Put A Record On: Bora Yoon Breaks All Boundaries

As a classically trained musician, a pitch-perfect soprano and an architect of sound as a spatial experiment, Bora Yoon brings an unusual set of skills to music making. ( (( PHONATION )) ), her latest album, mines centuries of music in single songs. Opening cut, "Sons Nouveaux," for instance, juxtaposes plucked violin and soaring vocals reminiscent of choral music with subtle static fields and rhythmic samples.



"PLINKO," meanwhile, is a winking jewel of electronic sounds, built from a looped melody played on an outmoded Samsung cellphone, tinkling glockenspiel, handclaps and vocals that stretch to the roof beams. On the other end of the spectrum, the more organic "//" uses layered chants, off-kilter music box melodies, dripping water, Tibetan singing bowls and wind chimes to create an atmospheric incantation that's at once eerie and beautiful.

Though Yoon's curious array of instruments and electronic experiments can sound challenging when described, the sum total is as accessible as it is richly articulated. As Ajay Singh Chaudhary writes in the record's liner notes, "In many ways, Yoon's music exemplifies the move away from genre boundaries and into embracing the new freedom in music to juxtapose the avant-garde with the melodic, to explore the depths of possibility in acoustic sound only to let it all dissolve in a squall of electronic noise..."

Yoon launches ( (( PHONATION )) ) into the world Thursday November 20th with a performance in downtown New York (get details here), accompanied by acclaimed Reykjavik-based sound artist Ben Frost, with whom she collaborated on a 7" for cutting-edge music journal Popular Noise.

For more information, see www.myspace.com/borayoon
or www.borayoon.com

—Anastasia Vye