1. First Buds (03:33)
2. Grounding (04:35)
3. Bloom (05:51)
4. A Story Of Little Birds (06:07)
5. Growth Ring (03:45)
6. Blown Leaves (04:53)
7. Breathe Again (06:51)
8. Eternal Path (06:19)
9. Water Moon (04:27)

“Creative and singular”
–Pitchfork
“The beauty of Jiha’s work lies in the spaces she leaves to evoke imaginative moments in the listener”
–The Guardian

Park Jiha, the acclaimed Korean composer/multi-instrumentalist, makes patient, immersive music; music that illuminates the essence and texture of the natural, living world.

On her fourth album, All Living Things, her mastery of Korean traditional instruments is intricately woven with deeply personal compositions and a deft use of contemporary sonics. Terms like post-classical, ambient or even cinematic are useful, entry-level tags, but they only scratch the surface of this album’s shimmering, contemplative soundworlds.

All Living Things is a tender and profound meditation on the miracle of life. It is suffused with reverence and gratitude for the chance to simply be a living being on this planet at this time. To be a part of the natural cycles of life. To belong in the universe. It’s an intimate sound portrait of what she calls “a hardly explainable sentiment of feeling alive.” Jiha writes: “Take a deep breath and step forward, consciously, into an ordinary morning. Feel the ground beneath your feet and the life in your body, through the movement of your limbs. All Living Things begins with this: a singular connection to the earth that with awareness becomes a connection to all things; the cycles and continuities of life that help to process feelings of uncertainty with hope.”

Park Jiha explores this vision through idiosyncratic and deeply personal methods. Like its critically acclaimed predecessors, Philos (2018) and The Gleam (2022), All Living Things features her playing every instrument, meticulously overdubbed and layered in the studio to create sumptuous sound worlds. She employs an array of Korean instruments – piri, yanggeum and the saenghwang – alongside flute, glockenspiel, bells, her voice and, most crucially, electronics. “On my previous album, I used various techniques to produce unusual but still natural sounds from these instruments,” she says. “With this new album, I kept a natural sound and worked with various electronic elements to make the compositions sound fuller and more immersive.” On All Living Things, her music has undertaken a decided turn towards sonic experimentation and contemporary sound design.

The opening track, “First Buds,” is the perfect example of this approach. As the title suggests, it feels like a gentle opening up, delicate and full of promise, the acoustic instruments intertwining with more elusive and otherworldly textures. The track that follows is “Grounding,” a hypnotic composition that evolves in luminous cycles and reveals Park Jiha’s stylistic debt to minimalism. “Growth Ring,” is a dialogic game between the saenghwang and piri, both instruments bringing a distinctive atmosphere to a composition that represents maturity; a concept that expands as the album continues. The first single, “Blown Leaves,” features a seductive saenghwang melody that is doubled by shimmering and escalating electronics. The record’s final track, “Water Moon” with its softly struck glockenspiel, creates a childhood, music box innocence that hints at new beginnings and a sense of having come full circle.

The album as a whole manifests Park’s deeply personal take on the lifecycle, evolving from birth to growth, maturity to decline and finally death. This conceptual structure deliberately encourages listeners to engage with the album from start to finish. As she puts it, the album itself is “a cycle expressing the hope and beautiful uncertainty that I tried to bring into the music.”

It’s this tantalising uncertainty that makes Park Jiha’s music so indefinable. Sure, there are hints of minimalism in the delicate, repeating patterns and percussive cycles. But here, too, you’ll find the dreamy waft of ambient soundtrack music, a searching spiritual sincerity, the formal precision of contemporary classical, and the spontaneity of experimental jazz. It all combines in one of the most distinctive contemporary musical voices, one that is fully engaged with the process of living and finding the wonder in sheer existence. “Life, as a beautiful voyage, is what always brings me to compose at some point,” says Park Jiha

As for the listener, it remains up to them to find their own joy and meaning in the glistening possibilities presented on All Living Things. “Just as diverse as we are,” says Park Jiha, “we all have the ability to feel things and emotionally interpret them for ourselves. This is such a beautiful thing for me. I wish my music could be part of people’s lives and bring them hope.”

