Written By Liam Babbitt
Following the release of his critically acclaimed album ‘After the Magic’, anonymous South Korean artist Parannoul hits it out of the park just one year later. While releasing 13 (now deleted) albums throughout the late 2010’s under the pseudonym laststar, Parannoul received widespread acclaim for his 2021 project ‘To See The Next Part Of The Dream,’ and now sits as a mainstay for the genre.
For me, shoegaze as a genre can feel a little void of substance at times. Especially with many artists thinking that the medium can disguise what are often unoriginal and repetitive ideas. Compressed guitars and distorted vocals don’t mask as many mistakes as you might think. Fortunately, I think 2023 was the best year for the genre in the internet age. While I do think “After The Magic” got outshone by Jane Remover’s “Census Designated” and bl4ck m4rket c4rt’s “Today, I Laid Down,” it was still a standout record for the year and put the Seoul artist on mine, and many others’, radar. Then Parannoul went back to back.
‘Sky Hundred’ was a surprise release on August 3rd 2024, with minimal rollout and no announcement. At the time, I was driving to the West Coast for a hiking trip and was able to give the project a full, uninterrupted, conscious listen, and if you read no other words from this review, just know that this album is everything you could want in a rock record.
From the first couple seconds of the intro song A Lot Can Happen, Parannoul takes no prisoners. Compressed guitars do battle over earth moving drums, while a piano motif that carries throughout the track floats above it all. In truth, I’m not a gifted enough writer, nor do I know enough about music production to talk about the soundscape he paints or the texturing throughout each song. However, I’m perfectly within my abilities to say that this album is big, and grand, and expansive, and any other word synonymous with large. Parannoul has this way with creating songs that just seem to take up so much space, to the point where I’m looking at my phone asking how it could all fit inside. I think this is exemplified in the second track Gold River, ornamented with a sweeping (and infectiously catchy) chorus, showcasing Parannoul’s much improved vocals from even last year. I often hear the term “wall of sound” thrown around, especially when talking about noise rock as a medium, but in this instance, that seems to be selling it short. It feels like waves, as Parannoul controls the timid verses before crashing in on the chorus. The auditory experience of surfacing for air only to be covered again by the next wave of breakneck drums and midi synth.
Which brings up a complaint I hear echoed when discussing not just this album, but Parannoul’s catalog as a whole. This being the production. I hear that the guitars are often too distorted or that it’s poorly mixed, etc. Now, for complete transparency, I am immensely biased when I say this, and it can be argued that intentional reduced quality doesn’t negate the fact that a product has a reduced quality, but I think that’s the point. The album cover shows two people on a playground, with the exposure completely blown out. Like walking out the theater after a matinee. Many of the songs on this piece are a reflection on Parannoul’s life, whether these be moments of beauty or regret. The sound maintaining continuity of the cover art and overarching theme of the album only contributes to the experience. The bulk of the album sounds like a fuzzy memory. And if that explanation isn’t adequate, the whole album is also his first completely self produced record, with his other studio albums being produced in part by eeajik. So if none of what I just gushed about was intentional and rather a genuine blip in production, it’s cool regardless.
Moving forwards with the album itself, I could talk of each song in depth, but it would become redundant adoration for the project and also ten pages long, so we’ll stick with standouts on an all-star roster. To keep with this silly analogy, if the record was the 2024 Los Angeles Dodgers, the fourteen-minute Evoke Me would be Shohei Ohtani. This song could very easily be my personal song of the year, and is the best for the genre in any recent memory. Like every other song on this project, it’s loud. Maybe the only song that I would say is perversely so, but I’d also say that it adds to the song (FAIR WARNING: THIS COULD BE PURE, RAW, UNADULTERATED BIAS). The entire song sounds almost effortless, like a one take jam session in his room. His songwriting has also taken a massive leap in my opinion. He’s not trying too hard to preach some world-altering message or tell some elaborate allegorical story from his past. Instead, he sings of his life in a very real and relatable way. For anyone doing a full listen, I can only beg you to have a translation by your side (or I guess be fluent in Hangul; this is also a valid option).
STANDOUT TRACKS: ALL
ON REPEAT: A Lot Can Happen, Painless, Evoke Me, Backwards
SKIPS: N/A
SCORE: 9.7/10