just like any other day (어느날) : background music for your mundane activities

For all the countless nights catching former downtown New York denizen Okkyung Lee grappling with the finest avant-garde players at Tonic, either as participant in John Zorn’s various improv games or in her own assemblages, little can prepare you for the stylistic left-turn of Lee’s latest. Her oeuvre – over 30 releases – often documents prickly, challenging exchanges with the likes of Bill Orcutt, Christina Marclay, or Evan Parker, but Just Like Any Other Day isn’t just like her previous efforts. For one, Lee relies heavily on twinkling synthesizers, her exquisite bow work on cello (her primary instrument) nowhere to be heard. Inspired by the recent renaissance in kankyō ongaku, or Japanese environmental ambient music, Lee explores the restrictions of that practice with her own curious approach. It revels in Eno’s ambient maxim to be as interesting as it is ignorable. But before long, there’s moments that can’t help but give you pause in the midst of cooking dinner or folding laundry. Lee hovers over certain melodic fragments until they begin to yield to the pressure, finding odd dissonance amid such lullabies, the lurking darkness beneath the calmest of water surfaces.