01. At Dawn (5:32)
02. Sunrise; A Song Of Two Humans (7:19)
03. Light Way (5:55)
04. A Day In… (5:28)
05. The Way Of Spiritual Breath (6:35)
06. Restlessly Towards (6:08)
07. Nightfall Dancer (4:15)
08. Temporary Inertia (8:54)

The luminous 3rd album from the acclaimed Korean multi-instrumentalist and composer. A gorgeous meditation on the intersection of music and light.

“The beauty of Jiha’s work lies in the spaces she leaves” – The Guardian

How often do we consider light? We revel in the soft wonder of a sunrise or the majesty of a glorious sunset, but all through the day its quality and texture is continually changing, second by second, in ways we rarely register. That beauty is the inspiration for The Gleam, the third album from Korean composer and instrumentalist Park Jiha.

She distils light into sound, from the first flicker of morning on the horizon in “At Dawn” all the way to the moment when full darkness falls again in “Nightfall Dancer,” capturing the essence of it in notes and silence.

The album had its origin with the piece “Temporary Inertia,” she explains, which was created for a performance as “a meditative improvisation in a bunker designed by the architect Ando Tadao, where the ceiling had an open light way going across the room, it slowly moves during the day and leaves a very special impression when inside. I thought I could capture the emotions light gives me being just as an observer, the textures, intensity, warmness… the constant movement of light itself seems to look inert at points and needs time to be seen, to reveal things and angles you wouldn’t realize otherwise.”

Like its predecessor, Philos, The Gleam is a completely solo work, all the music composed and played by Park Jiha on the piri, a type of oboe, the saenghwang, a mouth organ (shown on the album cover art), the hammered dulcimer known as the yanggeum, and glockenspiel. There’s a stark clarity to the sound, yet it’s never spare or empty. There’s a searching warmth to what she does. It’s minimal without being minimalist, occasionally presenting itself with the formality of traditional Korean music that is her background, although she feels that the distance she’s put between herself and that teaching is “really what made my music what it is now.” At other times her playing is an improvisation that spirals free into the sky. It all comes together into a beautiful whole and it always flows with a natural rhythm. Like everything, it breathes.

“Breathing has been an essential part of all my work since day one,” she notes. “It definitely is intertwined within the music, as we need breathing to feel music. I tried taking my time as much as possible with this album trying to express what I felt at the moment.” Breathing is an act of constant repetition, of course, but “repetition is essential to keep a certain focus and create enough ground for the atmosphere of the track to develop and create feelings, music is very similar to nature in a way.”

The music on The Gleam often surprises, as instruments take on different colours and shades. Nowhere is that more evident than on “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans,” a composition created as a live soundtrack for a movie of the same name, a silent black-and-white film.

“It made me think a lot on the role of light and gave me the opportunity to re-imagine this black and white canvas with a sunrise of my own,” Jiha explains. “I also divided the piri melody into two parts so it sounded like two choirs that would assemble and transition together.”

The effect shimmers, both intimate and quietly flickering, like light itself. Across The Gleam, the music patiently shifts moods, from the soft serenity of “At Dawn” to the playful, sparkling dance that marks “A Day In…” as the rhythm carries it along.

Nothing is rushed. As Park Jiha says, “things take time and the layers of events end up creating something.” Much of that sense is due to the way she composes. “There is absolutely no formal writing process, once I start feeling something that really strongly inspires me to start working. It is very instinctive. This is very emotional work for me as well and can take me a long time to get it right, but I try to focus on textures and layers of sounds I create with time to build up a piece that sounds complete to me.”
Working with it until it breathes, until it’s ready. However, there was another, inevitable factor involved in the creation process of The Gleam: Covid-19. The global pandemic has affected everything, put lives in limbo, and it was no different for Park Jiha. It meant that the performance of “Temporary Inertia” was pushed back until Oct. 2020. “I did prepare for this a while ago, it just kept on being moved because of Covid regulations. They made it hard to have much in the way of performance happening, but Covid also gave me enough time to focus and give life to this new album.”

The music had already been gestating for a while, with some pieces written a couple of years earlier, but the long break offered her more chance to “slowly shape the album with a strong representation of the kind of work I am doing at the present.”

