The artistic partnership that led Park Sumin and Kim Minwoo to join forces and start a dynamic funk-pop project a few years ago led the couple to achieve results that had only been glimpsed up to that point, illustrating with “Miniseries” a path to song pop from which many projects mainstream Koreans could benefit greatly. There is no changing a winning team, and after a few years of solo releases and credits in other people's songs (Aespa, Red Velvet, Lim Kim among many), the 2021 miniseries is accompanied by a second chapter, with which to reiterate all the love for groove quick and compact melodies.
Even more dense and short than its older brother, the album deals with the eternal theme of separation and the conclusion of a love, deepening the r&b vein that had already been an integral part of the previous album, but above all heading towards the seductive Brazilian shores. In this way we obtain a listening experience that does not give up the rhythm and the dance style, but imbues them with greater humoral subtlety, highlighting the bitter-sweet traits of a necessarily unpleasant theme, but endowed with the right vigor to find in the pain and in melancholy new opportunities.
The sparkling ones patterns house that connect the duo's work to the fine acid-jazz textures of their compatriots Roller Coaster make “Why, Why, Why” an immediate standout passage in the album, a suffused dance prism to which the snappy electric funky of “Tic Toc Tic Toc”, on which Park appears almost amused as she marks the fatal countdown.
Between and around them, they slide like butter inspired midtempo bossa-nova, lightly tinged with delicate orchestrations (“Just A Breakup”), interludes with vague aromas jazzy (“Sorry”), irresistible folktronic delicacies, seasoned with light space-age moods (the irrepressible pathos that surrounds “Goodbye”).
The story does not fail to show off all its implications, from the sad sleepless nights (the moody city-pop of “Endless Night”, all bass and interpretation) to the sudden bursts of pride (the vital funktronica wing Dâm-Funk of “None Of Your Business”), the reflections that tangle the brain in loops with no exit (the spacious r&b of “…I Think”) passing through the awareness of a chapter definitively concluded, with all the strangeness and sense of rebirth that this can entail (the Clazziquai Project via Towa Tei in the gloss sambass of “Stoplight”).
Perhaps the melodic impetus that made the first chapter the funky triumph that it was is missing, however the charm of a sound and a compositional touch that make the SUMIN/Slom couple among the closest and best equipped on the current Korean pop scene. Who knows if a third installation will arrive to further broaden the field of action.
10/13/2024
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
