The Gleam

The work of the Korean multi-instrumentalist Park Jiha has divided opinion at Songlines. Simon Broughton disliked her 2018 solo debut Communion and dismissed it with two stars but her splendid follow-up Philos (2019) doubled that rating.

While Communion mixed traditional Korean instruments with saxophone, clarinet, vibraphone and percussion, The Gleam is more in the style of Philos, the sound stripped down to the piercing tones of the Korean piri (oboe), saenghwang (bamboo mouth organ) and yanggeum (hammer dulcimer), augmented by chiming peals on the glockenspiel, all played and overdubbed by Jiha as she transforms the formality of the traditional Korean music that frames her compositions into an improvised, minimalist meditation, which owe something to the spirit of the ‘fourth world’ experiments of Brian Eno and Jon Hassell. The eight instrumental tracks are presented as an impressionistic journey from night into day and back again, as we awake to the sparse and haunting tone signal of ‘At Dawn’, peak with the sparkling rhythms of ‘A Day In…’ and then drift into a sleep of dreams with ‘Temporary Inertia’. The result is serene, luminous and utterly gorgeous.