JAMBINAI 잠비나이 - THEY KEEP SILENCE 그들은 말이 없다
The true highlight, though, is the six-and-a-half minute closer “They Keep Silence”. The track was inspired by the Sewol ferry tragedy, in which a ship mainly carrying high school students capsized and sank, killing over 300. According to Lee, the song is his response to the silence the event was met with by many in the Korean government, despite the apparent negligence of the crew. “Many musicians in Korea made songs of sadness, mourning all those innocent victims but I didn’t want to do that,” he told The Line of Best Fit. “I wanted to focus more on the anger and suffocation.”
Lee, a guitarist in hardcore bands in addition to chief songwriter for Jambinai, finds the purest, most evocative rage here. His words come out as if seeping out of him, syllables blunted and watery. The geomungo ripples and bends under the pressure of the rest of the band, though never breaks. The haegum begins in distorted bursts before clawing into a screaming fury. Then everything falls away. Byeongkoo Yu’s bass rings out a bit, as do drummer Jaehyuk Choi’s cymbals. The loss is felt, desperately, and yet there’s nothing. But rather than let that silence last, the band explode into an even stronger fit, pushing fiercely at the edges of the track. That refusal to keep quiet is essential to the makeup of Jambinai, accentuating and amplifying traditional Korean music, turning up the noise, and letting both traditional and modern emotions vent.
- Adam Kivelon, “Album Reviews: Jambinai – A Hermitage; Experimental outfit blends traditional Korean music with sky-cracking post-rock”, Consequence of Sound, 22 June 2016
