Park’s one of the most compelling, noisy, and simultaneously humorous and challenging guitarists around…. Jones and Thomas are wonderfully simpatico…. This is just a radically exciting album…. [Read the rest…]
The music is challenging… visceral with confronting rhythms and keys that merge… creating a sense of clashing ideas, yet a willingness also to (eventually) end up on the same musical path. [Read the rest…]
For once, this is non-idiomatic music worthy of being called such, only loosely tethered to traditions and so confounding and strange that simply listening to it makes you feel alive. [Read the rest…]
I’ve said that, while I was mixing the album, I came to “realize this unapologetically unrefined music was probably unreleasable, but I also came to love it more for being delicate as a slab of granite.” I’m very happy that listeners worked hard to prove me wrong on whether the album would find its audience.
I’m honored to have worked with Lara and Pat on this album (you will not find a nicer bunch of trouble-makers), and very proud of the noise we achieved.
The above is a behind-the-scenes mix breakdown. If you just want to listen to music (and who could blame you), please check out the original (video and album track).
Are you still here? Okay, Juno 3: Proxemics was mixed into multiple buses (including parallel processing of ‘melodics’ and ‘environmentals,’ for example) before hitting the master bus. One of those buses was fed a mix of the bass signals from each performer. How the bass was separated, in each case, was somewhat different depending on the nature of the electronics, for example, or the instrument (e.g. clean v. fuzz guitar).
Folk have asked me about my mix strategies in approaching experimental and improvised musics, and here’s a little window into how I approached some of the problematics (I mean that in a positive, creative sense) in this one. I’ve said that, in regards to Proxemics, there’s a different album that lives in parallel, and that’s partly because there’s separate mix (with its own automation and processing) in the bass/subs.
Track listing: Derealization I (4:07), Derealization II (4:57), Derealization III (3:52), Derealization IV (6:19), Derealization V (5:55), Derealization VI (3:47), Proxemics I (5:05), Proxemics II (3:54), Proxemics III (6:10), Proxemics IV (7:15), Proxemics V (6:10), Proxemics VI: Rumble (5:13). Total duration: 62:44.
I’ve approached recordings and performance as very different animals. One way this lack of interest in ‘vérité’ manifests is in how I’ve been mixing recordings of my guitar playing; sending the guitar signal through a crossover, and processing the high and low frequency components separately, feeding them into separate cab sims, et cetera. I’ve also recently performed compositions by Carina Khorkhordina, and by Camila Nebbia, that involved multiple guitar and bass amplifiers. And this got me thinking about multi-amp setups, and practical (low component-count, portable, pedal-board friendly) ways to do this kind of dual-band processing.
So the above is a test; trying to figure out whether something like a simple crossover, coupled with, say, an analog octaver, might do the job in a live situation. (This test video is based around the recording from back in May, so if you want to listen to the music without the audio tinkering, please check out the original video.)
I’m happy to announce that, following a delay at the factory, I am now shipping the companion cassette tape to Proxemics (BAF003). It’s super limited edition, and the recording on cassette presents an, I think, fascinating, alternative perspective to the music of the album.
“So confounding and strange that simply listening to it makes you feel alive.”
Please note that this cassette release does not duplicate the digital album, but offers a complement to it. In contrast to the digital download album, the cassette album is the room mic recording of the second set only (corresponding to ‘Proxemics I–VI’). The cassette presents a vérité, ‘bootleg’-vibe documentation of the performance as heard by the audience on the night.
Thanks so, so much to everyone who ordered the tape—I truly appreciate your support, patience and understanding. I’m excited for you to hear the noise on tape!
Track listing: Orbital Dusk I (6:04), Orbital Dusk II (4:20), Orbital Dusk III (2:29), Orbital Dusk IV (6:03), Diel Vertical Migration I (6:31), Diel Vertical Migration II (4:38), Diel Vertical Migration III (4:33), Diel Vertical Migration IV (7:36), Metastability (7:24). Total duration: 49:36.
I love, love, love this recording, and the camaraderie of the artists (and helpers and supporters behind-the-scenes) involved in its making. If the trio’s first performance in the spring of 2022, caught between lockdowns and post-pandemic ‘normality,’ was about that strange sense of cautious relief and optimism, then this later performance was something altogether more strident, brash, at times harsh and ugly, confrontational and combative. What I hear is Lara punching you unremittingly in the mid-rage gut; Pat throwing down beats of glitchy robotic wasps, and of impossible danceability; and my struggles with an unfamiliar guitar (a silver rocker) that wants to make it all a little too easy.
