Latest improvisation part of the ‘#onetakestudy’ series. Enjoy! (I honestly couldn’t tell you if that’s an ironic title.)
Of Life, Recombinant (NEWJAiM9) [details…]
Personnel: Han-earl Park (guitar) with Anne Wellmer (voice on track 4).
Track listing: Game: Mutation (5:38); Naught Opportune (≥ 10:42); Are Variant (≥ 8:06); Of Life, Recombinant (≥ 29:22). Total duration ≥ 53:48.
© 2021 NEWJAiM Recordings.
℗ 2021 Han-earl Park.
Gonggong 225088 (wa008), the eponymous debut album from the trio of Han-earl Park (guitar), Yorgos Dimitriadis (percussion and electronics) and Camila Nebbia (saxophone) is out now on Waveform Alphabet!
I love what’s recorded (and sculpted) here as sound. There are behind-the-scenes stories about an impossible group emerging from the debris of lockdown and the tangles of inter-border bureaucracy (stories for another time). But also, to my ears as a listener, there’s something tricky and oblique about our music—an origami of fire music and improvisative mischief—knotted, folded-on-itself, and, at time, joyously vexed.
Yet, the feeling on-stage, it’s all near effortless ‘and then’s and ‘therefore’s; of effects and reactions, but also reframings and reflections and retroactions. We went, I think, to a lot of unexpected places in that one session.
So sit-back in your favorite sofa or beanbag, or, headphones ready, go for a wander and a walk, or maybe sit at the table with a good book, and enjoy the journey.
[Get the CD/download from Waveform Alphabet (Bandcamp)…]
CD: $15 plus shipping. Download: $10.
Fluid, pliable motion…. The synergy between them is electrifying….
— Corey Mwamba (Freeness, BBC Radio 3)
Blue-green iridescence
(Crunch and more scatter)
A vacuum of warning
The latest project from Korean-American guitarist, improviser and composer Han-earl Park, Gonggong 225088 is his trio with Argentinian saxophonist, composer and visual artist Camila Nebbia, and Greek drummer, improviser and sound artist Yorgos Dimitriadis. Based in Berlin, the group emerged, piece-by-piece, from the darkly hazy, collective dream of masks, remote work, and social distancing.
By turns light-as-a-feather, and heavy and prickly as a bucket of rusty nails, the music is of contradiction and ambiguity. Leaps into ’90s HatHut pastiche are followed by truckers-in-space-engine-rumbles; slow-crawls-from-the-swap of irony-free ‘bells’n’smells’ sound art followed by turns-turns-turns-on-a-dime mutant Free Funk. Gonggong 225088 find overlapping-through-time, All-You-Zombies guitar gestures; stompbox-assisted saxophone punk ventriloquisms; and hive-mind metallophone creatures that migrate across the stereo field.
Here be dragons.
It’s music that is simultaneously earnest and full of ironic glee; a spaghetti junction of noise held together by a deep love of connection, and a constantly shifting center of balance found only in ensemble play.
Recorded with skill and sensitivity by Rabih Beaini, mixed by Han-earl Park to place the listener within the ensemble, and mastered for presence’n’punch by Andrew Weathers, this eponymous debut album captures Park, Dimitriadis and Nebbia in live performance at Morphine Raum.
Recommended reading: China Miéville. “Covehithe.” Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories (Pan Macmillan, 2015).
Han-earl Park (guitar), Yorgos Dimitriadis (percussion and electronics) and Camila Nebbia (saxophone).
Autopoiesis I (≥ 10:14), Autopoiesis II (≥ 4:29), Niche Shift I (16:09), Niche Shift II (≥ 4:45), Niche Shift III (4:35), Niche Shift IV (≥ 12:52), Autopoiesis III (3:26), Autopoiesis IV (≥ 5:03), Autopoiesis V (≥ 3:17), Autopoiesis VI (3:37). Total duration ≥ 70:14.
Music by Han-earl Park, Yorgos Dimitriadis and Camila Nebbia.
