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Tierpark plans final Korea tour before going on hiatus again
The members of Seoul "dreamgaze" band Tierpark / Courtesy of Kim Tae-young
By Jon Dunbar
By Jon Dunbar
The four-member “dreamgaze” band Tierpark has two final shows in Seoul this weekend and Busan next weekend, before two of its core members move away.
“It's been a pretty hard decision to make, but ultimately we've decided to leave Korea, for now, to pursue things in the U.S.,” guitarist Jonathan Jacobson, who is moving away with his wife, lead vocalist Kim Sehee, told The Korea Times. “That being said I won't say that our band is ending but rather being put on hiatus. We've done that before and were still able to write and create new things.”
He said he's looking forward to new experiences and the effect they will have on his writing.
“I'm interested in trying new things and seeing where that takes us,” he said. “And it's getting easier and easier to stay connected digitally.”
Before they leave, they'll release a new EP, titled “Where Fish Sleep.” The album features the band's signature dreamy, shoegaze style they've called “dreamgaze.”
“Actually our friend
first coined the term 'dreamgaze' ― at least that was the first time I heard anyone use it,” Jacobson said. “He kind of saw us as a dreamy shoegaze band. And it seemed rather fitting. And genre being a bit harder to define these days, I felt like it was OK to go with something that I'd never heard before. But strangely enough, these days people seem to be using the term more and more, independent of our own usage. It keeps popping up in conversations around us. So yeah it seems like the right genre for us.”
One interesting departure is the new album features a song with English lyrics, a rare departure from the band's usual Korean songs.
They also collaborated with indie-pop duo Hyangni for instrumentation on a couple of songs.
The album is themed around the emptiness of modern society, a common thought of the band members throughout their decade-long run.
“Our
was more about trying to find oneself through isolation, whereas in 'Where Fish Sleep' we try to highlight how we can all feel collectively empty,” Jacobson said. “It's never been easier to share images and ideas, and subsequently it's also easy to observe and follow other people's lives. With social media, we are all sharing and watching and sharing and watching, seemingly creating a plethora of connections with other people. And yet we can still end up feeling empty and alone. We are full of empty things.”
The members of Seoul "dreamgaze" band Tierpark / Courtesy of Kim Tae-young
Jacobson recalls his early days in Korea after arriving in 2009, when he lived in Incheon.
“I remember early on in living here when I began to notice how much I stood out,” he said. “Everywhere I would go people took notice of me. Sometimes strangers would want to take selfies with me. And at that time I was an English teacher. So again people were very curious about me and where I had come from. I would meet other foreigners from various places and they usually had similar experiences. Anyway, I started to imagine these experiences as being similar to those of a zoo animal. People would visit the zoo to learn about an animal and its native habitat. I liked thinking about all the foreigners as different visiting animals. So I wanted to name our band after their animal park.”
But the word “zoo” wasn't doing it for him, so they went with the German word for a zoo, “Tierpark.”
Over the resulting 10 years, they've released three full-length albums, played plenty of shows and got back from a Japan tour recently.
Kim Sehee and Jonathan Jacobson of Tierpark perform in Kyoto while on tour in Japan in April. Courtesy of Mark Lentz
This won't be the first time the band has gone on hiatus. He recalled one previous “final show” at Zandari Festa 2014 when they announced Sehee was pregnant.
“At that point, people didn't even know that we were married, let alone having a kid,” Jacobson said. “And when she made that announcement everyone kinda lost their shit. After that, there was much celebration to be had. It felt pretty special.”
That led to a long pause in the band's activities, but Jacobson is careful not to call it a break.
“We haven't had any official breaks per se, but once some of our members started becoming parents we did take a few unofficial hiatuses. But we never really stopped,” he said. “At the end of the day, we're really doing this because we love playing so that has been keeping us going.”
Tierpark will be in Strange Fruit
with Hyangni and Cadejo. Then on Friday, July 28, they'll go to Busan for a
with We are Kitae.
Visit
on Instagram for more information, or go to
to hear their music.