Artist: Pal Hwang Dan
Album: A Length of Line, written by Ee Yeoro
Format: Digital
Cat.No: CHI024
Master: Pal Hwang Dan
Release Date: 04 September 2020
Korean artist Pal Hwang Dan has collaborated with writer Ee Yeoro to create an audio soundscape based on Yeoro’s 2019 Korean-language book, A Length of Line. Pal Hwang Dan combines spoken readings, sometimes overlaid and strangely pitched, with a melodic and surreal musical score.
A Length of Line, written by Ee Yeoro seeks to destabilise both the writer and the subject, composed half of quotations and half of Yeoro’s own writings. The eclectic and conflicting mix of quoted texts come from such diverse sources as ancient Chinese poems, the critic Paul de Man, contemporary Korean poetry, Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and texts found on a telephone pole in Yeoro’s Seoul neighbourhood.
Yeoro’s own writings touch on the difficulty of seeing and being seen, rich with an ambivalent and anxious sense of dislocation. The text is read by 21 people from his neighbourhood, including a student, a Buddhist monk, a clerk, and a teacher, in keeping with the community-based, collaborative nature of the release which rejects the idea of a singular creator. An English-language translation of his text will be available to download with the release.
In sympathy with Yeoro’s creation, Pal Hwang Dan has woven the text readings in with a typically unique blend of uncanny sunny pop, Baroque music, computer game-inspired blippy beats, funky guitar and industrial textures which dominated his 2018 Chinabot release, Saneopseonjip. All text is spoken in Korean, but non-Korean speakers can experience the record’s power of disorientation, playful textures and blasts of solid-gold pop bliss.
About Pal Hwang Dan
Pal Hwang Dan, real name Pal Boche, is a musician living in Jung-chon. He is inspired by industrial, K-pop and animation. He works as a composer for advertising and and video game soundtracks.
About Ee Yeoro
Ee Yeoro is a writer and also translates essays about art and philosophy, including work by Mark Fisher and Jacques Derrida. His first book was a translation of The Sisters by James Joyce; the next will be an anthology about ethics. “I’m interested in amateurism with a critical attitude in mind,” he says. A Length of Line was supported by Incheon Foundation for Arts & Culture.
A fusion of ambient, classical, spoken word, and deconstructed dance music finds beauty and groove in glitches and pops. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 20, 2022
With all proceeds going to benefit Ukraine, the latest from Angela Winter is a beautifully haunting work that centers the human voice. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 16, 2022
The debut full length album from Melbourne electronic producer Female Wizard is full of trancelike keys and rapturous rhythms. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 4, 2021