A chance for it to breathe and for the light to shine, growing from a glimmer. The Gleam shimmers and dazzles. Let it carry you.
———————————————————-
The Gleam: liner notes
The inspiration for this album originates from the concept of light – in its different forms, and in the way in which it interacts with us throughout the different parts of the day.

It takes a certain focus to appreciate the textures and emotions light can bring. A faint gleam of light piercing through the darkness, evokes a signal ready to be awoken in ‘At Dawn’. Changing environments and feelings are expressed throughout the album, conjuring atmospheres from the crack of dawn to nightfall.

Part of ‘The Gleam’ project was conceived for a special performance in the Meditation Hall created by Ando Tadao at Museum San in Wonju, Korea. Light is an integral part of the architecture of this space. Whilst feelings are instantly captured, the constant movements within, allow us the sensations of observing the unreachable. For the meditative performance we had there, sound was a way to carry the light further giving it a sensation of being expressed aurally. This resulted in the realisation of the final track of this album, ‘Temporary Inertia’.

Light is in a constant race towards time. Repetitive, yet constant, it only leaves temporary feelings behind. This being exactly what I want to picture for my own music. – Park Jiha

1 Arrival 03:04
2 Thunder Shower 04:16
3 Easy 06:08
4 Pause 02:08
5 Philos 06:05
6 Walker: In Seoul 06:00
7 When I Think Of Her 05:13
8 On Water 04:18

Park Jiha’s debut album “Communion” – released internationally by tak:til last year – drew well deserved attention to the young Korean instrumentalist/composer’s vivid soundworld. The widely acclaimed album graced 2018 critics lists at The WIRE, Pop Matters and The Guardian. 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.

While Park Jiha’s music is often contextualized by its kinship with minimalism, ambient and chamber jazz, her creative backbone is Korean traditional music. Jiha formally studied both its theory and practice and has mastered three of its most emblematic instruments:

“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.”

On “Communion” Park Jiha wove these ancient instruments into an ensemble sound that included other musicians contributing on vibraphone, saxophone, bass clarinet and percussion. The effect felt revelatory. An admixture that brought together different epochs and cultures and yielded sonic possibilities that were more futurist than traditionalist. It seemed to naturally evoke Jon Hassell’s “Fourth World” ethos, a music that morphs across time and tradition.

Park Jiha’s new album “Philos,” is both an extension of, and a swerve away from, her previous record. It shares its predecessor’s patience and deeply resonant hypnotic effects. It similarly looks to the future, while continuing to converse with a rich instrumental language from the past. But the overall tone and intent feels much more interior and personal – more rarefied. This evolution was purposeful and integrated into the way the album was composed and recorded. Jiha tells us:

“When making ‘Communion’ I focused on harmony with the different musicians. But this time, I wanted to get back to putting the focus on what I do. I played all of the instruments myself. This way I could make the tracks more solid, and I could focus on one thing at a time.”

Whereas “Communion” featured the classic soundfield of a group of musicians playing in a room,
“Philos” trades that for more density and concentration. Each sound has been given the artist’s full
attention. Fashioned, blended and layered in the way that she hears it. Nothing surrendered to interpretation.

Jiha contends that her new musical approach is reflected in the title of the album. In Greek “Philos” is the plural for philo which can mean “love” or “the liking of a specified thing.”

“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’.”
The album’s compositions include ‘Arrival’, which slowly introduces every sound featured on the record. The gift of unexpected rain in the heat of midsummer is heard on ‘Thunder Shower’. ‘Easy’ is a poem written and recited by the Lebanese artist Dima El Sayed who visited Korea to participate in the Hwaeom Spiritual Music Ritual and was inspired by Park Jiha’s work. The title track ‘Philos’ was created by overlapping sounds and stretching time. ‘Walker: In Seoul’ evokes the vivid soundscape of the city in which Jiha lives. ‘When I Think if Her’ features the ghostly melodies of the yanggeum and saenghwang.

Park Jiha reaches for a sturdy simplicity. A borderless connection between her life and her accomplished musical art:

“My musical influences come from my life, and I think music comes from being human; a person’s music is ultimately representing that person. I know for sure that I have been living sincerely when I make music.”

