Jihae is a sexy Korean chick who appears topless with strategically placed long hair on the album cover. She grew up in Nigeria, Sweden and the UK before settling down in New York City. Her bio makes a big hurrah about all the collaborations she's doing with artists in other media. Of course with looks like that and a willing to bare all, what video artist or director wouldn't want to work with her? The idea of a remix album of someone you've never heard of in the first place, coupled with the softcore record cover meant that I wasn't expecting much, but I was in fact pleasantly surprised by the record.
This is a relatively brief, 6-song remix album of her sultry pop songs, created by an NYU electronics composition profesor by the name of Jean-Luc Sinclair. With that pretext, you might expect something avant-garde and academic, but that's not the case here at all. This is straight-up, commercial electronic pop, which may sound like a put-down, but it is damn good electronic pop. For reference you could think of Brazilian Girls and their singer Sabina Sciubba....
Where the professor shows his stripes is perhaps more in the quality than in the context; the production is good with nicely crafted beats and beautiful synths and soundscapes weaving their way in and out of the mix. Effects are subtle but cool, hazy and psychedelic. It makes me want to hear the original to see how much these vary from the originals.
Nice....
