At 73, South Korea’s Shin Joong Hyun has released his first collection outside his homeland.
Approaching their 10th anniversary having amassed an indisputable armoury of quality reissues that span everything from psychedelic rock and folk to reggae, funk and soul, alongside sporadic current releases, Seattle’s Light in the Attic label hasn’t put a foot wrong in recent times.
Although it may not have the intense focus of contemporaries such as Chicago’s exemplary Numero Group, or On-U Sound’s unimpeachable Pressure Sounds imprint, the passion and standards are equally high, and its free-range approach has served up some real surprises and worthwhile curios.
Beautiful Rivers and Mountains, from South Korean guitarist, songwriter and producer Shin Joong Hyun is just such a revelation, featuring tracks that would have previously only been the province of very high-level record collectors and crate diggers. The complete veracity of Shin’s fantastical and tragic story recounted in the sleeve notes is questionable, but the music, progressing from late-50s twangstrumentals to Hendrixy blowouts and gritty breakbeat funk, is fully authentic.
Shin studied the styles he could hear by tuning into American Armed Forces stations on a homemade radio, and eventually graduated to play at American military bases. He was perfectly positioned to reprocess Korean pop songs and traditional melodies into the developing styles of rock’n’roll.
Light in the Attic has cherry- picked Shin’s best material, ranging from work with individual vocalists like the impressive and sultry Kim Jung Mi and the psychedelic songcraft of Jang Hyun to more pop-orientated groups like the Bunny Girls and Golden Grapes, alongside gloriously indulgent instrumentals including the 15-minute sprawl “J” Blues 72. Arguably the most significant contribution is the patriotic pledge Beautiful Rivers and Mountains, a 10-minute opus that Shin composed in protest after receiving the hard word in 1972 that he should be writing songs praising dictator Park Chung-hee and his Republican Party. Inevitably, his records soon became banned items, and after being arrested for possession of marijuana in 1975 Shin endured torture and tough times locked up in prison and psychiatric hospitals.
Although Chung-hee’s assassination in 1979 considerably bettered Shin’s lot, his career never regained its early momentum or the astounding trajectory it enjoyed through the 60s and early 70s. With this, his first collection to be released outside Korea, and further volumes already in the works, the 73-year-old guitarist – one of only six to ever receive a Custom Shop Tribute Series guitar from Fender – is finally getting the wider acclaim he so richly deserves.
BEAUTIFUL RIVERS AND MOUNTAINS, Shin Joong Hyun (Light in the Attic/ Southbound).