Okkyung Lee is one of contemporary music’s greatest cellists, but on her new record, just like any other day (어느날): background music for your mundane activities, she sets her cello aside for a keyboard, a computer, and a tape recorder, bringing ten compositions to life in a sly undercutting of what gets thought about when the subject turns to experimental music. Melodic and often beautiful, the album is no mere gesture toward the pop sphere. It’s available on vinyl and digital from Shelter Press on September 5.
Okkyung Lee has amassed a large discography since emerging as a recording artist in the late 1990s, excelling as a collaborator (The Bleeding Edge by Evan Parker, Peter Evans, and Lee, psi, 2011), as the leader of her own ensembles (Noisy Love Songs (For George Dyer), Tzadik, 2011), and as a solo musician (Ghil, Ideologic Organ/Editions Mego, 2013).
A superb improvisor, composer and virtuoso instrumentalist, Lee has thrived in connection with the NYC Downtown avant-garde, where she has proved highly adaptable to a wide range of stylistic situations. By extension, Lee’s recording path in this decade is an unusually fertile distillation of her musical range.
There’s the vivid chamber brilliance of Yeo-Neun (Shelter Press, 2020), the sublimely hairy saw-scape of “Teum (The Silvery Slit),” a piece constituting her side of a split LP with Florian Hecker (Portraits GRM, 2020), and the deep emotional resonance of Na-Reul (Corbett vs. Dempsey, 2021).
just like any other day is a bold and unexpected departure, but the set highlights both Lee’s compositional strengths, her confidence and command of the keyboard, and her ability to seek out and flourish in a new context. Laying heavily into the keys in opening track “this is a never ending story (you just need to close it),” Lee shifts the focus in the subsequent pieces toward melody as the selections cohere into a rich tapestry integrating elements of ambient music, Minimalism, neo-classical, and electronic music.
Although too lively in execution to ever appropriately function as background music (contrary to the full title above), just like any other day does cultivate a sustained atmosphere across its ten tracks. Glistening tones resonate, with Lee’s melodic lines precise but never cold, as she playfully embraces cyclical motifs.
And Lee’s preference for almost but not quite retro electronic textures through her choice of a clean-toned electric keyboard helps just like any other day avoid the lack of instrumental substantially that afflicts far too much neo-classically inclined stuff. Not that Lee’s latest is appropriately assessed as a neo-classical thing. If pretty, the album is never lightweight, and its new developments are articulated with confidence by a master musician.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
