Lee: Continuous Deformation

Yongbom Lee's music is characterized by continuous streams of sound and a finely balanced interplay of instrumental and electronic sounds. Shaped by his intercultural biography, Lee is particularly interested in the interfaces and distances between contrasting things—such as between the foreign and the familiar, or between the conscious and the unconscious. Building on this, booklet author Leonie Reineke explains: "A concept focused on liminal spaces is also the ambiguity that runs through all the compositions on the album. States of suspension, associative developments like in a dream, and musical situations in which everything can develop from everything else occur again and again."

Thus, the work "Imaginary Rooms," performed by Ensemble Recherche, moves between a progressive narrative and fragmentary snapshots. In "Dépaysement," the composer also explores the coexistence of contradictory concepts: The first movement grants the musicians of the Broken Frames Syndicate improvisational freedom, while the second movement is strictly traditionally notated. The title work "Continuous Deformation" for cello (Kyubin Hwang) and live electronics (Yongbom Lee) reflects Lee's engagement with neuroscience. Here, the generation of sound and the musician's electrical brain activity are connected, leading the listeners through overtone landscapes.