SUNGJOON KIM QUARTET (SJQ) – NO. 2

Ah I found this ages ago and have been meaning to share it ever since. I'm not usually a fan of crazy jazz, or maybe I don't know what jazz is. Can jazz be anything? Does it have to sound jazzy? Hmm. Maybe this is "contemporary" jazz. I found this because I don't really subscribe to many people on YouTube and the one person I do subscribe to is this guy from South Korea who films lots of music and culture stuff.

Anyway yeah, this is the Sungjoon Kim Quartet (or 김성준 쿼텟) performing a track simply called 'No. 2' – except this time around it's a sextet, with an additional saxophonist and a zither type thing. This is actually called a yang-geum, which is a traditional Korean instrument, and this would make more sense in this instance given that SJQ (as they are known) is a South Korean entity of jazz.

It's headed up by jazz saxophonist, Sungjoon Kim. After graduating from Berklee College of Music in Boston, he moved to NYC and sat in on many jam sessions, taking the new experiences back with him to South Korea in 2010, where he makes music and teaches as a professor at Soongsil University and Baekseok University. Jun Kim is on guitar, Doc Skim is playing synth bass, and Woongwon Hahn is on drums. This is SJQ. The girl playing the yang-geum is possibly Hwiseon Choe and the additional (tenor) saxophone guy might be Jeeseok Kim.

The track, performed live at VELOSO in Seoul, is a mad slice of bustling energy, a large helping of hot and sticky music, sultry and humid, permeated with cool calm in the form of constant laid-back guitar chords, all the while the bulging bass supports beneath it all. It begins with saxophone flourishes, a kind of brass call-and-response, the yang-geum solo is particularly fresh, hearing it in this jazz context gives it a whole new meaning, a twist on tradition.

The guitar solo is a break in the craziness after some crashing dynamic punctation from the drums, a soothing oasis from the screaming saxophones, which soon itself bleeds back into high-energy, rapid-fire playing, building to a crescendo which drops us off full circle, to the ascending saxophones that played at the start.

Whew. I don't ever write about jazz and I'm sorry if you don't like it but you should give it a listen anyway, it's really cool. It's 11 minutes long but I'm sure you can deal with it.

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• And if you'd like to hear the whole album, it is a possibility. It's been uploaded to YouTube courtesy of the label on which it was released, ILIL SOUND.

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☟ Sungjoon Kim Quartet Social Media Presence ☟
Sungjoon Kim's Facebook • SoundCloud • Myspace • Bandcamp • ILIL SOUND • Twitter • Tumblr • YouTube • Wikipedia

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PARKGOLF KISS ME

I've been wanting to write about PARKGOLF for a rather long time but for some reason I just never got round to it. I'd heard a few songs before the release of tofubeats' Lost Decade Remixes album (remixes of songs from his album Lost Decade) but it was PARKGOLF's remix of tofubeats' 'I Don't Care' that really won me over. But still, I didn't get around to writing about him. So you should go and listen to that song. Anyway, here I am now.

For those who don't know, PARKGOLF is a beatmaker/producer from Sapporo, Japan. His music is often punchy, energetic and filled with lovely synth, mostly with a leaning towards the quirkier side of what could be considered pop music. Sounds good right? Well it sounds even better when you actually hear it in your literal ears, I can tell you that. His latest offering, 'Kiss Me', is a rollercoaster ride of theatrical sounds, making for a sound that sounds almost like a song from a futuristic musical - West Side Story for the neon club generation. Maybe.

There's a lot going on here. The intro is so good it might as well be like some kind of electronic foreplay. The main synth melody is outrageous, high-register pitch-bent chords that have something of a Japanese scale to them - a gloriously unexpected melody; I love the audaciously long duration of some of the notes. All of this is intermingled with variously altered vocal samples (one of them chopped so well it sounds like someone waggling their tongue around) and, during the midsection, some funky slap bass and some house-style piano chords. Spacey synth and bulging bass counterparts make their presence known alongside a hefty beat whose snares and claps scream laid-back-down-south-hip-hop, accompanied by rollicking hi-hats. At 2:35 the chords are wonderfully stop-start, sharing space with playful piano sweeps and kick explosions - this part's almost like a bit of prog rock.

And that was the wonderful pop of PARKGOLF. There's a bit of house in there; funk, hip hop (perhaps more aligned with trap), as well as those notes that seem like a piece of traditional Japanese music in the hands of a genius robot. There's a great deal of punch here, too, almost like a statement to the world, a song that stops you in your tracks; the soundtrack to the sometimes risky request of "kiss me" indeed.

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Listen to PARKGOLF on SoundCloud
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BOTANY QUATIC [FREE DOWNLOAD]

Moving on from the sparkling, busy ambience of Texan producer Botany's 'Simple Creatures' featuring the vocals of RYAT, uploaded earlier this month, we arrive at the mellow yet mean sounds of his latest offering, 'Quatic'. Both songs come from an album due for release on 28th October called Lava Diviner: Truestory, a "loosely" conceptual offering that tells the musical story of a cult praying for a volcano to erupt - a vision of smart hip hop that mixes intricate beats and super-atmospheric sounds.

