Park Jiha – The Gleam (2022)

Park Jiha makes music that is difficult to describe and easy to understand. The hard facts: using instruments from traditional Korean court music such as piri (a flute), yanggeum (a kind of zither) and saenghwang (the imposing recorder pictured on the cover), as well as glockenspiel, Park single-handedly builds complex compositions that have the sonic quality of a synthesis of digital production processes and Fourth World aesthetics and the musical-rhythmic parameters of minimal music, jazz and post-rock. Always to the feel, always right to the heart. Unique, in every respect. Kristoffer Cornils