Reviewed: 03/07/2020

박 혜진 Park Hye Jin returns with her second EP, another strong showing of Deep House that is just fun to vibe and chill with.

South Korean artist Park Hye Jin may have taken two years since her debut EP to release her latest project, but there are clear signs of improvement and development from the rapper, producer and musician.

This is a generally cohesive project that starts off with energy thanks to the tracks Like This and Can you. Like This has the soft cascading of a glockenspiel worked into the dreamy landscape of the song, with echoing sound effects creating a dream-like status.

The percussion sweeps us firmly into the stylings of the genre, whilst retaining that spacious and calming vibe.

Can you is similarly spacious in sound and feel, but has a more repetitive vocal to serve as the backbone of the song. It certainly has the most club-hit feel to it, but again there’s that floating feeling to the general sound of the track.

Throughout the switching between Korean and English is done seamlessly and without fuss, with the two languages effectively used as tools, catered to the music.

The titular track adds a more rigid hip-hop-esque beat to another roomy instrumental, with the lyrics delivered in a drone-like state.

NO completely diverts from the cohesive sound the opening trio of tracks fostered, with layers of different percussion at the start. The genre of house is hidden behind the layers of repetition, which dominate even after the softly-spoken vocals kick in almost a quarter of the way through the song.

It borders on monotonous, but the subtle changes throughout keep it just fresh enough.

How Come incorporates some of those similar percussion instruments, slowly layering them and upping the tempo in a more directed effort.

The closing track Beautiful has a slight elevator-music vibe to it, with washed-out vocals and gentle, calming instruments starting off in the background.

Towards the end of the project I kinda get the impression of ideas being stretched beyond their natural conclusion, but overall I haven’t got any major complaints of it being drawn out too long. The back half of the EP does rely on the instrumentals far more than the opening three tracks, and whilst I would have liked to have heard more vocals or samples, it comes with the territory of the genre.

Overall well worth 20 minutes of your time.

Track Listing

• Like This (B+)
• Can You (B)
• How Can I (B+)
• NO (B+)
• How Come (B)
• Beautiful (C+)