Julie Seo — Photo: Cho Il Kwon
When I was a kid in the '90s, my parents owned a toy store. Sure, it was fun (collecting Pokémon cards wholesale was a dopamine hit for my 10-year-old brain), but it was also super boring. Like many kids of small business owners, I spent school days in a tiny back room, lost in a sea of boxes full of inventory while doing my homework. The worst part was the day the new Beanie Babies came out, when the store would be besieged by hordes of loud collectors, yelling at me to “don't touch the tags!” as I anxiously handled their precious beanies with the utmost care.
Of course, composer Julie Seo's Toy store, It was released on May 5th through Carrier Records. Each of the work's five movements is named after a popular children's toy, such as “Monster Truck” and “Bubbles,” but despite the cutesy titles, this is not music for kids. Seo developed this multi-movement work for violin and electronics in collaboration with violinist Jinju Cho. Cho's playing astounds with each intricate development. An internationally acclaimed violinist and winner of the Indianapolis International Violin Competition, her expressive, nuanced playing lends the album an essential humanity, lending it a warm glow that cuts through the album's hyper-produced sheen.
On the surface, Toy store The piece is full of contradictions. Extremely catchy yet rich and complex; cohesive yet stylistically and aesthetically diverse, juxtaposing synthetic electronic sounds with centuries-old Guarneri violins that breathe with a life of their own. The piece instills in the listener a sense of cognitive dissonance, a psychological phenomenon that occurs when a person holds two contradictory beliefs at the same time. After all, childhood memories can be full of contradictions when viewed through the blurry lens of memory.
The album opens with “Jack-in-the-Box,” an up-tempo feast of zippy, syncopated electronics perfect for an arcade game. It combines Squarepusher-esque IDM beats, minimal riffs, a funky bass line, and a violin solo that sounds like it came straight out of a classical concerto. True to the Jack in the Box spirit, the song is full of musical surprises, switching suddenly from one style to another. At the same time, these elements tightly intertwine to create an unstoppable dynamic, mesmerizing movement.
“Monster Trucks” is a heavy metal blast that plays like a caricature of a testosterone-fueled toy brand. The violin is so distorted it could be mistaken for an electric guitar, and the backbeat would make Metallica jealous. Later in the track, an organ solo blares out, but its evil is gradually drowned out by abstract monotony.
“Mobiles” sees the listener soak in a cool bath of white noise, an invigorating sound at first, then becoming oppressive as it crescendos into increasingly harsh frequencies. Once quieted, violins emerge with smooth, questioning phrases against a soft, monotonous backdrop. Lush electronic sounds play out romantic harmonies, mingling with more meditative, hushed dissonances.
“Roller Skates” is a blissful glide with gentle percussive sounds. The track features layers of strings that twist and turn with the backing groove, sometimes leaning too far into mourning, before veering off at the last moment. The final track, “Bubbles,” is a fusion of sound sculpture and impressionistic tone poetry, with ASMR-inducing bubbles popping amidst lush, layered strings. On both tracks, Cho's light, evocative playing perfectly captures the whimsy of dancing through life as a child, unfettered by the burdens of adulthood. Just as my own memories of my family's toy store swirl in iridescent colors like oil on water, Seo's compositions act as see-through glasses, offering an opportunity to peer into the distant past and examine the complex interplay of memory, nostalgia, and childhood.
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