Recorded live December 4, 2023, Morphine Raum, Berlin.
Recorded by Rabih Beaini.
Mixed by Han-earl Park. Mastered by Andrew Weathers.
Video by Carina Khorkhordina. Video edited by Han-earl Park.
Design and artwork by Han-earl Park.
© 2024 Han-earl Park. ℗ 2024 Waveform Alphabet.
05-23-24: released!
05-27-24: update with video playlist.
Catch the first ten minutes (‘Autopoiesis I’) from Gonggong 225088! The extended preview will premiere at 5pm CET* on Friday, March 1, 2024! [Click ‘notify me’…]
By turns light-as-a-feather, and heavy and prickly as a bucket of rusty nails, the music is of contradiction and ambiguity. Leaps into ’90s HatHut pastiche are followed by truckers-in-space-engine-rumbles; slow-crawls-from-the-swap of irony-free ‘bells’n’smells’ sound art followed by turns-turns-turns-on-a-dime mutant Free Funk. [More…]
I am super, super excited to finally be able to share this with you. The session was awesome: Rabih Beaini and his team did phenomenal work with the recording (it was a pleasure to mix), and I’m so happy that Carina Khorkhordina made time to be there and capture the performance on video.
Click ‘notify me’, and be ready with your headphones (and popcorn), and join me on Friday for some origami fire music!
* 17:00 CET, 16:00 GMT, 11:00 EST, and 8:00 PST. Or: 1:00 in Seoul, 18:00 in Athens, 13:00 in Buenos Aires, and 17:00 in Berlin.
Music by Han-earl Park, Yorgos Dimitriadis and Camila Nebbia.
Recorded live December 4, 2023, Morphine Raum, Berlin.
Recorded by Rabih Beaini.
Mixed by Han-earl Park. Mastered by Andrew Weathers.
Video by Carina Khorkhordina. Video edited by Han-earl Park.
Design and artwork by Han-earl Park.
© 2024 Han-earl Park. ℗ 2024 Waveform Alphabet.
A quick, ‘no-prep’ improvisation as part of the ‘#onetakestudy’ series: here’s what my guitar sounds like, straight out-of-the-case, the day after a gig. (Guitar tuning thanks to Aidan Baker and Katharina Schmidt, plus lighting design courtesy of the Berlin sky.) Enjoy!
Of Life, Recombinant (NEWJAiM9) [details…]
Personnel: Han-earl Park (guitar) with Anne Wellmer (voice on track 4).
Track listing: Game: Mutation (5:38); Naught Opportune (≥ 10:42); Are Variant (≥ 8:06); Of Life, Recombinant (≥ 29:22). Total duration ≥ 53:48.
© 2021 NEWJAiM Recordings.
℗ 2021 Han-earl Park.
A quick one-take made before heading out. A simple, take-a-line-for-a-walk improvisation as part of the ‘#onetakestudy’ series. Enjoy!
Of Life, Recombinant (NEWJAiM9) [details…]
Personnel: Han-earl Park (guitar) with Anne Wellmer (voice on track 4).
Track listing: Game: Mutation (5:38); Naught Opportune (≥ 10:42); Are Variant (≥ 8:06); Of Life, Recombinant (≥ 29:22). Total duration ≥ 53:48.
© 2021 NEWJAiM Recordings.
℗ 2021 Han-earl Park.
You can now listen again to Corey Mwamba’s Freeness on BBC Radio 3, and catch the extended preview of Gonggong 225088, my upcoming album with Yorgos Dimitriadis and Camila Nebbia. On the show, Corey described our music as having “fluid, pliable motion”:
And the synergy between them is electrifying…. So much intensity in that music. Even when the volume goes down the intensity is still there. [Listen to the rest…]
A big thanks to producer Silvia Malnati at Freeness, and big, big thanks to Corey for supporting our music, and supporting the broader communities of creative people.
The album artwork is complete, and I’ve been working the last couple of weeks with engineer Andrew Weathers, and label mastermind David Menestres on the album masters. Gonggong 225088 will be out on Waveform Alphabet later this year. More soon!
