Okkyung Lee
Ghil

THE REVIEW

As already stated by the only other review of Okkyung Lee present in DeBaser's archive, the fact that this charming Korean girl was discovered by that crazy John Zorn and lives under his protective wing can (not) make us understand what this record contains. 

An atypical cellist who has nothing in common with other contemporary music names. Her sound research is dictated by the wildest, most cacophonous and disturbing improvisation around. Practically Masonna imprisoned within the folds of classical music. Lee stabs the cello with the bow, destroys it, suffocates it, disrupts it with a nonchalance that leaves you stunned. And despite her music being so free from conventions, a wild beast ready to tear at the listener's throat, the combination of sounds is capable of taking you elsewhere, abandoning the body of those who accept the challenge among the galaxies, awaiting the apocalypse. 

Listening to her previous works was already shocking, but with "Ghil" every barrier is broken down. Recorded with outdated equipment and with a masochistic search for ugliness, imperfection, and the corpse left to rot, "Ghil" is the result of an artist's outburst, who let herself go into improvisations derived from solitude. If you already thought "Noisy Love Songs" was extreme, get ready: with "Ghil," Lee aimed to achieve a quite ambitious goal: "not only to hear the instrument, but to feel it." Feel not only the agony of this music from the underworld but also the body, the flesh, the life of the cello itself. 

But how does "Ghil" sound? It's hard for me to say. Because it is the last record you would expect to come out of a bow. A violent mix of noise and chaos, pure and schizophrenic noise, moments that even reveal drone and doom-metal natures. Flesh, blood, death: it's the sound of a lion chasing the gazelle before ending its life. An incision without anesthesia unfolding in short compositions (the beautiful drone interlude "Holow Water") and long ones, some of these coming directly from hell (the masterpiece "Meolly Ganeun", the extraordinary "Over The Oak, Under The Em", the intangible nine minutes of "The Space Beneath My Grey Heart").
It has the sound of blood, of earth, of a dense and very dark sky, heavy as a boulder. It has the sound of a labored breathing ending in a harrowing scream. 

Impressive, fierce, indescribable, "Ghil" makes one tremble.
It's hard for me to talk about it, but I wanted to introduce it to you. I would like to write about it better, in more depth, but my fingers no longer know how to tap these keys which are now devoid of meaning.

Put simply: it’s among the best things of this 2013.

Back to hell.