A field, a cliff, a landscape: the backlot of the world… (a listening guide to Of Life, Recombinant)

Of Life, Recombinant (NEWJAiM9), my latest disc and my first solo* album, is out now on New Jazz and Improvised Music Recordings.

This suite might be my first self-consciously poetic work if not for the fact that I couldn’t have told you that’s what it was when I was in the middle of it (visibility low; uncertain, uncertain, uncertain). Of Life, Recombinant is the work in which I most want listeners to hear, in it, themselves.

Walls rusted lichen curve into a canopy. / Concrete weaves of roots. / Dew-covered moss memory foam. / You find your usual spot on the armchair, or maybe the comfort of your favorite beanbag. Perhaps your companion animal (is it a cat?) chooses to sleep on your lap. Maybe you lay between two speakers. Or having embraced the solitary, you wear headphones. / Music starts. / Look out the window—a field, a cliff, a landscape: the backlot of the world. Of neon. Of sodium. Of broken machinery. Fences. Or walls. Do walls surround you? Home to insects. Mammals, reptiles, and plants, molds and funguses? / Watching the light of dawn (or is it dusk?). See the light-wall of apartments. Leaves waving. Or are the trees bare? And distant as the hillside. Images refracted by veins of rain. No, the sky is clear: stars, pinprick rear-projections. But drowned in a sea of streetlights—streaking—traffic etches unpredictable figures across the darkened ceiling. My eyes hunt muscae volitantes. Hear those creaks. (I’ve missed something.) The sound of floorboards next door. (Do I seek ghosts?) My roommate. My Family. My guest. My host. — © 2021 Han-earl Park [Higher resolution image…]

I always hope that my music reflects and diffracts very human truths; that they depend, and perform, and engage with them. But with Of Life, Recombinant, I think, (I hope) that the work is fueled by, and has in its core, compassion.

Thanks again to the project director at NEWJAiM, Wesley Stephenson, for inviting me to have my work represented on this most awesome label. Thanks also to Annette Krebs for helping me, with one simple question, to decide to release these listening guides to my listeners.

[About this album…] [Get the CD/download from NEWJAiM (Bandcamp)…]

* Ostensibly solo. It’s complicated.

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