Dal:Um - Similar & Different (Sealed) (CD)

Two musicians. Two weighty acoustic stringed instruments. A dialogue between traditional and experimental practices. A melding of both new possibilities and deeply travelled resonances. Dal:um was founded in 2018 by Ha Suyean ('gayageum') and Hwang Hyeyoung ('geomungo'). Suyean notes that they first met "as members of Seoul Metropolitan Youth Traditional Music Ensemble which we still are in. We both had been pondering and exploring the possibilities of our respective string instruments, and that led us to come together as a team." While both Suyean and Hyeyoung had been performing Korean traditional music since their childhoods, upon meeting they discovered a shared desire to extend the techniques and boundaries of their instruments and to develop their own distinctive repertoire. The music of Dal:um is the result. "Dal:um's music comes from 'emptiness'" says Hyeyoung. "We've been working to create a balance between the original sound of silk strings and the beauty of emptiness. It's easy to get obsessed with filling blank spaces when one wants to express something, so we always try not to fill things in rashly. We are focusing on the beauty of the pure sounds and tones of the 'gayageum 'and 'geomungo 'in order to change 'blankness' into a space of anticipation." Suyean continues the thought: "the charm of Dal:um's music comes from its natural gaps, not the hasty filling in of musical notes. The charm comes from conveying the sentiments inside these gaps." Dal:um's beautifully balanced and expansive music is defined by inspired dialogue and creative paradox