Balming Tiger – Gongu

Balming Tiger are the self-identified multi-national and multi-disciplinary K-Pop group presenting an alternative voice in the Korean music scene. They are made up of artists, producers, film-makers and editors, and this broad range of experience is deftly deployed in Gongbu, which they’ll be showcasing in their headline concerts on 6^th and 7^th June.

An experimental affair, it utilises instrumentals and traditional Korean sound with a psychedelic edge. This psychic exploration through the sonic landscape presents a fascinating method of storytelling.

The narrative is built around a fictional neuroscientist, Park Min, who runs a dream research centre called Gongbu Korea. Through this, it depicts an anthology of individual dreams. This core anchors the album, facilitating investigation whilst remaining cohesive. The concept is made tangible, with Hong Chanhee’s cover art featuring bj wnjn’s face on an employee ID created for Gojingamrae.

Across 14 songs, the album is meticulously structured to convey its narrative. The opener sounds like someone rewinding a tape. This is repeated in Bird Song and Recruiting, providing a space to process the other songs and reinforce the setting of a dream research institute. Stretching, Cha Cha Cha and Janjan start the record with a foreboding percussion, building up to Gongbu. The eponymous track depicts a self-loathing nightmare spiral through electronic sound and English-Korean lyrics. This is unexpectedly followed by the upbeat Oui that is especially reminiscent of 1980s disco.

However, nothing in this album feels incongruous. For example, Madengyaeho draws on traditional Korean sound and is chanted by a chorus, invoking a communal feeling. This should feel out of place, but the dream world created allows for these formal differences. Gojingamrae is inspired by the familiar idiom “eat bitter taste sweet”. Examining heartache, this is used as a refrain to present both pain and hope. Equally, It’s the Night is very memorable, with the escapism of going out conveyed through its exuberance. Closer Memory Train is elegiac to begin with. Memory is personified, whilst electronic melody gives way to overlapping voices until only one remains. This summarises the album well – interiority as conveyed through sonic expression.

In the Freudian sense, dreams are the manifestation of our unconscious thoughts. The group takes this and pushes it further through their experimental concept. Gongbu is an ambitious, multimedia project that successfully explores both the human condition and the pathologising of it.