Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2011 October 14 • Friday

A few months ago we were hanging out with two of our neighbors, a Korean couple about a generation older than us. They told me about Shin Joong Hyun, whose music they had grown up with. I'd never heard of him but he sounded really interesting. They told me he was a self-taught guitarist and a genius.

Good timing. A day or two after this conversation, I found out that this Shin Joong Hyun compilation, Beautiful Rivers and Mountains: The Psychedelic Rock Sound of South Korea's Shin Joong Hyun, would be released on CD on September 6! (It came out on vinyl a little earlier.)

Shin's amazing life story gets the wikipedia treatment here but is recounted in greater detail in the liner notes. "Beautiful Rivers and Mountains" is the song that got him in trouble with the government.

Shin also offers his personal notes on each song. So we learn, for instance, that the first song here, "Moon Watching" (1958), was recorded at "probably the only recording studio in Korea. In addition, the studio was set up in someone's living room".

"Please Don't Bother Me Anymore" was written for orphans that Shin took care of after the Pearl Buck Foundation closed. It features a great guitar solo and some killer organ playing.

"The Man Who Must Leave" has a weird, spacey, off-kilter vibe, like a warped recording of "96 Tears" played at the wrong speed. Shin's guitar playing is again very exciting and has an especially vicious tone.

"The Sun" is a beautiful, gentle melodic song with vocals by Kim Jung Mi. Shin says that she was the only singer who stuck with him after he became an unofficial enemy of the state in 1972.

Other highlights are "'J' Blues 72", a fifteen-minute improvised instrumental piece for drums, bass, organ and guitar, and of course the title track, "Beautiful Rivers and Mountains", ten-minute miniature pop symphony.

This came about when Shin was asked to write a song in praise of then-president of South Korea, Park Chung Hee. Shin refused and wrote this song instead, which praises Korea itself, not its leaders. This meant trouble for Shin.

In 2009 Shin became the sixth musician in the world to receive a Fender Tribute guitar.