Long Decay and New Earth

Composed, performed and recorded by Jiyeon Kim. Rehearsal space: Jeokdo, Seoul. Performance venue: Cafe Unplugged, Seoul

Jiyeon Kim writes – "This cassette is a document of a performance and its rehearsal, in Seoul, December 2019. The piece performed was a "decomposition" of a previous cassette release of mine, "piano mixtape". For this live show I employed two distinct techniques.

Firstly, I took piano decay resonances, broken melodies, mechanical noises and magnetic hiss from "piano mixtape" on the fly and recorded them on separate buffers of an 8-track digital sampler. By modulating time and pitch of those samples, I mixed and played them without a master clock. Through overlapping various looped samples, micro patterns would arise organically.

Secondly, I overdubbed the original piano pieces repeatedly to deform and fade their sounds. Cassette tapes and tape players are not just a data storage medium, but also an analogue musical instrument in themselves. They have their own sound characteristics and unique means of manipulation. My digital sampler provided me with further compositional possibilities.

I do not consider these processes to be "destructive", but instead something more organic – decaying sound sources seeding and propagating new landscapes." – Jiyeon Kim, Seoul, South Korea, 11 March 2020.

Jiyeon Kim is Seoul-based musician and sound artist. Over the past decade she has devoted her time to developing a vocabulary based on field recordings and format-specific sound making, with close-listening deeply embedded in her practice.

As a musician, she integrates field recordings, acoustic piano and electronics with modern composition, sampling and improvisation techniques. She is also interested in the use of audio playback technology and data formats as instruments. As a sound artist, she presents sound installations, interdisciplinary performances and writings based on her listening experiences and her reflections on them.

She is a member of artist duo Weather Report who are based on Jeju island, Seoul, and who explore the medium of live streaming for remote listening and network performance practices. She also scored the documentary "Kim Gun" (2019).

She has performed at Cafe Oto (UK), Ausland (Germany) and Stazione di Topolò (Italy), and several local experimental live events in Seoul. Her audio works have been broadcast on Resonance.fm, NTS, KDVS and more. She has participated in artist residencies at Portobesebo (Italy), MoKs (Estonia) and Culture Space Yang (Jeju Island, Korea), and is part of the curated Touch Mentorship programme. Her listening practices are documented in "Experimental Music Since 1970" by Jennie Gottschalk (Bloomsbury, 2016).