공 空 ('Empty')

Melanie Eden is an Australian performance poet and musician who does not do things by halves. Notable for her unvarnished articulation of trauma, on this album she deploys the Korean musical storytelling medium of pansori to exorcise her thoughts and frustrations. What might appear a tricky fusion blends brilliantly in practice. The sparse accompaniment of a single drum emphasises the rawness of Eden’s strident vocal delivery. On the two traditional pieces that begin the album, pansori master Il-Dong Bae interjects with whoops of encouragement, as if acting as midwife to Eden’s full-throated emotions.

Having set the tone singing in Korean, Eden switches to English and dials up the fusion elements on the final three tracks. This trajectory wisely pays tribute to the traditional first before later demonstrating pansori’s commonalities with Western performance art and even punk rock. ‘Go Outside’ provides a suitably deranged finale, beginning with Lee Hanjoo’s treated cello twangs and building through Yukie Sato’s blaster-gun guitar effects and Eden’s guttural vocals. 공 空 translates as ‘Empty’ and Eden has held nothing back on this unique and at times unhinged oddity.