Corey Mwamba – Han-earl Park

December 1, 2024December 14, 2024

Proxemics (BAF003)

Proxemics (BAF003), Juno 3’s latest album (digital download and companion cassette tape^*), is now available to pre-order! Masterminded by Berlin-based Korean-American improviser and guitarist Han-earl Park, Juno 3 is his trio with London-based experimental producer, saxophonist, and sound artist Lara Jones, and boundless experimentalist and pioneer of electroacoustics in free improvisation, Pat Thomas. Recorded at Cafe OTO, Proxemics (BAF003) captures the trio’s performance as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival’s outer left field.

I love, love, love this recording, and the camaraderie of the artists (and helpers and supporters behind-the-scenes) involved in its making. If the trio’s first performance in the spring of 2022, caught between lockdowns and post-pandemic ‘normality,’ was about that strange sense of cautious relief and optimism, then this later performance was something altogether more strident, brash, at times harsh and ugly, confrontational and combative. What I hear is Lara punching you unremittingly in the mid-rage gut; Pat throwing down beats of glitchy robotic wasps, and of impossible danceability; and my struggles with an unfamiliar guitar (a silver rocker) that wants to make it all a little too easy.

During the mix, I came to realize this unapologetically unrefined music was probably unreleasable, but I also came to love it more for being delicate as a slab of granite. Listen to it, and think of us. Enjoy.

[Pre-order download/cassette (Bandcamp)…]

Download: €8.
Cassette tape^* plus download: €12 plus shipping.

Description

Elastic, doxastic collisions—
hold two thoughts, both true.

Masterminded by Berlin-based Korean-American improviser and guitarist Han-earl Park, Juno 3 is his trio with London-based experimental producer, saxophonist, and sound artist Lara Jones, and boundless experimentalist and pioneer of electroacoustics in free improvisation, Pat Thomas. Recorded at Cafe OTO, Proxemics (BAF003) captures the trio’s performance as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival’s outer left field. Proxemics is the follow-up to the eponymous Juno 3 (RAM-163CD, 2023) described as having “wonderful energy, constant motion, and roiling in noise. And immense amount of grit and power” (Corey Mwamba, Freeness, BBC Radio 3).

The music was recorded with efficiency (and with a boldly creative live-mix) by Kevin Shoemaker, and mixed and mastered for release by Han-earl Park. If the trio’s previous album was an expansive and joyous flow of intergalactic urban transit, then Proxemics is altogether something more prickly, difficult, and at peace with its confrontational nature.

Recommended reading: N. K. Jemisin. The City We Became (Orbit, 2020).

Personnel

Han-earl Park (guitar), Lara Jones (saxophone and electronics) and Pat Thomas (electronics).

Track listing

Derealization I (4:07), Derealization II (4:57), Derealization III (3:52), Derealization IV (6:19), Derealization V (5:55), Derealization VI (3:47), Proxemics I (5:05), Proxemics II (3:54), Proxemics III (6:10), Proxemics IV (7:15), Proxemics V (6:10), Proxemics VI: Rumble (5:13). Total duration: 62:44.

Cassette tape: Proxemics A (18:11), Proxemics B (17:27). Total duration: 35:37.^*

Recording details

Music by Han-earl Park, Lara Jones and Pat Thomas.

Recorded live November 13, 2023, Cafe OTO, London. 
Recorded/live mix by Kevin Shoemaker. Mixed and mastered by Han-earl Park.
Design and artwork by Han-earl Park.

Thanks to On Yee Lo, Fielding Hope and everyone at Cafe OTO, Wesley Stephenson of Jazz North East, Corey Mwamba of Out Front! and a very special thanks to Alex Ward for the loan of his guitar. The performance was presented as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival, and with funding from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Community.

Funded by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Community.

Note on the cassette tape

 * The cassette tape release does not duplicate the digital album, but offers a complement to it. In contrast to the digital download album, the cassette album is the room mic recording of the second set only (corresponding to ‘Proxemics I–VI’). The cassette presents a vérité, ‘bootleg’-vibe documentation of the performance as heard by the audience on the night.

Also by Juno 3

disc art (copyright 2023 Ramble Records)

Juno 3 (RAM-163CD) [details…]

Personnel: Han-earl Park (guitar), Lara Jones (saxophone and electronics) and Pat Thomas (electronics).

Track listing: 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.

November 19, 2024

Coming soon! Juno 3: Proxemics

Coming soon! Proxemics (BAF003), the new album by Juno 3 (Han-earl Park, Lara Jones and Pat Thomas). Proxemics (BAF003) will be available as a full-length, digital download album, and a limited edition companion cassette tape.

The music is strident, brash, at times harsh and ugly, confrontational and combative—it’s unlike anything else I’ve been a part of—and I’m very excited to share it with you, and very, very curious to know what you make of it. More soon!

