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| Courtesy of DooRooDooRoo Artist Company |
By David A. Tizzard
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There's something unmistakable about Jang Gi-ha's voice. It's instantly recognizable: not only in tone but also in the syncopation and rhythms. The amount of syllables he puts into each bar is ridiculous. Triplets give the voice bursts of speed and forward momentum. His use of inflections and techniques normally only heard in spoken Korean are also emphasized frequently. You will hear sharp intakes of breath, you have that particularly Korean glottal that takes place at the back of the throat when emphasizing certain words or sounds, and that small little "uh" that serves as a joiner between ideas or sentences. Once you are aware of Jang doing these, you can't help but hear them. They are the hook. And that makes one think that the man clearly knows what he's doing in utilizing them so often.
His words are music. He is not singing octaves, he's not layering harmonies and using thirds, and he's not abusing certain intervals or tonics. Instead, he's using his voice and the stream of conscious-like lyrical delivery as the focal point for his songs. And when it comes at you, it's incessant. Just on, and on, and on. A relentless chattering of ideas, non-sequiturs, humorous observations, cliches, and philosophical insights into modern life. You could almost think of it as a stand-up routine put to music rather than someone purposefully writing verses, choruses, and bridges.
His latest album 'Levitating," the first solo release after splitting from his group, The Faces, a few years back, doesn't actually have any choruses or middle eights. After a decade of trying to write new progressions and novel ways of going round the circle of fifths, it makes sense that the next step for someone artistically inclined is to abandon chord progressions completely. To find music and melody in its absence. To find something purer, devoid of unnecessary ornament. So it comes as no surprise to hear that he previously spent time in the capital of East Germany exploring conceptual art. This is Jang's "Berlin album." His avant-garde phase.
There are only five tracks on "Levitating." Each one revolves around a sparsely populated rhythm track that doesn't change but instead adds or subtracts instruments at peculiar intervals. This reinforces the inorganic nature of the music. It's not a jam or spontaneous collaboration. It's music by programming. It's the creation of an individual trying to make sense of the sounds in their head as they spend hours in their car trying to drown out certain thoughts. Jang wrote, produced, recorded, and mixed this all by himself. This is what his internal monologue sounds like at 40.
Jang has definitely listened to San-ul-lim, the influential Korean rock trio founded in the 1970s. But I've always been curious whether he has been shaped by Elvis Costello, by Ian Dury, by The Fall, Linton Kwesi Johnson, or, more recently, Sleaford Mods and Kae Tempest. Maybe I'm just projecting my own English taste and upbringing onto what he's created and trying to wrest some of it back from German influence. But I hear that in what he's doing.
Jang's album is unmistakably Korean. Very much more so than a lot of the western-produced tunes sung in English that get the K put in front of it elsewhere. I don't think I've actually heard any English in Jang's lyrics over the past ten years and, considering its ubiquity in the modern landscape, that must be a conscious decision. His latest album sounds drastically unique because its abandoning convention in terms of arrangement, production, and mixing. It's authentic. A middle-finger to expectations of celebrity and swag. It revels in understatement and awkwardness. It stumbles and repeats. It stutters. It doesn't make sense sometimes. And that's why it's so interesting. And why it works in modern Seoul.
Dr. David A. Tizzard (datizzard@swu.ac.kr) has a Ph.D. in Korean Studies and lectures at Seoul Women's University and Hanyang University. He is a social/cultural commentator and musician who has lived in Korea for nearly two decades. He is also the host of the Korea Deconstructed podcast, which can be found online. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.
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