Jim Kimchi – Space Container [Detroit Underground]

Jim Kimchi‘s Space Container feels almost post transhumanist in its rejection of any sort of “instrument” sounds, anything remotely human in this album feels foreign, it’s as if we are discovering music from an ai’s perspective. First comes noise, then refinement, sculpting, shaping; everything feels like it’s been carved out of a solid crystal of noise. Each tone and harmonic lovingly carved from the crystal and brought into life. We can almost hear the noise fighting back but Jim Kimchi somehow manages to not only control it, but bring a whole album out of it.

The journey begins when we awaken as an AI in a simulated reality. We skip abruptly through the fragmented memory of something visceral, human, but distant and long since corrupted. We begin to remember what music is, what it’s for, what it means. We begin to find the pieces of what we were. What it meant to feel. And then we’re thrown into an error – frozen until whatever god made us finds enough mercy to end task.

The best of this album is how very few of the sounds are themselves, the “drum kit” here is made of sounds that are similar enough to kicks and snares to stand in for them but they really are not those sounds.

Release date: April 5th, 2022.