Be first in-line to hear the new album! Please sign-up to my newsletter:

[About the newsletter…]

Funded by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Community.

Also by Han-earl Park, Lara Jones and Pat Thomas

Juno 3 (RAM-163CD) [details…]

Personnel: Han-earl Park (guitar), Lara Jones (saxophone and electronics) and Pat Thomas (electronics).

April 4, 2024November 8, 2024

‘Don’t Overthink It’ (#onetakestudy Nº 7)

I came away from a session with Kaffe Matthews with some fragments of ideas—not themes, barely motives—let’s call them random arrangement of atoms. This study is an unprepared (without even a warm-up) first-run of some of these. Think of it as a soup made from whatever’s at hand.

I’ve taken the title for this latest study (‘Don’t Overthink It’) from an album by Corey Mwamba. (I hope you don’t mind, Corey.)

Kaffe and I are performing on Tuesday, April 23, 2024 at REH (Kopenhagener Straße 17, 10437 Berlin).

Out on NEWJAiM Recordings

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.

March 2, 2024May 27, 2024

Gonggong 225088 (wa008)

Gonggong 225088 cover art (copyright 2024 Han-earl Park) — Gonggong 225088 (wa008) © 2024 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.

description

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).

personnel

Han-earl Park (guitar), Yorgos Dimitriadis (percussion and electronics) and Camila Nebbia (saxophone).

track listing

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.

recording details

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.

updates

05-23-24: released!
05-27-24: update with video playlist.

January 28, 2024February 25, 2024

Gonggong 225088 on Freeness, BBC Radio 3

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:

[About the newsletter…]

October 28, 2023November 11, 2023

Juno 3: Han-earl Park, Lara Jones and Pat Thomas (Newcastle and London)

This November: Juno 3 is performing in Newcastle (November 12) and London (November 13)!

Newcastle, November 12, 2023: The Globe (11 Railway Street, Newcastle NE4 7AD).
Presented by Jazz North East.
[Performance diary entry…] [Facebook event…] [Get tickets…]
London, November 13, 2023: Cafe OTO (18–22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London E8 3DL).
As part of the EFG London Jazz Festival.
[Performance diary entry…] [Facebook event…] [OTO page/tickets…]

Juno 3 is Han-earl Park (guitar), Lara Jones (saxophone and electronics) and Pat Thomas (electronics). Captivating, gripping and fascinating, Juno 3’s music 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.

As Corey Mwamba said on Freeness about our music, “wonderful energy, constant motion, and roiling in noise. And immense amount of grit and power.” I can honestly say this trio sounds like nothing out there.

See the performance diary for up-to-date info.

Funded by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Community.

Out now on Ramble Records

Juno 3 (RAM-163CD) [details…]

Personnel: Han-earl Park (guitar), Lara Jones (saxophone and electronics) and Pat Thomas (electronics).

October 28, 2023

Han-earl Park, Heather Roche and Anton Hunter at OUT FRONT! Derby

Heather Roche, Han-earl Park and Anton Hunter. Photos © Kevin Leighton (HR), © Jazz em Agosto/Petra Cvelbar (HeP), and © Amelia Read (AH)) — Original photos L-to-R © Kevin Leighton (HR), © Jazz em Agosto/Petra Cvelbar (HeP), and © Amelia Read (AH)

Wednesday, November 15, 2023, at 6:30pm: OUT FRONT! presents Han-earl Park (guitar), Heather Roche (clarinets) and Anton Hunter (guitar) at Déda (19 Chapel Street, Derby DE1 3GU, England).

[OUT FRONT! page…] [Get tickets…]

details

The first on-stage meeting of improvisers Han-earl Park (guitar), Heather Roche (clarinets) and Anton Hunter (guitar).

This promises to be music with great depth and vibrance!

about the musicians

Improviser, guitarist and constructor Han-earl Park (박한얼) has been crossing borders and performing fuzzily idiomatic, on occasion experimental, always traditional, open improvised musics for twenty years. He is the mastermind behind ensembles including Eris 136199 with Catherine Sikora and Nick Didkovsky; and Sirene 1009 with Dominic Lash, Mark Sanders and rit.; and has a duo with Richard Barrett.

Anton Hunter is a composer and improviser living in Manchester. He leads the 11-piece Article XI band as well as his own trio, both with records on Efpi Records. Also ongoing is a duo with baritone saxophonist Cath Roberts called Ripsaw Catfish, Cath’s quintet Sloth Racket, the trio Beck Hunters and a myriad of other different ensembles, ad hoc and otherwise.

Born in Canada, clarinetist Heather Roche trained in England and now lives in London. She gives workshops in clarinet technique and composition all over Europe, and has premiered many solo works for her instrument, including pieces by Maija Hynninen, Simon Emmerson, Lisa Robertson, Christopher Fox, Dai Fujikura, and others.

Funded by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Community.

September 1, 2023February 11, 2024

Juno 3 (RAM-163CD)

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.