Color me “stumped”. My apologies to Chris, who graciously shared Yon Seok-Won’s 空 (Space & Silence) with me. I did my best to piece together some kind or type of background for this amazing Korean ambient album but ran into an equally large gulf in history. It shouldn’t end this way, of course. Much like Lee Byung-Woo’s revelatory work, Yon’s own work deserves its place in some kind of new Balearic canon.
Yon Seok-Won was born in Korea in 1949. It wouldn’t be until twenty-odd years later that he would strike it in the music business as a member of Korean psychedelic rock group, Devils. By the late ‘70s, Yon would transition out from the foreground and begin his more lucrative turn as songwriter and session artist for successful pop and disco acts like Lee Hyun Woo and Ji-Young Moon.
It wouldn’t be until the ‘80s when the multi-instrumentalist parlayed his professional sideman gig into opportunities soundtracking films and TV dramas. A decade in he would develop skills using newfound electronic drum machines and synths to augment his more traditional rock-oriented origins. Skills providing quietly brilliant electro and dance pop tracks to artists like Lee Eun Ha, Keum Sung Pil, and the iconic Kim Wan Sun, bought Yon Seok Won some degree of liberty when Korean label, Oasis Record Co. came knocking looking to add some “jazz” into their roster.
His first solo work, 1990’s soundtrack to MBC Korean drama “어둔하늘 어둔새”/Dark Sky, Dark Bird would indeed be something special. Showing the influence of modal fusion jazz and slipstream ambient, on songs like “아버지와 아들” and “비내리는 날의 창밖”, nocturnal guitar and electroacoustic themes became strange, elegiac background music of a different stripe.
Just a year later on The Mermaid Yon would flesh out an even more personal record, one absorbing neoprog influences and art rock into some truly aquatic-sounding instrumental jazz. Album highlights like “인어” and “사랑이 오고 그리고 갈때” speak of a romantic side unheard of yet in his music. Assured in vision as a composer and performer, Yon set his sights higher.
One, or least this one, believes that 1992’s 空 (Space & Silence) was a shift into more organic territory. Where once songs meandered, on songs like “연석원 (The Valley)” they spellbind with earthy tones (played on yet another Korg M1…) blending with real folk instrumentation like the airy daekum. Marketed as his “New Age” album, somehow, Yon Seok Won managed to sneak in a latin-tinged soul ballad called “Love” sung by an American balladeer, Linda Theus.
空 (Space & Silence) features bits of head fakes like these that keep you on your toes. Right after it we get something like “연석원 (Instinct.1)” a decidedly leftfield neoclassical torch instrumental that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Hajime Mizoguchi record. Other ideas like “연석원 (Forest)” venture into the realm of ethno-jazz and tribal music (albeit with a decidedly Korean twist).
When 空 (Space & Silence) is at its most memorable are when songs like “연석원 (Boonga Boonga)” and “연석원 (The Cloudland)” tap into the atmospheric ambient jazz little-heard (or better yet) little discovered by us, as played in Korea. Little-known Korean jazz vocalist Park Kang Sung adds plaintive scatting and vocalizing on bits and bobs here.
As a whole, the album sounds impeccably played and far from rigid or inhuman. Floating music would be an apt style to call it. All and all, for the span of 40 minutes one forgets that all the promise shown here (of which there is plenty) this would in fact be the last time we’d hear Yon record a statement under his own name. Like a mirage, just when you feel you have a grasp of it, it’s gone.
Hopefully, time will tell whether there’s far more of his story to tell and for others to write down.