by Would it have been like this if Beopjeong (1932-2010) had released a ballad hip-hop album? Would you say it’s unowned pop music? In the era of global K-pop, where even a three-minute song is filled with any content, it’s such an empty texture.
Singer-songwriter Jang Ki-ha’s (40) ‘s new work ‘Lifting in the Air’ (released on the 22nd) shakes the back of the head of K-pop with the aesthetics of emptying and minimalism of emptiness. Jang’s vocals, which he occasionally throws out, have a tiny stake. More than silence and space floating between beat and rhythm, lyrics and melody. It’s like an American jazz player Wayne Shorter (89), who takes over the area with just a few notes.
At the beginning of the album, Jang’s vocals, who swim between the choppy keyboard repetitions of ‘What did I do wrong, ‘How far will I go’ and ‘I’m not envious, and the empty spaces of the bass and snare drums and hi-hats, are even sadder because they are sparse. Rhythmic to restraint The lyrical lyrics and melody are sometimes ballad-like. Still, at the same time, the song is exquisite, which is not like Jang’s characteristic words, but at the same time very talkative, using the taste of Korean to roll or spit bluntly.
After appearing like a comet in 2008 with the bizarre single ‘Cheap Coffee,’ he was active as the leader of the band ‘Jang Ki-Ha and the Faces.’ After disbanding ‘Faces’ in 2018, he took a break for three and a half years. At a video call meeting on the 23rd, Mr. Jang said, “I lived in the Paju publishing complex in Gyeonggi Province for two years and drove to Imjingak, fishing for horses and songs.”
“If you keep running in the direction of Cheorwon past Imjingak, people get dazed. Then something comes to mind. There are days when I go home empty-handed, but on the days I got a sentence, I developed it into writing lyrics and composing.”
There are also filled-in tracks in the new work emptied and emptied. The 4th song, ‘I just need to be quiet, but what do you keep doing that,’ is reminiscent of the Left-Field House genre, a twist on a branch of dance music. An outstanding collage of the passages from Lee Ja-ram’s pansori ‘Simcheongga’ was a godsend. In new work, Jang wrote lyrics, composed, arranged, and took on the role of a mixing engineer for the first time by hand.
“Voice and words came first. I recorded it and sketched the drums and other sounds that fit it, so naturally, I was almost alone in the mixing stage.”
Jang scratched his head, saying, “When I finished it, I noticed that the base was missing.” The texture of the floating sound wasn’t wrong. Come to think of it, and there was Jang Ki-ha in the music industry. This handsome man started levitating here and there.