During the mix, I came to realize this unapologetically unrefined music was probably unreleasable, but I also came to love it more for being delicate as a slab of granite. Listen to it, and think of us. Enjoy. [Read the rest…]
Download the album, and revel in those buzzing, ugly fusions, microsurround pops and spikes, and queasily in tune warbles and waves.
Download: €8.
Cassette tape* plus download: €12 plus shipping.
Note on the cassette tape
* The cassette tape release does not duplicate the digital album, but offers a complement to it. In contrast to the digital download album, the cassette album is the room mic recording of the second set only (corresponding to ‘Proxemics I–VI’). The cassette presents a vérité, ‘bootleg’-vibe documentation of the performance as heard by the audience on the night.
Funded by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Community.
Track listing: Orbital Dusk I (6:04), Orbital Dusk II (4:20), Orbital Dusk III (2:29), Orbital Dusk IV (6:03), Diel Vertical Migration I (6:31), Diel Vertical Migration II (4:38), Diel Vertical Migration III (4:33), Diel Vertical Migration IV (7:36), Metastability (7:24). Total duration: 49:36.
Proxemics (BAF003), Juno 3’s latest album is out now! with the digital download available as of January 15, 2025, and the companion cassette tape* shipping as of March 21. Masterminded by Berlin-based Korean-American improviser and guitarist Han-earl Park, Juno 3 is his trio with London-based experimental producer, saxophonist and sound artist Lara Jones, and boundless experimentalist and pioneer of electroacoustics in free improvisation, Pat Thomas. Recorded at Cafe OTO, Proxemics (BAF003) captures the trio’s performance as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival’s outer left field.
I love, love, love this recording, and the camaraderie of the artists (and helpers and supporters behind-the-scenes) involved in its making. If the trio’s first performance in the spring of 2022, caught between lockdowns and post-pandemic ‘normality,’ was about that strange sense of cautious relief and optimism, then this later performance was something altogether more strident, brash, at times harsh and ugly, confrontational and combative. What I hear is Lara punching you unremittingly in the mid-rage gut; Pat throwing down beats of glitchy robotic wasps, and of impossible danceability; and my struggles with an unfamiliar guitar (a silver rocker) that wants to make it all a little too easy.
During the mix, I came to realize this unapologetically unrefined music was probably unreleasable, but I also came to love it more for being delicate as a slab of granite. Listen to it, and think of us. Enjoy.
These spiky yet nuanced confrontations have their own profound logic, relying on messy, punchy, and unsettling conversational interplay that avoid comforting veins and familiar dynamics and transform it into compelling interplay that offers a subversive, resistant kind of empathy and compassion.
Masterminded by Berlin-based Korean-American improviser and guitarist Han-earl Park, Juno 3 is his trio with London-based experimental producer, saxophonist, and sound artist Lara Jones, and boundless experimentalist and pioneer of electroacoustics in free improvisation, Pat Thomas. Recorded at Cafe OTO, Proxemics (BAF003) captures the trio’s performance as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival’s outer left field. Proxemics is the follow-up to the eponymous Juno 3 (RAM-163CD, 2023) described as having “wonderful energy, constant motion, and roiling in noise. And immense amount of grit and power” (Corey Mwamba, Freeness, BBC Radio 3).
Elastic, doxastic collisions—
hold two thoughts, both true.
The music was recorded with efficiency (and with a boldly creative live-mix) by Kevin Shoemaker, and mixed and mastered for release by Han-earl Park. If the trio’s previous album was an expansive and joyous flow of intergalactic urban transit, then Proxemics is altogether something more prickly, difficult, and at peace with its confrontational nature.
Recommended reading: N. K. Jemisin. The City We Became (Orbit, 2020).
Derealization I (4:07), Derealization II (4:57), Derealization III (3:52), Derealization IV (6:19), Derealization V (5:55), Derealization VI (3:47), Proxemics I (5:05), Proxemics II (3:54), Proxemics III (6:10), Proxemics IV (7:15), Proxemics V (6:10), Proxemics VI: Rumble (5:13). Total duration: 62:44.
