Leevisa - Koreography

  • Squishy club tracks somewhere between EDM and ambient.
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  • Packaged as a eulogy, the extensive liner notes for Leevisa's Koreography EP detail a life filled with art before a tragic death at the age of 30. With this as an introduction, there's a striking juxtaposition when you hit play on opener "Avant-garde Challenge." Giggling voices sing along to a beat somewhere between drunk marching band and Prefuse 73 while crushed chords stagger by. It's a raucous and fun track and, as any small amount of internet sleuthing reveals, a clear sign that Leevisa is alive and well. If you can look past the cheap PR gimmick and dig into the actual record, Koreography is a manifesto of rebirth, filled with laughter and polyrhythmic explorations of club music, from breakbeat and trap to EDM and ambient. On her previous releases, Leevisa's output has been equally varied. Her bread-and-butter has been introspective tracks alternating between SoundCloud rap confessionals and skeletal ambient. But she also has a soft spot for adrenaline as she showcased on her EDM-fueled debut EP. Koreography is somewhere between these poles as Leevisa takes a Play-Doh like approach to production, shaping and reshaping rhythms. "Three Shifts," could be a lo-fi house track before it gets overwhelmed by bass pulses you might hear at Electric Daisy Carnival and a kick drum borrowed from Lancaster's donk scene. "Indoor Labor" follows a similar trajectory as flattened chords sit atop stuttering drums, before a crisp breakbeat comes in. Even on the record's bluest track, you get the sense that Leevisa is laughing, as the fragile chords and reverb slowed snare of "Sori Wa Spirit" give way to bickering voices. If not exactly a parody of death, the record, at the very least, approaches somber topics with a reverence that I feel split on. Musically, Leevisa's playful tracks are full of ravey strangeness and joie de vivre that ties her into the burgeoning ecosystem of cheekily experimental dance and ambient music being released in Seoul.
  • Tracklist
      01. Avant Garde Challenge 02. Indoor Labor 03. Three Shifts 04. Sori Wa Spirit
RA