Review Summary: Okkkkkkkkk
After some research, it appears Kjjjjjjjjj lifted the name of their third LP,
Bi Won, from a Korean restaurant in the band’s home base of Buenos Aires. If my translators of choice are also correct, the term itself refers to a secret garden of sorts—the sun-worn, floral budding of the album cover, one might expect—but that picturesque landscape is partially a red herring.
Bi Won is more akin to navigating a hedge maze, and unfortunately, it’s a modest one: at an exceptionally short 24 minutes, the puzzle presented here isn’t particularly encouraging of long-term immersive wanderlust.
The album’s initial hook—the zesty, densely-layered rummaging of opening pair “Alfombra” and “Flan”—over-promises an element of prolonged suspense the rest of
Bi Won dearly lacks, kicking things off with two of the project’s three heftiest songs and patiently reaffirming Kjjjjjjjjj’s core appeal: Lorenzo Schiavo and Nicolas Esparrach’s unflinching rhythmic pocket prioritizes groove over flash, while Mariano Membrives’ perky lead guitar dissonance compensates as if embroiled in a tantalizing tug-of-war for the spotlight. They’ve carved this niche from a smooth combination of 70’s prog worship and the new wave-ification of modern math rock—I personally hear late 00’s Porcupine Tree in the synth flourishes and golden-era King Crimson in the technical riffery—and if any of those buzzwords whet your appetite, season with a tinge of emo noodling and you’ll mentally map out Kjjjjjjjjj’s instrumental-only botany pretty quick.
On the band’s 2016 self-titled debut and 2020’s chiller, spacier
Centro De Dispersión, that same blueprint had room to grow, but they didn’t skimp out on some degree of immediate gratification; the former wielded a punkier edge attuned to their contemporaries and the latter gave each of its focal tracks plenty of space to melodically and spiritually meander.
Bi Won, in comparison, is more like a stingy sample platter, summing up the group’s previously trodden territory with a plethora of bite-sized daydreams that don’t amount to a full course meal. If you’re completely unfamiliar with Kjjjjjjjjj’s discography, this latest offering accurately alludes to how the band’s more fulfilling material
sounds, but it waters down their compositional gusto to a largely disposable degree. In isolation, everything here is competently performed—it’s just structured around fundamentally diminishing returns. Why bother heading into the hedge maze when you can see open fields of flowers abloom over the garden wall?
