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| Seth Mountain visits Dokdo in 2019. / Courtesy of Daisy Cho |
By Jon Dunbar
Seth Mountain, an American folk musician living in Seoul, is releasing "Through Dark Valleys," his latest full-length album.
The album is a follow-up to "This Mountain," (2016) with all sorts of callbacks lyrical and musical.
"It is very much meant to be a middle album of a trilogy... and darker than part one or three ― thus the valleys," Mountain told The Korea Times, "and to evoke a sort of attempt to find meaning through the voices in the past that are or have walked the same dark valleys, and to underscore the connection between today's struggles and those of the past."
He released the first two tracks on Bandcamp, laying out the "landscapes" of the overall album on Christmas Eve, with plans for the full album to be out on Jan. 1.
As the artist and the album's name both suggest, the 11 songs are grounded, literally, in local places, based on where Mountain has lived and felt a strong connection, with the balance continuing to tip more toward Korea over the U.S.
He recorded it with help from his younger brother Joel Martin working out of a homemade studio, and David Fuller, a longtime collaborator, friend and producer, who recorded and mixed the tracks.
"David and I have been collaborating on albums together for over 15 years, and this is the seventh studio album of mine he has mixed, mastered and produced," Mountain said.
The album starts off with Mountain's banjo-plucking on the breezy "Morning in Seattle," an instrumental with whistling and other non-lexical vocables. That and other songs like the civil war ballad "Going Across the Mountain" and Mountain's own composition "The Ballad of Eric Garner" show the American roots of this music as well as Mountain's background and concern with U.S. social issues.
And other songs reveal the Korean ingredients in this album, particularly the Korean-language rendition of "Mom and Daughter" on track 3, a field recording titled "Little Giant" featuring an evictee protester in Ahyeon-dong and a spoken word piece featuring the words of Han Yong-un, also known by his penname Manhae.
"The gist of the poem is a boat talking to its lover ― the person it has carried across the river only then to be abandoned as the person walks onward," he explained. "The boat says it will wait by the shore for the person to return."
Mountain brings in Korean friends for these songs, including Lee Nan-young, SMB Mountain School, Jeju activist Choi Sung-hee, Yamagata Tweakster, eeeho of the band Howaho, No Soon-chun from the Changwon indie band Uncle Bob, to help on these songs. He also has help from Zoe Yungmi Blank and friends back in the U.S.
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| Cover art of Seth Mountain's album "Through Dark Valleys," designed by Lee Nan-young / Courtesy of Seth Mountain |
Near the end of the album is a two-minute recording of a South Korean air-raid siren, a false ending to the album before the final song, "Grown Up Soul (These Dark Valleys)."
Tying all this together in the middle is the traditional number "Climbing High Mountains," in which he sings "I've been climbing high mountains trying to get home."
Mountain chose this song as his favorite on the album, saying it "makes me almost cry every time I hear it" and that "it is meant to be the thread that ties it all together."
He added, "It has deep undertones about Black Lives Matter in the U.S. now... and can also be very applicable to corona and divided Korea."
Set to this backdrop, the album somehow feels both timeless and a product of our times.
"The connections between divided U.S. past and present ― civil war songs up to modern tracks ― and the division of Korea past and present is very intentional," he said, "with the theme of mountains, suffering and searching for home with the help of ghosts from the past being important."
But the album also carries a youthful theme, incorporating elements from children's music here and there.
"It is more about learning to be compassionate and wise, rather than tough and clever ― and how wisdom only comes through solidarity with ― understanding of ― the sufferings and realities of others, so a kind of death and rebirth of self, so to speak," he explained. "And for me, and in this album, the attempt is to sort of show or point toward that process in losing oneself in the larger current of song and struggle, past and present."
Visit sethmartinandthemenders.bandcamp.com to listen to Seth Mountain's music.
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