♫♪  공중도둑 (Mid-Air Thief) - 무너지기

Summer Soul, who provides vocals on 공중도둑's 무너지기

South Korea’s 공중도둑, or Mid-Air Thief, specializes in the kind of autumn vibes that all of us in the northern hemisphere are craving hard. So it may be a good thing that 무너지기 (Crumbling) took a little while to make its way out of Seoul. It’s hard to tell exactly where the buzz came from, but at some point in late August, this broke into the top 25 rankings for 2018 on RYM, whose lists are always full of left-field gems.

Outside of progressive metal and a certain subset of experimental rap, there isn’t much that holds the community’s taste together, so when an album as tough to pin down as Crumbling unites the site’s users, it’s a testament to the strength of the music, its translatability across borders. And that’s an apt way to talk about Crumbling, which takes everything rustic you loved about Grizzly Bear’s Yellow House and peppers it with arpeggiating synths and childlike melodies (with help from vocalist Summer Soul). It is, much like its spiritual predecessor, alternately chillaxed and maximalist, calming and rousing.

Much as the music, everything about Mid-Air Thief oozes humility and privacy. There seems to have been no press push for this stuff outside of Korea. The artist has, consciously or not, resisted posting any photos. Most endearingly, the liner notes on Bandcamp include a passage that Google translates as: “I can master it with a cassette, and it sounds a bit strange, but it sounds good to my ears. Sidie is going to sell it at [Gimbab Records]. Have a nice day!”

Thankfully, this nice music made by this nice person (/nice people) has made it far beyond Gimbab Records. Stream Crumbling below, and click through to buy it on Bandcamp if you dig it.

Chocolate Grinder

CHOCOLATE GRINDER is our audio/visual section, with an emphasis on the lesser heard and lesser known. We aim to dig deep, but we’ll post any song or video we find interesting, big or small.

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