Ki Oni – “Reincarnation At The End Of The World”
One of my very, very favorite ambient artists, Chuck Soo-Hoo, aka Ki Oni, is announcing the release of a new record, A Leisurely Swim To Everlasting Life, out August 25th on AKP Recordings. I cannot wait to listen as Chuck’s music is always evocative, illustrative, and healing.
A Leisurely Swim To Everlasting Life is the forthcoming album from ambient artist Chuck Soo-Hoo under his Ki Oni moniker. Building upon the aesthetics established on 2021’s Stay Indoors And Swim, and with a more intentional focus on listening, A Leisurely Swim To Everlasting Life serves as a mediation on the relationship between sound and its environment. It is Soo-Hoo’s first foray into writing about death.
A Leisurely Swim was inspired by childhood memories of Soo-Hoo’s grandmother and summers spent swimming and eating from her garden, and the idea of a spirit floating into the afterlife. Shimmering microtones produce a serene means for expressing this abstraction. “I wanted to give tribute to my grandmother who sadly passed away earlier this year,” Soo-Hoo says. “In Chinese traditions, family and friends of a recent deceased would leave their light on for several days to help guide the spirit home to say their last goodbyes to their loved ones before they fully move on to the afterlife.”
Sharing textural elements with Olive Ardizoni’s Green-House project, and the glimmering ambience of the work of H. Takahashi, A Leisurely Swim To Everlasting Life ascends to a meditative drone. Fans of KMRU will find much to love in these heady, elongated jams which are imbued with a sense of elevation, upward and forward motion. This and the sense of effervescence in Soo-Hoo’s flowing compositions feel remarkably consistent with the conceptual inspiration, as though we were hearing the sound of a soul traveling over the Earth or through liminal spaces between light and time.
