파란노을 (Parannoul) – To See the Next Part of the Dream

After enough decades online, you can tell when you're listening to something that's going to become forum famous. As the clock ticks in the intro of 흰천장 (White Ceiling) flood through my newly-set-up home theatre system, I can imagine years of greentext word-walls and /mu/ shitposts written by kids that look like younger versions of myself: kids who will blog obsessively about that night they discovered Parannoul. It helps that Parannoul’s internet presence is deliberately anonymous. Nothing is known about them beyond the fact that they're a student in Seoul – too shy to reveal their true identity, their music-making life kept secret from everyone, particularly their parents. If that backstory isn't forumcore fodder, I don't know what is. 

Modern shoegaze is an almost entirely digital affair, a sharp contrast from its analogue origins. In many ways, the genre has morphed from shoegaze to screengaze, and bands have no longer needed to bankrupt record labels to create the sounds they want. VSTs and plugins have come to replace Orange amps and a studio-sized lineup of myriad effects pedals. The standard goodenough guitar has come to replace the modded hunkachunk. Gone are the days in which bands like My Bloody Valentine spent years surrounded by wires. Today, even an anonymous South Korean student can make guitar-based music that's larger than life and emotionally evocative all by themselves. Don’t worry, I’m not going to be a gatekeeper for tr00 shoegaze. Quite the opposite, I think this increased accessibility to music-making is a giant leap for humankind. However, the fact remains that while these tools are now widely available, it's very rare that someone makes as good use of them as Parannoul does on To See The Next Part Of The Dream.

There’s a special place in my heart for bedroom musicians (gee, I wonder why). But while the bedroom music community has spawned the likes of Washed Out, Wild Nothing, and Vektroid, it has also spawned a goop consisting of millions of indistinguishable beatmakers. To my ears, Parannoul belongs to the first class of home studio exponents: someone with a unique vision for what they want to say, and a unique sound that helps them say it. I often speak of nostalgia on here, and am particularly amazed at how certain music evokes wistful a longing for a past the music-maker hasn’t themselves experienced. To See The Next Part of the Dream is another one of these nostalgia-evoking albums, conjuring up memories of youthful summers spent doing nothing of note. It’s hard to guess if Parannoul will go the way of obscurity like so many bedroom acts before them, or if they will continue to put out music as evocative as this, but I sincerely hope it’s the latter.