What we have in 'Quatic' is a lot of watery sounds, or perhaps liquid would be a better description; it isn't A-quatic after all. Instead here are images conjured of an subterranean world never seen but for a select few - a world of scorching magma bubbling, of unintelligible spirits inhabiting the very molten rocks themselves. Sumptuous sounds illustrate this hidden world, quietly cradling its liquid lava flow, as sluggish as it is brimming with dangerous power. Atmospheric.

The noises that go into creating such an image are legion. Blooping synth hides in the background like a constant measure, zither-like sounds strum, scratched-glass sounds stab the air, chopped vocal samples whisper gently, synth vox joins the pattern of the bloops, blobs of bass squelch their way along, and ambient air disturbances sound like distant roars or shrieks of the roots - the heart - of the volcano itself.

That's not to mention the beat. A boom bapping sensation, as faltering as it is strong. Dustings of hi-hats skiffle rapidly along with a dull shuffle that sounds as real and raw as a dented, well-used hi-hat should. The snare rip-slaps to the solid bounce of the kick. As traditional a hip hop beat as you could imagine, with a less than traditional approach to the surroundings and cargo of that beat. Spencer Stevenson, the real name of Botany, is onto a winner with this kinda sound.

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HAILU MERGIA SHILELA

New new new. Actually it's not new at all. It's over twenty years old - you could even say it's nearly thirty years old. But it sounds great. It's really interesting and I am so happy to have stumbled across it because it is just a really cool sound: this is 'Shilela' by Hailu Mergia.

What? Who? Well, Hailu Mergia is an Ethiopian one-man-band who first released the record on which this song appears in 1985. It is only down to the good eyes and ears of Awesome Tapes From Africa, a record label which as far as I can make out started life as a blog (specialising, as you can guess, in music from Africa), that I heard this song last week. Now I find out that the Washington City Paper has written an article about the re-release of the album, as well as interviewing Hailu Mergia himself, who is now working as a cab driver in Washington - and I think: how amazing that a certifiably "dead" recording should be unearthed and resurrected in this way, written about in the press, listened to, liked and shared by a completely new generation.

BUT YES. The album is called Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument and is out 25th June. 'Shilela' of course is just one song from that collection of songs, but it gives a pretty good inkling into what you will find upon listening. Traditional Ethiopian music in the form of jazzy accordion stylings combined with synthesiser sensibilities.

The synth in this particular song is immense, bold without overpowering everything else, warm and soft-edged, like a set of winding waterfalls made of viscous cartoon-clouds instead of water. An electric piano jazzes out in the background, whilst the accordion - the integral part of this song and I believe the whole album - patters like drips of sunlight over the top, creating a virtuoso dot-to-dot of traditional Ethiopian music. Although it is generally unchanging throughout, I think that is the point: Shilela is also the name of a patriotic traditional song, and it is unchanging, almost as if the repetition plays a part in drawing you in to its melody.

In any case, I like it a lot. The fact that it sounds old gives it even more of a boost in my opinion: it's supposed to sound that way. It is wholly and wholesomely analogue, live and real - the accordion nearly sounds as though it is breathless throughout its performance. Lovely stuff.

You can pre-order the album on www.awesometapes.com.

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ISA GT LEYENDA VIDEO

Ever heard of Isa GT? I hadn't. And I feel like I've missed out on a little bit, because this kind of discovery is most certainly the good kind. I'm not about to not bother to feature this London-based Colombian and her new track 'Leyenda', which comes hot-launched like a foil airplane from upcoming EP Leyenda, due for release in November on Isa GT's very-own-brand-new label, Etoro Records.

I am fond of a good beat, and if there are ever any good beats to be had, you find these in the places you'd perhaps least expect them, which I guess is in traditional music. And this is kind of the first thing you notice about 'Leyenda' - its entirely based on this infectious minimal beat which doesn't explode with any ridiculous over-the-topness, and at most feeds you some grooving shakers and a nicely timed sub-bass kick that really gets to you in a good way. Without further description, here is the track:



It's a teleportive number, something hot and sweaty about it, something floorboards and mosquitos and sunshine, something flamboyantly intoxicated. It features chill with just that right amount of near-threatening potential to go somewhere unnecessary and insane - and it stays necessary and sane, and as a result, it's a good one. It's a mix of traditional flavours and electronic modern methods, a complete cocktail of spicy content and execution. Naturally, there'll be a review of the EP in its entirety here soon.

Also, if you're interested, 'Leyenda' is the alternative name of the classical guitar piece, 'Asturias' (or the prelude to Chants d'Espagne). You'll recognise it if you heard it. In fact, here it is played to utter perfection by classical guitar legend, Andrés Segovia.


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• Check out Isa GT's official site
• Her label, Etoro Records
• And Etoro's SoundCloud
• And why not follow her on Twitter?
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