Goodbye to sleeping monsters and intimate ghosts.
We are on the road again.” – (from “Friendly Enemies”)
The demons of night are out again: Seoul’s one-stop shop creative collective Byul.org returns this fall with
its third international album, entitled Nobody’s Gold, out xx October via Alien Transistor (worldwide) and
the group’s own Club Bidanbaem imprint (South Korea). Comprising 14 new songs, it’s a dizzying,
haunting affair that channels the group’s manifold influences and references points (from post-punk to
Stockhausen and back via club culture) and yet sounds intriguingly coherent.
Moving in and out of the shadows, Nobody’s Gold breaks forth as pure sonic landscape – a universe of its
own, folding and unfolding into both more experimental patterns, yet also with occasional hooks and dark
catchy structures, gracious build-ups flickering among the hazy roar and thunder. After the screak and
squeal of “Lamb with a Wolf Mask,” the foreboding sounds of “The Museum of The Two of Us” segue into
a synthesized party tune about a missing friend being chased by police (“Nari Yuko Yin”), one of several
vocal tracks with a sinister edge. Taking things up another notch, “Friendly Enemies” is probably the
closest this group will ever get to creating a stadium-ready anthem. On the other end of the spectrum,
“The Place Where Designers Go To Die” is a magnificent void with an immense and irresistible
undertow…
Never too jolly (not even while “Day Drinking at a Seaside Town” or during takeoff via epic pop tune “Bats
We Are”), Nobody’s Gold compiles soundscapes with a very tangible, corporeal presence – iridescent
sonic sculptures placed in unlikely settings (e.g. outer space, see: “Dirty Dirtiness”), born at the fringes
where night blends into day and vice versa.
Inspired by everyday life, half-remembered drug/club experiences, Pascal Quignard’s disturbing La haine
de la musique, Stockhausen and Bill Evans, the new LP sees the collective remain true to its DIY
foundations while repeatedly questioning our listening habits and “the exaggerated love for the concept of
love,” as they put it.
Founded around the dawn of the millennium as a group of poetry-loving friends who’d occasionally meet
for drinks, Byul.org has long become an extremely prolific and versatile collective within Seoul’s scene:
Main song-writer TaeSang Cho and his mates Yu Hur, Jowall, YunYi Yi, SuhnJoo YI, HyunJung Suh, and
SoYoon Hwang went from publishing to recording, from releasing tunes to design, art direction and more.
Although their list of clients includes Atelier Hermès and the Venice Biennale (they did the Korean
Pavilion twice), the group still remains a drinking circle of close friends at its core: Pals who simply like to
create and carouse and dream and live and perform and play tunes together.
“All the monsters in the forest and the ghosts in the village gathered there/We drank and drank with
them./(…)/We shared our dreams together/We dumped our dreams together.”