Taking cues from ambient pioneer Hiroshi Yoshimura and Studio Ghibli filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, Seoul duo Salamanda conjure vivid fantasy worlds with richly tactile sounds: mallets placing, objects plunking, vocal cords pushing air via pursed lips. Yetsuby, one half of the duo, takes a equally bodily strategy to sound in her solo work. However the place Salamanda’s music typically conveys a glowing, childlike high quality—name it the psychedelia of innocence—Yetsuby’s solo data have typically been extra chaotic. She knotted up artificial sounds on 2019’s Heptaprism and leaned towards Two Shell-style overload on final 12 months’s shuddering My Star My Earth. Her new EP, B_B, is her most dynamic and evocative solo launch but. It appears like a geyser of ball bearings, or a plasticine rainbow, or a marimba the scale of a bridge.
Each Yetsuby and Salamanda have lengthy displayed ambient leanings, however “Who Swallowed the Chimes on the Random Place,” which opens the EP, is the closest she’s come to crafting one thing that is likely to be filed inside the style. Softly rounded synth arpeggios bubble expectantly; chimes flicker throughout the stereo area; jagged streaks of tone often resemble Jon Hassell’s prismatic horn. Nonetheless, regardless of the music’s incidental really feel and the absence of drums or melody, the temper is something however chilled. The transferring components are unpredictable and the placid, new-age tones are offset by metallic bursts and an overarching air of turmoil. The piece belongs to a recent pressure of hyper-digital music whose organizing precept is gestural in nature, as if Yetsuby had reached into the digital house of her DAW and smeared the sounds right into a shimmery blur.
At 5 minutes lengthy, “Who Swallowed the Chimes” is each the longest and probably the most formless of the EP’s six tracks. The remainder of the file zigzags between streamlined rhythmic research and maximalist amalgamations of IDM and hyperpop. However irrespective of the fashion, a way of mischief reigns. The temporary, percussive “If I Drink This Potion” traipses alongside at a comparatively restrained 112 beats per minute, but all the things appears designed to make it really feel quicker and extra hectic than it’s: Drums explode into effervescent clouds, and the downbeat continuously shifts, lending the impression of a frantic jog throughout liquefying sand. Issues quiet down on “1,2,3, Soleil,” a 90 BPM head-nodder whose thumping log drums and elastic, dancehall-inspired syncopations might simply move for a Salamanda observe. However Yetsuby can’t resist her recurring impishness: Dappled flute accents quickly cede the way in which to garish splotches of synth, and Thirty second-note arps take off like a runaway prepare, tipping the groove towards singeli’s breakneck gait.
