Korea Undok Group – Quarto

Korea Undok Group is a mysterious artist and label hailing from Winnipeg up here in Canada. There isn’t much information to be found online regarding who is involved, yet their first batch arrived earlier in the year, a pair of tapes one courtesy of the eponymous outfit and another from the equally enigmatic Sargasso Sea. Uncanny origins aside, the label’s visual aesthetic is somewhat akin to that of Christopher Riggs’ now defunct Holy Cheever Church label, so what’s not to love? Quarto features a quartet of minimal piano melodies slathered with gauzy tape loops and barely there synthesizer grumbling. The music is brooding and rife with elements of decay and abjection. Apparently influenced by Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa’s Letters of Fontainhas trilogy, which focused on the lives of marginalized slum dwellers from the outskirts of Lisbon, the warbling piano tones and corroded loops of Korea Undok Group themselves engender feelings of loneliness and despair, with a faint strain of hope peeking through the void.

You’ll have to email the label directly to get your hands on this degraded spool of ferrous plastic, but the quest is certainly one worth undertaking.