DOYEON KIM - Wellspring

Wellspring presents the arrival of a powerful new voice in creative music, unrelenting in passion and invention, while always transmitting a deeply empathic grace. Masterful composer-improviser Doyeon Kim is an unparalleled practitioner of the Korean gayageum (a silk-string zither), and is also in possession of a purposeful vocal intensity. This is her debut album as a bandleader, featuring fellow master musicians Tyshawn Sorey (drums), Mat Maneri (viola), Henry Fraser (bass). Armed with an unlikely traditional instrument, flanked by three extraordinary improvisers, radiating a brash, acoustic strategy that simultaneously invokes folk universalism and a No Wave battle-stance, the Brooklyn-based virtuoso has dropped a volcanic sonic statement with grand humanist goals. Kim mingles Korean lullabies, fervent interactions between drums and strings, and pure instrumental expressions of musical self. At times, she sounds like she can halt armies. Wellspring is a call for society to come together. How the Seoul, South Korea-born 34-year-old came to be the centuries-old zithers leading (only?) practitioner of contemporary improvised music, reflects an expansive embrace of her own culture, her place in modern society, and her ascending recognition of musics liberatory power. Kim has released works alongside Morris and Brandon Lopez. Her 2017 duo album GaPi with Chase Morrin garnered a Korean Grammy nomination. And shes shared stages with Kris Davis, Cooper-Moore and John Hébert, among many others. Now, Wellspring, is the recorded culmination of her growth period. It is a rumbling record, with wall-to-wall big sounds, all Kim compositions or group improvisations, built on immediacy and gusto. Even the aforementioned lullaby, Walking in a Dream, which Kim performs with unrestrained vocal intensity, surrounded by Frasers resonant bowing, Maneris accompanying melody and counter figures, and Sorey adding atmospheric percussive touches-ends like a hurricane.          Kim chose her accompanists not simply because of familiarity, but due to their emotionally unmediated relationship to the moment. I dont want people thinking about their role in the music she says. I want people free from their instrument, who are more about how they are making a sound and the relationship between our sounds.  That feeling and the albums humanist themes are well-displayed by Wellsprings two-part epic closer, the 20+-minute Linear System/Calculus of the Soul. The instrumental Linear Systems is, according to Kim, constructed on the theme of the lifecycle, slowly building to a mass bowed drone, through a plucked and reactionary percussion section, before folding into the albums gentlest moment, and sliding into Calculus of the Soul. Please listen to this girls story the latter begins; then, with Maneri and Sorey flitting around her narration in noise-folk fashion, Kim speak-sings-then-screams of how between the suns and the moons daily arrival are countless formulas, and that the mystery of life is contained within those numbers. Thats how we live together!LP is packaged with an insert featuring liner notes & addtl images, and full album download card with CD Only track Walking in the Dream.  Limited edition of 500.

Vinyl release of Doyeon Kim - Wellspring. Released through TAO FORMS and available on LP.