Cassette tape: Proxemics A (18:11), Proxemics B (17:27). Total duration: 35:37.*
Recorded live November 13, 2023, Cafe OTO, London.
Recorded/live mix by Kevin Shoemaker. Mixed and mastered by Han-earl Park.
Design and artwork by Han-earl Park.
Funded by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Community.
Note on the cassette tape
* The cassette tape release does not duplicate the digital album, but offers a complement to it. In contrast to the digital download album, the cassette album is the room mic recording of the second set only (corresponding to ‘Proxemics I–VI’). The cassette presents a vérité, ‘bootleg’-vibe documentation of the performance as heard by the audience on the night.
Track listing: Orbital Dusk I (6:04), Orbital Dusk II (4:20), Orbital Dusk III (2:29), Orbital Dusk IV (6:03), Diel Vertical Migration I (6:31), Diel Vertical Migration II (4:38), Diel Vertical Migration III (4:33), Diel Vertical Migration IV (7:36), Metastability (7:24). Total duration: 49:36.
03-21-25: cassette tape begins shipping. 01-15-25: released! 01-06-25: add video playlist. 02-06-25: added reviews. 02-15-25: cassette delivery delayed. If you’ve already ordered the tape, you should have got an email from me about the delay. If not, please drop me a message. 01-01-26: more reviews.
Coming soon! Proxemics (BAF003), the new album by Juno 3 (Han-earl Park, Lara Jones and Pat Thomas). Proxemics (BAF003) will be available as a full-length, digital download album, and a limited edition companion cassette tape.
The music is strident, brash, at times harsh and ugly, confrontational and combative—it’s unlike anything else I’ve been a part of—and I’m very excited to share it with you, and very, very curious to know what you make of it. More soon!
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Thanks to On Yee Lo, Fielding Hope and everyone at Cafe OTO, Wesley Stephenson of Jazz North East, Corey Mwamba of Out Front! and a very special thanks to Alex Ward for the loan of his guitar. The performance was presented as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival, and with funding from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Community.
Funded by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Community.
Track listing: Orbital Dusk I (6:04), Orbital Dusk II (4:20), Orbital Dusk III (2:29), Orbital Dusk IV (6:03), Diel Vertical Migration I (6:31), Diel Vertical Migration II (4:38), Diel Vertical Migration III (4:33), Diel Vertical Migration IV (7:36), Metastability (7:24). Total duration: 49:36.
I’m very happy to have contributed to Cath Roberts’ Setlist zine. As Cath announces:
The third installment of my Setlist zine project is out today! For Setlist 3 I asked four of my favourite artists from the improvised/experimental music world to send me a question. As before, the texts are intended as starting points for improvisation, and I love what people came up with! [Read the rest…]
Guitare du jour. (Thanks to Anton Hunter, Cafe OTO and Alex Ward.)
Thanks so much to everyone behind-the-scenes who made the music happen. Thanks so much to Wesley Stephenson and Charles McGovern at Jazz North East, and to everyone at The Globe. Thanks to Fielding Hope at Cafe OTO for again hosting Juno 3, and my warmest thanks to the awesome, awesome people working at OTO on the night who helped us navigate the Jazz Festival crowd (if you were there, you’ll know what I mean), and to Kevin Shoemaker who exercised his creativity behind the desk. And thanks to Ian Perry, Richard Belfitt, Jonny Hill and everyone at OUT FRONT! and at Déda, and thanks so, so much to the smart, creative and tenacious Corey Mwamba—always a pleasure to play Derby!
A 100% sincere ‘boo’ to the airline who sent my guitar to the wrong airport, but an equally sincere thanks to the guitarists who generously lent me their instruments for a night each in Newcastle, London and Derby: to Alex Ward (rock’n’roll!), and to Anton Hunter (you can take the Tele out of Nashville, but you can’t take the Nashville out of a Tele).
Finally, thanks so much to the musicians who joined me on stage: to Heather Roche and Anton Hunter for the chirps, slaps, snaps, twangs, slides, honks, skronks and growls. And to the amazing Lara Jones and awe-inspiring Pat Thomas—yeah, how about that moment from the second OTO set!—I look forward to many more noisy adventures in the future.
Funded by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Community.