Be first in-line to hear the new album! Please sign-up to my newsletter:
Gonggong 225088, an album of noisy, sweetly disquieting dreams by Han-earl Park, Yorgos Dimitriadis and Camila Nebbia will be will be released by Waveform Alphabet in 2024! Tune in to Freeness on BBC Radio 3 for a preview of the album. More soon!
Be first in-line to hear the new album! Please sign-up to my newsletter:
Monday, December 4, 2023, 8:30pm (doors: 8:00pm): Dream a little noisy, sweetly disquieting dream with Han-earl Park (guitar), Yorgos Dimitriadis (percussion and electronics) and Camila Nebbia (saxophone) at Morphine Raum (Köpenicker Str. 147, 10997 Berlin). Entry: €10 at the door.
Feel the grass under your feet, and the steel girders flying over your head.
As reeds pop, strings snap, and membranes flutter and resonate.
Trace the folds in the fabric of the interactive.
I feel enormously privileged to be part of this trio with Yorgos and Camila, and super happy to be recording this beautiful confusion of clicks, flutters and snaps, of standing waves and intermodulations. Please come be part of this process!
See the performance diary for up-to-date info. [Morphine page…] [Facebook event…]
A ‘first-take’ made on a rainy day. First in a new series of studies (‘#onetakestudy’) that folows on from the #lockdownminiature series, and on parallel tracks to #spliceimprov.
I’m not 100% sure this improvisation holds focus entirely for its duration, and it could do, for my taste as a listener, with more contrast, but it meanders in a pleasing way. A kind of reverie on an overcast day. Enjoy.
As the looper becomes more a part of my sound, I begin to again question the disconnect between gesture—visible, weighty—and the auditory. As I watch myself in play (in video playback), I find myself alienated from the experience. [Read the rest…]
See the pinned comment to read my thoughts about this piece, and what I think doesn’t work about it.
Of Life, Recombinant (NEWJAiM9) [details…]
Personnel: Han-earl Park (guitar) with Anne Wellmer (voice on track 4).
Track listing: Game: Mutation (5:38); Naught Opportune (≥ 10:42); Are Variant (≥ 8:06); Of Life, Recombinant (≥ 29:22). Total duration ≥ 53:48.
© 2021 NEWJAiM Recordings.
℗ 2021 Han-earl Park.
10-29-23: added quote, and link to the pinned comment.
Juno 3 (RAM-163CD), the debut album by the trio of Han-earl Park, Lara Jones and Pat Thomas, is out now on Ramble Records!
The music on this album transports me to scenes from retro-scifi stories to those of present-day mass transit. It is, to my ears, the sounds of junction crossings, signals from space, and mysterious telegraphy; sometimes evoking impressions of walking by streams under footbridges, at others, of rushing through Manhattan Chinatown. Recorded live at Cafe OTO during the trio’s first meeting, we knew then that we had something special.
I think the sounds and the performances on this disc are all ’round captivating, gripping and fascinating, and the production work, exceptional. Take the journey with us: I’m super proud of the music, and I am thrilled to finally share this with you!
[Get the CD/download from Ramble (Bandcamp)…]
CD: $18 AUD plus shipping. Download: $8 AUD.
Get ready for the latest release of challenging and imaginative music from Ramble Records with Juno 3, the debut album from the trio of Han-earl Park, Lara Jones and Pat Thomas. Recorded by Shaun Crook live at Cafe OTO, London, and mixed (refracted and rephrased) by Han-earl Park, the album is a particle sim of sounds which spelunks from derelict urban ravines to cybernetic rainforests, while catching auditory glimpses of crashing robotic waves, and strange telegraphic messages from space.
Nautiloid capsule tumbles
across field lines.
An impracticably agile,
graceful derailment.
Juno 3 is Han-earl Park (guitar), Lara Jones (saxophone and electronics) and Pat Thomas (electronics). The eponymous album document the first meeting—interactive, relational—by this trio as it takes a journey: launching from the familiar of the Hackney club space into future imagined By Others. We coax it into our space.
