Mid-Air Thief

South Korean singer-songwriter and producer musician Shin Jung Woo recorded Gongjoong Doduk (2015) under the moniker Gongjoongdoduk, a collection of lethargic guitar-based songs characterized by rhythm and counterpoint that don't quite seem to match the melody, and often interrupted by digital noise. The post-rock lullabies White Room and Parasol are relatively focused, but Seismic swings from laid-back country meditation to gallopping violin-driven bluegrass breakdown, Woo trots around jovial and loose until it detonates in pure noise, the dreamy and jazzy Swamp feels like a remixed bossanova, and the seven-minute The Knot glides over Beach Boys-esque vocal harmonies and suddenly soars into a sort of garage rave-up. All the songs have an element of dissonance and discordance.

He changed name to Mid-Air Thief for Crumbling (2018) even more intricate folktronica dirges like Ahhhh These Chains, whose electroacoustic orchestration changes every moment, Protector, a psychedelic swoon with convoluted vocal harmonies, and Dirt, a more jarring and louder jam that ends in another psychedelic trance after a false orchestral upbeat intermezzo. The nine-minute Crumbling Together begins like a church hymn, turns into a suicidal lament, embraces a Brazilian beat at the same time that it hints at Indian ragas, becomes a delirious invocation and fades away in a sputtering of guitar strumming. The more rhythmic and danceable Gameun Deut in which percussion plays a key role. Elsewhere it is mostly decoration and often missing in action.