Kachi service’s music video pairs forest field recordings with jade carving craftsmanship

Kachi service, the ambient alias of DAWN, has released the EP ‘green house’. It’s the first release from Gachi-eum, a heritage soundscape project built around Korean master artisans and national heritage sites.

Meditation introduced DAWN to ambient music, which soon became a source of comfort and rest.

The EP itself started with field recording, where the producer took his own recording gear to three forests: Gwangneung Forest (protected for more than 500 years), the area around Namhansanseong Fortress, and Bijarim, a grove of nutmeg trees that are hundreds of years old.

He documented each location on a film camera, and the sounds from those visits make up the album’s five tracks.

After a career built on a big voice, he found that music can shape a space and its atmosphere without a lyric or melody carrying a message. He sees Kachi service as another way of expressing himself as DAWN, not a separate persona.

He tells Mixmag Asia: “At first, though, I thought of Kachi service and my music career as separate things. But while making ‘green house’, my perspective on music began to shift. I came to realise that music doesn’t necessarily have to communicate a particular message or emotion through melody and lyrics. Music itself can be an experience, and it can also shape a space and its atmosphere, much like a painting or a piece of furniture.”

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A music video accompanies the release. Wanting to capture the spirit of ancestors who lived alongside nature, he filmed the jade craftsmanship of master artisan Jang Ju-won, a recognised holder of Korea’s National Intangible Heritage in jade carving, as the work he felt would express that spirit best.

He explains what drew him to the material: “Jade forms in nature over a very long time. I felt that it held the traces and energy of nature—of earth, wind and time. Its craftsmanship involves carving and refining a raw stone from nature, removing what is unnecessary to reveal the beauty that already exists within it. I saw it as a process of discovering an inherent value, rather than adding something to create new value.”

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On how this ties back to the release, he shares: “I felt that this approach resonated with the relationship between nature and humans, and the spirit of our ancestors, that I wanted to explore through ‘green house’. So I asked Master Jang Ju-won if we could capture his work on film, and I am sincerely grateful that he so willingly agreed to take part.

“Through his work, I wanted to document the moments when the material qualities of nature meet the spirit of a craftsman. I hoped those scenes and the music on the album would come together as one sensory experience,” he concludes.

Watch the music video for ‘green house’ below.

Amira Waworuntu is Mixmag Asia’s Managing Editor, follow her on Instagram.

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