The concept behind Park Jiha’s new album ‘The Gleam’ is immediately compelling. The musician finds her inspiration in light and its interaction with the human form during the day. In part, the project was also conceived for a special performance in Tadao Ando’s Meditation Hall at San Museum in Wonju, Korea. Ando’s architecture features light as an integral part of the space and, through Park’s creativity, a music performance is a brilliant, complementary addition to the magic of the space.
As an architecture graduate, the name of Tadao Ando wasn’t new to me, nor was the dialogue between light and spaces inhabited by humans. Therefore, when I found out about Park’s latest music I was eager to discover how the artist gave sonic form to light. It is a fascinating journey to embark upon, one where the visual world informs the world of sound.
In a way, we can already find similarities between architecture and musical composition. A sense of rhythm can be achieved both with the repetition of sound and repetition of an architectural element. In addition, light can generate emotions, and it is common to describe one’s emotional state with metaphors involving light and darkness.
Music, on the other hand, notoriously taps into human feelings in a powerful way, evoking places, feelings, images, and helping us to recall old memories. Art in every form can give a more tangible quality to intangible human experiences, perhaps guide our attention to something often overlooked, inviting us to dwell on that something a little longer.
The music of Park Jiha invites us to accompany the light in its progression from timid gleams though dazzling brilliance and back to darkness, stimulating our imagination and appreciation of the phenomenon.
The sound serves the image of light, reproducing its movement in the space. Contrasting sounds, harsh and delicate, seem acoustically to reproduce the consistent and precise drifts of light in our chaotic world.
Listening to the album, track after track, is like being taken on an acoustic journey tracing the progression of our exposure to light. It grows from faint sun rays to the glory of midday till the end, when darkness comes back once more.
“At Dawn”, the first track, evocatively suggests the image of a thin beam of light piercing through the darkness in the silent early hours of the day, quietly entering our world and our consciousness. “Sunrise” builds towards conveying the glory of the rays of light that slowly break and shine through the darkness. The third track, “Light Way”, is captured in a video recorded in Tadao Ando’s Meditation Hall, and gives an idea of how well the music complements the architectural light and space.
The progression from the first and second tracks to the fourth, “A Day In”, and the sixth, “Restlessly Towards”, is clear, as these pieces of music have a different feeling to them. The track “Restlessly Towards” does suggest a certain determination in movement in a calm, quiet, but steady way. The fifth track, “The Way of Spiritual Breath”, seems to suggest the persistence of light, its steady journey in measured but unstoppable steps through the chaos and rush of everyday life. A delicate melody made of clear sounds makes its way through harsher sounds. It grows into a more and more confident rhythm that eventually takes over the sonic space towards the end of the track, a development surely reminiscent of that of a spiritual journey. The last track of the album, “Nightfall Dancer”, seems to be a time of reflection, giving the album a sense of conclusion.
The album – released on Glitterbeat’s Tak:til label at the end of last month – is one of Park’s most satisfying to date, complementing in its austere beauty the luminous interior of Ando’s hall. Paradoxically, despite the way the album deals with the movement of light, it is best listened to in a darkened room where you can be enveloped in Park’s delicate, shimmering sound-world, and let your mind drift in meditation.
After immersing ourselves in Park’s music, we had some questions we wanted to ask her. Tomorrow, we’ll post her answers.
Links:
- Buy or download The Gleam at parkjiha.bandcamp.com
- Stream The Gleam at any of the services linked here: idol.lnk.to/TheGleam
- Buy tickets for Park Jiha’s two-day residency at Cafe OTO here: www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/park-jiha-two-day-residency/
- Buy tickets for Park Jiha’s appearance at Glasgow’s Counterflows on 31 March