((Park Jiha plays the piri, saenghwang and yanggeum,
as well as layers of sounds derived from time & space))

1. Throughout The Night (04:56)
2. Accumulation Of Time (06:38)
3. Communion (06:52)
4. Sounds Heard From The Moon (09:05)
5. The Longing Of The Yawning Divide (03:15)
6. All Souls’ Day (09:03)
7. The First Time I Sat Across From You (08:28)

Park Jiha first gained attention as the leader and producer of the neo-traditional Korean duo 숨[suːm]. Her music combines the formalism of classical minimalism, the rootedness of Korean folk motifs and the dynamics of post-rock and contemporary jazz.

A calm from within the storm.
“I don’t want to play only traditional music. I want to play my own music…my own stories.”
– Park Jiha

Over the last few years a rising tide of new Korean artists have staked a place in the global music conversation. Groups like Jambinai, Black String and Park Jiha’s earlier duo 숨[suːm] have created exciting soundworlds that deftly combine the instrumentation and complex expression of Korean traditional music with an array of contemporary sounds such as post-rock, doom metal, downtempo jazz and classical minimalism.

While Park Jiha’s most recent musical endeavor, her debut solo album “Communion,” is another decisive step towards a more personal and forward-looking musical vocabulary, it also is deeply rooted in her traditional music education and background.

“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. Another traditional instrument I use is a saenghwang. A saenghwang is an instrument made of bamboo which has many pipes. It is similar to a mouth organ. It’s an instrument where the sound is made from inhaling and exhaling the air.”

“My main instrument is piri. But I 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. Piri, which has the simplest structure – yet holds so many variations in playing – is for me the most attractive of all. The shape of the instrument is humble but it can express sensitive yet deep energy. I feel most like myself when I play piri.”

Though she has played piri since her youth, Park Jiha started her music career by founding the duo 숨[suːm] with Jungmin Seo in 2007 – after she had finished her musical studies. 숨[suːm]’s music, composed with an array of traditional instruments and buoyed by unorthodox musical structures, was an immediate and profound influence on the new Korean music scene. The duo released the album ‘Rhythmic Space: A Pause for Breath’ in 2010, and ‘숨[suːm] 2nd’ in 2014. Their innovative, neo-traditional compositions began to echo outside of Korea and they were invited to acclaimed international festivals such as WOMAD and SXSW.
.
But Park Jiha started hearing a much different music – one that directly interacted with more distant sound traditions and a more eclectic instrumental palette. Putting 숨[suːm] on pause for the moment, she started collaborating with John Bell (vibraphone) and Kim Oki (bass clarinet, saxophone) to create “Communion,” her first solo album. Originally released in Korea in 2016, the album’s compositions are sometimes hushed and other times slowly swelling and dynamic. But they all share a stark rejection of ornamentation. It is a music of fundaments and clarity. It skillfully unites hypnotic minimalism and experimental strategies with Park Jiha’s distinctive mastery of the piri, saenghwang, and yanggeum.

‘The Longing of the Yawning Divide’ is inspired by the solemnity and resonance of a monastery in Leuven, Belgium, a space where Park Jiha once rehearsed her band. ‘All Souls’ Day’ constructs harmony and rhythmic lift between an unlikely grouping of instruments: the yanggeum, piri, saxophone, vibraphone and the jing. The album’s opening composition, ‘Throughout the Night’ is a precise and keening dialogue between the piri and the bass clarinet.
The atmosphere is calmly radiant. The music navigating the world’s abundant noise, in an almost silent way.

One can sense that this music is deeply connected to its composer. It is not an abstraction. It carefully and conscientiously draws in the world around her. The flow of water and the dawning of seasons. Love and loss. Light. Shadows. Nothing superfluous. A meticulous balance. A communion.

“I don’t know what kind of music I will play in ten years. But I know for sure that I will have been living sincerely.”

Park Jiha:
Composer/producer, piri (double reed bamboo flute), saenghwang (mouth organ) & yanggeum (hammered dulcimer)

Kim Oki:
Tenor saxophone, bass clarinet

John Bell:
Vibraphone

Kang Tekhyun:
Percussions