Track listing: Orbital Dusk I (6:04), Orbital Dusk II (4:20), Orbital Dusk III (2:29), Orbital Dusk IV (6:03), Diel Vertical Migration I (6:31), Diel Vertical Migration II (4:38), Diel Vertical Migration III (4:33), Diel Vertical Migration IV (7:36), Metastability (7:24). Total duration: 49:36.
Juno 3 is Han-earl Park (guitar), Lara Jones (saxophone and electronics) and Pat Thomas (electronics). Captivating, gripping and fascinating, Juno 3’s music is a particle sim of sounds which spelunks from derelict urban ravines to cybernetic rainforests, while catching auditory glimpses of crashing robotic waves, and strange telegraphic messages from space.
Nautiloid capsule tumbles
across field lines.
An impracticably agile,
graceful derailment.
As Corey Mwambasaid on Freeness about our music, “wonderful energy, constant motion, and roiling in noise. And immense amount of grit and power.” I can honestly say this trio sounds like nothing out there.
Track listing: Orbital Dusk I (6:04), Orbital Dusk II (4:20), Orbital Dusk III (2:29), Orbital Dusk IV (6:03), Diel Vertical Migration I (6:31), Diel Vertical Migration II (4:38), Diel Vertical Migration III (4:33), Diel Vertical Migration IV (7:36), Metastability (7:24). Total duration: 49:36.
The music on this album transports me to scenes from retro-scifi stories to those of present-day mass transit. It is, to my ears, the sounds of junction crossings, signals from space, and mysterious telegraphy; sometimes evoking impressions of walking by streams under footbridges, at others, of rushing through Manhattan Chinatown. Recorded live at Cafe OTO during the trio’s first meeting, we knew then that we had something special.
I think the sounds and the performances on this disc are all ’round captivating, gripping and fascinating, and the production work, exceptional. Take the journey with us: I’m super proud of the music, and I am thrilled to finally share this with you!
Get ready for the latest release of challenging and imaginative music from Ramble Records with Juno 3, the debut album from the trio of Han-earl Park, Lara Jones and Pat Thomas. Recorded by Shaun Crook live at Cafe OTO, London, and mixed (refracted and rephrased) by Han-earl Park, the album is a particle sim of sounds which spelunks from derelict urban ravines to cybernetic rainforests, while catching auditory glimpses of crashing robotic waves, and strange telegraphic messages from space.
Nautiloid capsule tumbles
across field lines.
An impracticably agile,
graceful derailment.
Juno 3 is Han-earl Park (guitar), Lara Jones (saxophone and electronics) and Pat Thomas (electronics). The eponymous album document the first meeting—interactive, relational—by this trio as it takes a journey: launching from the familiar of the Hackney club space into future imagined By Others. We coax it into our space.
Motion and motifs. (Switching gears, shedding engines.) Modes of transport change from first principles: future-past transit networks give way to bioengineered surfboards.
Bodies collide, unwind, and we’re up again. Reaching crossings; navigating junctions.
Intermodal is the only game we know. Networks (and bodies and vessels) weave, twist, cross then interweave, intertwist and intercross. (We, nocturnal monstrous shapes, turn and return to the deep.)
And, as the album comes to a close (thump’n’snap—bodies unwind), we find ourselves awakened back in the familiar club space. Or: half familiar. The same chairs, the same tables, the same staff. But not the same chair, not the same table, not the same staff.
Orbital Dusk I (6:04), Orbital Dusk II (4:20), Orbital Dusk III (2:29), Orbital Dusk IV (6:03), Diel Vertical Migration I (6:31), Diel Vertical Migration II (4:38), Diel Vertical Migration III (4:33), Diel Vertical Migration IV (7:36), Metastability (7:24). Total duration: 49:36.
Recorded live March 20, 2022, Cafe OTO, London.
Recorded by Shaun Crook.
Mixed by Han-earl Park. Mastered by Chris Sharkey.
Art by Han-earl Park. Design by Atharwa Deshingkar.
Thanks to Richard Barrett, Heather Frasch and Richard Scott; to Fielding Hope and everyone at Cafe OTO, Laura Cole and everyone at Fusebox, Wesley Stephenson of Jazz North East, and Peter O’Doherty of Northern Lights Project. Shoutouts to Corey Mwamba, Graeme Wilson, rit. and Una Lee. The performance was presented with funding from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
