SOUNDTRACK: JAMBINAI-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #234 (July 09, 2021).
Why oh why oh why do all the best Tiny Desk Concerts have to be so short?
This show is AMAZING and it’s only 12 minutes long. Meanwhile, some other bands have dragged theirs out for almost twice as long. Alas.
I was introduced to JAMBINAI (like many others I’m sure) at the 2018 winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Korea. Their set was spectacular and it blew me away. In reality, the band is much smaller than that spectacle produced, but their sound is still huge and intense.
I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “fierce” to describe a Tiny Desk, but that’s precisely what JAMBINAI has created in this (home) concert. The show begins in front of a massive recreation of my desk and what happens next … well, no spoilers here. Filmed in an immersive media art museum created by an organization known as d’strict on Jeju Island, this Korean band contains multitudes.
JAMBINAI plays traditional Korean instruments, but adds rock guitars and bass.
At its heart, JAMBINAI’s music mixes elements of metal, noise and Korean tradition. There’s full-on distorted guitar, bass and drums, but also a haegeum (a fiddle-like instrument), a piri (a type of flute), a taepyeongso (a reed instrument) and a most appropriately named instrument, a geomungo (a giant Korean zither). We also hear some delicate vocals in the mix.
The two pieces performed here include 2015’s “Time of Extinction” and the more recent and epic “ONDA.”
“Time Of Extinction” is the song they played at the Olympic and while it’s only three minutes long it feels epic and really encompasses their sound. It opens with a plucked geomungo creating the simple riff. After 20 second Ilwoo Lee plays a feedbacking guitar note and then Jaehyuk Choi comes crashing in on the drums. At the same time, the visuals blow your mind.
The basis of the song is Eunyong Sim’ geomungo rhythm and Bomi Kim’s keening haegeum solo. The guitars add a terrific tension to the basic melody. In the middle of the song when it’s just drum and Byeongkoo Yu’s bass playing, the thumping is broken by the fully distorted guitar You don’t expect Ilwoo Lee to bust out a taepyeongso and play a traditional and rather discordant horn solo on top. Just when it seems the song is about to launch to a new direction it’s over. Just like that.
There is something so unearthly about the geomungo–it’s percussive and stringed and you can feel it rumble and thump ta the same time
“ONDA” is 8 minutes long and opens with Ilwoo Lee playing a saenghwang an amazing looking wind instrument that I cant quite fathom. He plays a terrific sounding melody with it –almost patronal. Except for the low electronic chords underneath it
Then comes the rumble–the thundering drums and bass and a fast repetition from the geomungo.
Then Bomi Kim sings a gentle, calming echoing vocal line that sound magical under the rumble. After a verse of so Ilwoo Lee joins in on harmony vocals and they sound terrific together.
The song builds in intensity, as lwoo Lee adds the guitar, then it pulls back as Lee plays a piri solo that becomes a call and response with the haegeum.
There’s a wild jamming solo section that grows super intense. The way it builds to a climax and is followed by huge crashing chords (and great visuals) is monumental. Everyone joins in singing for the last minute as the melody soars and soars.
Maybe 12 minutes is all we can handle.
[READ: July 1, 2021] The Whispering Wars
This book is related to The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone in that it is set in the same land (The Land of Kingdoms and Empires). But it is set some thirty years before the adventures of that book. Through some magic (this is a magical land), we do see Bronte briefly. but if she ever starts to give way anything about the future, she is instantly sent back to where she came from.
In the first book we are aware of the Whispering Wars as being a big event in the past. This book explains how they started.
This book is told by two (sometimes three) alternating narrators. There is Finlay, who lives at the orphanage and Honey Bee who lives at the fancy Brathelthwaite school.
How they wind up alternating chapters isn’t explained until much later, which I rather enjoyed (both the delay and the explanation).
As the book opens, Finlay explains that it is time for the annual Spindrift (the town where they live) tournament. The kids at the orphanage looks forward to this event because they can show up the rich kids. Finlay is a super fast runner, as is his friend Glim. The twins Eli and Taya aren’t super fast but they are very strong and good with their hands (and can multitask like nobody’s business). There’s also Jaskafar, a tiny boy who sleeps on top of the wardrobe–his storyline is very funny until he is the first Orphan to be taken.
The Sir Edgar Brathelthwaite Boarding School is a super fancy school. They have a motto about how they will never fail (or even come in second) which they sing every day. One of the students, Victor a future duke (who is totally full of himself). There’s also Hamish, a boy whose hair falls in his face like a curtain and who never, ever seems to know what’s going on (in a very funny way). And of course there’s Honey Bee.
The two schools are set to race each other. There is much pomp and circumstance and ultimately the Orphans win–until The Brathethwaite school wins on a technicality. This sets off a war between the students of both schools. It starts with throwing eggs and releasing rats and it slowly ramps up until the Orphans are seen digging pits in the field where the Boarding school kids practice their drills.
But while this is going on there is serious trouble afoot. Children are being stolen and no one knows where they are going.
Even worse, the Association of Spellbinders has revealed that certain Whisperers are using superpowered whispers to control people’s minds. They are using shadow magic (bad magic). They warn that anyone seemingly making foolish decisions might be under the influence.
But the Whispering War officially began with a gnome attack (who would have guessed they would be so deadly).
I’m going to interrupt here to say that I enjoyed the narrators of this book–although I enjoyed Bronte as a narrator more. Initially I didn’t find them as immediately enjoyable (Bronte is reall awesome). But after a few chapters, once the story started going I really enjoyed them. Finlay and Honey Bee play off of each other very well and Finlay’s snippiness is often very amusing. I particularly like the part where Honey Bee dreams that her uncle is shouting
You
Will
Not
Cut
Your
Hair
Without
Permission
and Finlay complains that she is writing with rich people’s words–taking one line each.
Back to the story. Both groups of students see a couple of kids standing in front of each of their school and each group thinks the kids are spies from the other school. But before anyone can do anything, there is terrible attack from witches who make the beach undulate which destroys many shelters.
The Queen of the area has the idea to isolate anyone with any connection to shadow magic–inclduing people who have lived in Spindrift al of their lives (internment camp analogy).
Over the course of the story more and more children are taken. They figure out where the children are (in the Whispering Kingdom) but they can’t be rescued. The Kingdom is sealed off by magic. So our heroes devise a way of getting captured so they can break the children out themselves.
But once they get there they find that the Whisperers spells are really really strong.
It takes the kids from both school working together (as well as a couple of kids working against everyone else) to set the children free.
I also really enjoyed the way a tossed away joke from the beginning comes back to form a major part of the rescue.
Of course just because the children are rescued doesn’t mean the story is over. Because the Whispers still have super powers to control minds. What do you do when someone you love is possessed and is now trying to kill you?
I enjoyed the way that some of the characters from book 1 make appearances here in younger form (and in case we couldn’t figure out who they were Moriarity does explain it for us).
There’s lots of good false endings to the story (especially since the kids are writing the story and get petulant and want to end it early). But the final ending is very satisfying.
I’m quite curious what book 3 is about because given these first two, the third one could be about anything.
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