Motion and motifs. (Switching gears, shedding engines.) Modes of transport change from first principles: future-past transit networks give way to bioengineered surfboards.
Bodies collide, unwind, and we’re up again. Reaching crossings; navigating junctions.
Intermodal is the only game we know. Networks (and bodies and vessels) weave, twist, cross then interweave, intertwist and intercross. (We, nocturnal monstrous shapes, turn and return to the deep.)
And, as the album comes to a close (thump’n’snap—bodies unwind), we find ourselves awakened back in the familiar club space. Or: half familiar. The same chairs, the same tables, the same staff. But not the same chair, not the same table, not the same staff.
Han-earl Park (guitar), Lara Jones (saxophone and electronics) and Pat Thomas (electronics).
Orbital Dusk I (6:04), Orbital Dusk II (4:20), Orbital Dusk III (2:29), Orbital Dusk IV (6:03), Diel Vertical Migration I (6:31), Diel Vertical Migration II (4:38), Diel Vertical Migration III (4:33), Diel Vertical Migration IV (7:36), Metastability (7:24). Total duration: 49:36.
Music by Han-earl Park, Lara Jones and Pat Thomas.
Recorded live March 20, 2022, Cafe OTO, London.
Recorded by Shaun Crook.
Mixed by Han-earl Park. Mastered by Chris Sharkey.
Art by Han-earl Park. Design by Atharwa Deshingkar.
Thanks to Richard Barrett, Heather Frasch and Richard Scott; to Fielding Hope and everyone at Cafe OTO, Laura Cole and everyone at Fusebox, Wesley Stephenson of Jazz North East, and Peter O’Doherty of Northern Lights Project. Shoutouts to Corey Mwamba, Graeme Wilson, rit. and Una Lee. The performance was presented with funding from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
© and ℗ 2023 Ramble Records.
Here are two recent releases from two very, very different projects. Let’s start with some sweetly queasy, and queasily sweet avant-pop love from QLH (Quentin Tolimieri: synthesizers; Luca Marini: drums; and Han-earl Park: guitar). It’s music that is simultaneously too much, and not enough: there are voids that need filled, but it’s impossible to figure out where they are for the kitchen sink.
Then we can move to a collection of austere, uncluttered melodic compositions from The Names (Heather Frasch: flute; Carina Khorkhordina: trumpet; Koen Nutters: upright bass; Han-earl Park: guitar; and Quentin Tolimieri: bass and soprano melodicas):
Quentin Tolimieri (synthesizers), Luca Marini (drums) and Han-earl Park (guitar).
Music by Quentin Tolimieri, Luca Marini and Han-earl Park.
Track 1 recorded by Luca Marini, Berlin, October 11, 2022.
Additional recording by Han-earl Park, Berlin, October 22, 2022.
Track 2 recorded by Marini, September 27, 2022.
Additional recording by Park, September 29, 2022.
Mixed by Han-earl Park.
Artwork by Han-earl Park.
Thanks to Musikfonds / Neustart Kultur.
© + ℗ 2023 Tolimieri/Marini/Park.
Heather Frasch (flute), Carina Khorkhordina (trumpet), Koen Nutters (upright bass), Han-earl Park (guitar) and Quentin Tolimieri (bass and soprano melodicas).
Melodies, harmonies, and basic arrangements by Koen Nutters.
Recorded by Brendan Dougherty at Alte Münze Studios, Berlin, May 7 and 8, 2022.
Mastered by Taku Unami.
Graphic design by Dinara Vasilevskaia.
Band photo by Agata Guevara.
© + ℗ 2023 Waveform Alphabet.
Juno 3 by Han-earl Park, Lara Jones and Pat Thomas will be released by Ramble Records in September 2023! As I said to Chris Sharkey, the mastering engineer, this album exists somewhere “between an audio play and a soundtrack album, as if Bernie Worrell had been tasked to create a score for a Douglas Adams produced radio adaptation of Space: 1999.” More soon!
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