ALBUM REVIEW: Private Collection – Karin Park
KARIN PARK has always been a captivating performer. With her stellar vocals and insightful writing, she’s been a consistently underappreciated artist through her career. Having reimagined her music from over 20 years of work, Private Collection is a delight for those new to her, and those who already have been captivated by her musical tone and voice.
Tranquillity and smouldering passion collide here in Private Collection. There’s a sense of danger to the sombre tone of this record, and any long adoring fans will revel in the stripped back approach to this record. Bending Albert’s Law, with its sincere delivery, its pained and lonely calling out to the universe for solace and wholeness again, is beautiful. The synths that hang low and gentle are soft and unintrusive. It’s indicative of the album’s name that all the tracks should feel so intimate; being able to peek into the more vulnerable versions of these songs feels like being shown a secret by a dear friend.
It’s a little reductive to compare KARIN PARK to the likes of DAVID BOWIE, BJORK and KATE BUSH, but there’s a raw talent to her voice and music that is in parallel to these artists – an unbridled passion that can’t be contained. While her music is very different to the aforementioned, there’s a triumph in her strength that is just as captivating as more well-known musicians. It’s honestly a travesty that KARIN PARK isn’t better known internationally,
While these songs span Park‘s entire career, they all feel interlinked and realised in the same way for Private Collection. Tokyo By Night takes on a new feeling altogether from its original form, as does Glasshouse. Both are dreamlike, alien and yet inviting. These fresh versions of Park‘s work are both memories, and a new memory of where she is right now as a person and an artist. Shine is beautifully understated, while Give is such a wonderfully powerful song you might catch yourself holding your breath.
The album was recorded in Park‘s converted church studio, a place she visited in her youth when it was still used for its original purpose. Once again, that connection to personal places, feelings and memories is strengthened in the here and now of this recording. The cavernous recording space captures something between time and space; an ethereal and untethered spirit that echoes through its walls and into your ears. Look What You’ve Done maintains the dark discontented nature of the original, but takes what once was industrial and somewhat aggressive and changes it into something creepier and more silently menacing.
Private Collection manages to take all these facets of who KARIN PARK has been and is, and make them into a contemporary record that feels fresh. This reimagined set of songs, while maintaining the alien darkness of Park‘s sound, captures the familiar and inviting emotional heart of her whole body of work.
Rating: 8/10
Private Collection set for release on October 7th via Pelagic Records.
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