Jin Choi :: A Thousand Whales of Love (Private Gold)

Choi has a brilliant ear, juxtaposing the most palpably acoustic piano with the most artificial of beats, the bounciest bass with the hardest of hardware. It’s truly marvellous to hear him unspool them either with the highest polished sheen or macerated to the brink of disintegration.

[Beatport | Juno] An emotional journey “shrouded” in bent but not broken dance floor genres. Born in Seoul and now living and working in Berlin, Jin Choi’s day job is Senior Vice-President of Sales and Marketing for Viacom, and therewith MTV Germany. Let’s not hold that against him, everybody has to make a living. He has previously released extended tech and deep house players, but as he goes full length, he goes full blast, with a seventy-minute opus on the pompatous of love.

A Thousand Whales of Love sounds like a New Age parody, but it is instead deep house inflected by soul and jazz, tunes strung together like the story of a long night out, with its highs and lows, hopes and disappointments and shifts in momentum. “Godspeed Soul” leaps onto the dance floor in neoprene spandex pants. He meets the girl on “She’s Got Gold,” with its head-tossed back “whoa,” fingery bass and sticky beat, but appears to immediately lose her on the next, a downtempo track featuring an emotion-robbed, female voice repeating the chilly brush off, “Don’t you touch me, baby.” After that body blow to the ego, it’s time to retire to the bar to drink, forget and get a bit messed up on “The Hour Glass.” Soon he catches a smokey eye on “Amber & Gold” and hears “you are so wonderful.” This evening might turn out alright after all. Slow, shuffle-footed dancing on “There Must Be Ways” crests repeatedly with waves of content. And the night eventually draws toward a close with the groovy bossa nova “Solstice.”

Choi has a brilliant ear, juxtaposing the most palpably acoustic piano with the most artificial of beats, the bounciest bass with the hardest of hardware. It’s truly marvellous to hear him unspool them either with the highest polished sheen or macerated to the brink of disintegration. Very intelligent dance music. Mensa intelligent.

A Thousand Whales of Love is available on Private Gold. [Beatport | Juno]