‘Doff’ by Will August Park
‘Doff’ by Will August Park
In 2023, pianist and composer Will August Park and electronic musician J. Albert—two transplants to NYC from sunnier climes—convened on record with Flat Earth. That collaboration was mellow in the way of cool jazz; it was also unsettling in the way that the modern world can suddenly atomize anyone’s mellowness.
With Doff, his first solo full-length, Park is less unsettled and more ruminative, his fingers moving over the piano keys as though they’re drumming the surface of a table while he observes, ponders, and plans.
Those ruminations are neither too drawn-out—“Annuum,” the longest track here, is one second shy of the four-minute mark—nor too unvarying—that aforementioned longest track features limpid playing and a saxophone that could be a half-mile distant, and the shortest track, “Sea People,” lets darker chords resonate longer against curious squibs of synthesizer.
As a pianist, Park tends toward pensive economy, as if he’s consciously limited the number of notes he can play per song. He always caresses, never attacks, the keys, and he places the overt melodicism of the instrument over its implied rhythmic possibilities.
For more pointed rhythms, he explores compositional methods via lingering reminders of elements from Flat Earth: distant knocks and staccato atmospherics on “Nocturnal,” callbacks to 1990s drum and bass in “Daly,” and after-hours club beats and amped Nintendo chirps punching into “Last Life.”
Park’s compositional side comes out more in “Denial Creation,” a track on which he eschews the piano and instead builds a soundscape from deep and minimal bass, string plucks suggestive of Japanese folk music, and a calmer version of the keening from the recent “Dune” movies.
Often coming across as a series of moods, Doff also presents Will August Park as an artiste easily able to exist among eras and genres. For his next solo album, he could go fully electronic or unlock his idea of bebop. He could unsettle or soothe. Or do all those things.
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Stream or download Doff at Amazon here.
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