Taking cues from environmental pioneer Hiroshi Yoshimura and Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki, Seoul duo Salamanda create vivid fantasy worlds with rich tactile sounds: hammers slamming, objects sinking, vocal chords pushing air into tight lips. Yetsuby, one half of the duo, takes a similarly physical approach to sound in her solo work. But where Salamanda's music often conveys a shimmering, childlike quality — call it the psychedelia of innocence — Yetsuby's solo records have often been more chaotic. Turn synthetic sounds in 2019 Heptaprismus and leaned towards the Two Shell type overload in last year's creep My Star My Earth. Her new EP, BB, is her most dynamic and evocative solo release. It sounds like a geyser made of ball bearings, or a rainbow made of plasticine, or a marimba the size of a bridge.
Both Yetsuby and Salamanda have long displayed an ambient bent, but EP-opener “Who Swallowed the Chimes at the Random Place” is the closest she's come to creating something that could be lodged in in kind. Soft rounded synthetic arpeggio bubbles I expect; Bells flicker across the stereo field. jagged strips of tone occasionally resemble Jon Hassell's prismatic horn. However, despite the haphazard feel of the music and the absence of drums or melody, the mood is anything but chilly. The moving parts are unpredictable and the calm, new-age tones are offset by metallic blasts and a general air of turmoil. The track belongs to a modern strain of hyper-digital music whose organizing principle is gestural in nature, as if Yetsuby had reached into the virtual space of her DAW and smeared the sounds into a shimmering blur.
At five minutes long, “Who Swallowed the Chimes” is both the longest and most amorphous of the EP's six tracks. The rest of the record zigzags between refined rhythmic studies and maximalist fusions of IDM and hyperpop. But regardless of style, a sense of malice prevails. The short, percussive “If I Drink This Potion” clocks in at a relatively restrained 112 beats per minute, yet everything seems designed to make it feel faster and more frantic than it is: The drums explode into effervescent clouds, and the low pace is constantly changing. giving the impression of frantic jogging on liquefied sand. Things kick off with “1,2,3, Soleil,” a 90BPM shaker whose pounding drums and elastic, dance-inspired syncopation could easily pass for a Salamanda track. But Yetsuby can't resist her usual optimism: mixed flute accents soon give way to fancy synth touches, and 32nd-note arps take off like a runaway train, tilting the groove toward Singeli's dizzying gait.
