05 August 2011

Sima Kim - texture (2011, Twisted Tree Line)

Three tracks, named Texture 3, 4 and 5, a debut EP for Sima Kim on the UK label Twisted Tree Line, so yes, the idea of texture is central, and the three tracks have different colors.

Sima studied music and explored personally different directions and techniques, citing references such as Arvo Part, Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Sergei Profokiev or Karlheinz Stockhausen, with a focus on minimalist, combining silence and notes, elaborating layers to finally achieve textures.


Tracks one and three are indeed pure textures, nicely and intelligently conceived, with very subtle and precise atmospheres, which escape criticism. Their only problem is that there is no melody, no true narrative context or cathartic emotional content, it's just beautiful glass sculptures with no meaning, freewheel concepts.

Then you have the second track, mixing piano and electronics. Warm, refreshing, melancholic, rainy, intimate and highly personal, autumnal, mind blowing. Same perfection of textures but now with a goal, with a destination, five moving minutes of intense beauty where he finds a voice and avoid all cliches of an almost exhausted genre.

In fact on this track, "Texture 4", Sima Kim is doing exactly what Samn Johnson did on his debut album "Shades" with the track "Hyacinths", finding grace. There is a strange symbolic twinship between the two young composers that way.

I wish he can repeat such miracle over and over again.

http://simakim.bandcamp.com/album/texture

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