Liminal Silence

Now here’s an album that defies easy categorisation, in which Sunny Kim, a Korean-born singer, improviser and composer joins forces with Vardan Ovsepian, an Armenian-born Los Angeles-based jazz pianist, and Ben Monder, an American guitarist, to create an album that veers between ambient sonic landscapes, experimental jazz balladry and improvisation. Sunny Kim studied in the USA, where she began working with Monder, and is currently a lecturer at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Ovsepian has studied in Armenia, Estonia, Finland and the US and held a week-long residency at Melbourne in 2019. All three globetrotters are impressive musicians with jazz roots and a willingness to experiment. Their album is described as ‘a sonic reflection on life’s silent spaces,’ and it starts with a free improvisation, an eerie, atmospheric wash of sound and wailing vocals interrupted by minimalist piano chords, against which a piano theme eventually emerges. Elsewhere, there are cool, drifting and edgy jazz ballads and bursts of fine jazz piano and guitar work, while on the unsettling ‘Poland, 1948’, Kim’s vocals switch between the gentle and a furious wail. This would make great film music.