is brought to us in a quite unique way by a magician of sound. This set is by turns humbling, enchanting and sometimes quietly alarming in the starkness of its structure. It is a beautiful, inimitable creation.
All Living Things (14th February 2025) Glitterbeat Records (GBCD/LP 165)
Bandcamp: https://parkjiha.bandcamp.com/album/all-living-things