"Youjin Sung is a Korean gayageum player based in Berlin since 2014. She is a member of the AsianArt Ensemble playing contemporary music and is actively engaged in experimental music with gayageum.

Born in London and based in Berlin, Simon Rose performs on baritone saxophone. His interest in open form improvisation has led to a wide variety of collaborations.

Youjin Sung and Simon Rose met at the Berlin club Sowieso in 2019. Sung's curiosity about open form improvisation was matched by Rose's long term curiosity about the potential of Korean musical instruments and tradition when applied in open improvisation."-Creative Sources

"Simon Rose has no doubt assimilated the influence of Evan Parker and, in fact, I remember talking to Evan many years ago about our favorite traditional music albums. He had informed me of the existence of Korean Social & Folk Music published by John Levy at Lyrichord in 1968. One of the pieces documents an Ajaeng Sanjo, that is, music played on a Korean zither with a bow (Ajaeng) and completely "free" ", As well as pieces to the Komungo, another zither different from the Gayageum . This Korean Gayageum zither is heard played on a bow in track 1 and 8, Pandora and Map of Dreams by Youjin Sung. I even think the bowed Gayageum goes by the name Ajaeng, if I remember, because the cover notes included in my copy of the Korean Social & Folk Music album are gone. However, if her music is a little less wild and haunted than Ajaeng Sanjo in the 8 - Map of Dreams, the musician makes her bow downright slip on the strings with these astonishing sound effects that can also be heard in the aforementioned vinyl. Korean music is characterized by its floating rhythms which oscillate strangely and whose speed speeds up or slows down or, if you will, the spacing between beats accelerates or slows down slightly, as if the music hesitates to move. The erratic sound quality of Simon Rose's baritone sax, his playing with the harmonics and the fluctuation of his accents and sound loops in free rhythm fit perfectly with the particular playing of Youjin Sung. Simon takes out most of his baritone and gives the best of himself. Youjin Sung adds a subtlety and an airy lightness which contrast and paradoxically overlap in the moving and tearing sound paste of his colleague. Both are in total communion around these hesitant pulsations which one finds at the same time in the slightly crazy fingerings of the Gayageum and the licks and beaks of the blower. I am completely delighted with this magnificent exchange between this Far Eastern tradition open to the avant-garde and Western European free-music: the two artists form one another and create haunted and bewitching soundscapes. . Excellent !!

PS: Many traditional Japanese and Chinese musicians have a solid foothold in the avant-garde and improvised music like Kazue Sawai, the brilliant Kinshi Tsuruta, Min Xiao Fen and Xu Feng Xia. Korean musicians are downright predestined for this type of encounter of the third kind."-Orynx Improvised Sound (translated by Google)

This album has been reviewed on our magazine:


The Squid's Ear!