Music

South Korea’s Jambinai reinvent post-rock with traditional instruments

by Kathryn Kyte

Jambinai’s music skids through post-rock, metal, and experimental fusions, all while paying homage to traditional Korean instruments. Their upcoming album is comprised of eight expansive tracks that mess with your headspace jerking between guitars, bass, and drums alongside a Korean zither, piri (bamboo flute), and geomungo.

A Hermitage is Jambinai’s first release on Bella Union, a label whose roster includes Beach House, Father John Misty, and Toronto’s Doomsquad. Listen to a sample below:

A Hermitage translates loosely to “the dwelling of a hermit, especially when small and remote, undiscovered.” This album is the band’s attempt to awaken a newfound audience to their tempered noise. Their sound has been scoffed at by “Korean modernists” who’ve been reluctant to embrace Jambinai’s brand.

Lee started Jambinai and is the principle songwriter. He eventually pulled in Bomi Kim and Eun Youn Sim after all three met while studying traditional music at Korea’s National University of the Arts. While Lee had experiences in hardcore, his bandmates were trained in anything-but-hardcore so there were transitions needed to evoke their furious fusions.

These sentiments are exposed throughout the album, with an underbelly of political unrest and cultural repression plucked through the intense string ruckus. As Lee notes, “Nowadays, especially in Korea, many give up their dreams because life gets worse every day. We have the world’s highest suicide rate.”

Jambinai’s “Deus Benedicat Tini” draws specifically from “Dae Chui Ta”, a traditional Korean piece that is used as a form of celebratory, martial music while the “king marches down the street.” The track is urgent, suffocating, haunting and triumphant. It was made for those living in pain and those overcoming, reinforcing a sense of self-worth into shaken spines.

“The Mountain” begins with a sombre delicacy only to shift into more frenzied rhythms, while “Naburak” wastes no time and pummels from the start, grinding through muddy atmospherics. Both songs run for at least seven minutes. The closing track, “They Keep the Silence”, is quite possibly the best of the bunch, presenting a hodgepodge of all we’ve heard before it with the inclusion of trance-like vocals.

Jambinai is pushing its reach far beyond its native home, confirming upcoming festival spots across Europe including stops in Belgium, Poland and France. No word on any North American dates as of yet.
A Hermitage will be available on June 17 via Bella Union.