Bela - Noise and Cries 굉음과 울음
Bela, a musician and performance artist based in Seoul and Berlin, mines their musical influence from Korean folk music and club culture. Bela’s performative style through an ictus of growling poetic stance over electronic rhythms is a reclamation of ‘queer’ art and expression and their latent anxieties in communication breakdown. Co-released by Unsound and Subtext, their latest LP, Bela Noise and Cries, takes elements of death metal, Berlin club culture, and Pungmul—a traditional Korean form of folk music that finds its roots in agricultural festivals serving as rituals to implore the divine for good harvest and communal solidarity. Captivating in its ethereal spectrum, yet grounded by its industrialized experimentation of sounds from post-punk, electronic, and elements of classical (Eurocentric), Bela Noise and Cries is a confessional, sonic diary that traverses a transformative melancholy on the fading transference of identity and self-actualization.