Hi, everyone. Closethony Suntano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of this new Parannoul record, Sky Hundred.

This is the fourth full-length album from the anonymous South Korean DIY musical project, multi-instrumentalist, producer, singer, songwriter, Parannoul, who has been having a very intense rise in fame in the underground music scene, in the online space, as of late, due mostly to the viral success of several speedily released projects.

There's 2021's To See the Next Part of the Dream, which was the breakout. That very same year, there was also released a collaboration with fellow South Korean DIYer Asian Glow, as well as Brazil's sonhos tomam conta. Not too long after this was 2023's After the Magic, which was my personal fave - I thought one of the best records to drop that year.

And just a year later, we are now getting Sky Hundred over here. Parannoul is really keeping their foot on the neck of the online bedroom DIY scene, just not letting up. Nobody can breathe, especially with the wide praise of this consistently released output.

Now, out of the gate, I will say I have had my reservations about this project's music in the past. Some of the amateurish production has held me back from being as into it as I know some are, though I do very much see the appeal. I get why it's taken on in the way that it has, especially since there is something so genuinely beautiful, righteous, stunning, and nostalgic about the project's approach to melody as well as song structures and builds. Plus, genre-wise, Parannoul is known for an eclectic mix of lofi bedroom pop and rock, post-rock, shoegaze, noise pop, post hard core. It's like every genre that has a super micro niche passionate fan base is coming together under the umbrella of one single music project that has its own micro niche super passionate fan base.

Now, I wouldn't personally consider myself a part of that even though I did stand impressed by After the Magic, like I said earlier. I mean, it was just hard to not like that project, given just how effective of a build it was on everything that made the previous Paranuel album so good. Plus, overall, this thing is such a pretty record. It's so texturally diverse, and again, the builds across these songs are very epic and moving.

The amateur charm that originally made Parannoul so interesting wasn't entirely gone, but sonically, this project was definitely a graduation of sorts, which is why I'm stunned at the approach that was taken here with this latest LP Sky Hundred, which, like, side by side comparison with the sound quality between this record and its predecessor, is just a very clear and massive step down.

Pretty much the same genre fusion and series of influences are going into this project. Nothing too new as far as, again, those touches of noise pop and post-hardcore and emo and post-rock and shoegaze, all of that. It's still here. The vocals haven't really changed up all that much. The approach to melody hasn't really haven't changed up all that much. We still have a lot of epic progressions and builds across these song structures, too. Again, at its core and functionally, it's pretty much everything that has made this project what it is so far.

But rather than further embracing the lush sounds of After the Magic and maybe even improving a little bit from the strides that were made on this album, we are heading back very, very boldly into low, low, low, low, lo-fi territory, bringing tons of songs with lots of saturated distortion that is quite harsh. I will say it's not even a particularly great distortion texture or anything like that. It's just a very brittle and digital and flat and lifeless and one dimensional.

And yeah, pretty much every track on this record to some degree is smothered in this distortion, and it just creates this profound lack of textural variation across the LP, even if I know at the core of these tracks, there are a lot of great and different and quality melodies and vocal parts and keyboard parts, separating them all compositionally. Sonically, they all hit the same sorts of textures and distortion peaks, and it just makes for a very drab experience overall, and a lot of ear fatigue, too, especially with this record being about an hour in length.

And again, while I could see something this lo-fi making sense, earlier in the span of this project's lifetime, right now, after such a great and accomplished and beautiful and lush record as After the Magic, I just don't really see the appeal of going back in this direction because all of the melodies, all of the harmony, all of the nuance, the layers, the beauty that is clearly being laced into these tracks on the compositional end are pretty much being destroyed and smothered by the distortion that all these tracks, the very horrid distortion that all these tracks are caked in, which, again, very harsh, very blinding, very digital, not even a pleasing (aesthetically) type of distortion - I feel like I'm just listening to something that's been bass-boosted out of a laptop speaker.

Even though I do think there are elements of this record that have their merits, it's all for naught a little bit with the way it has very consciously been produced, which, again, personally, I just don't really see the appeal of at this moment in the project's career because it prevents any creative progression beyond what was done on After the Magic. In fact, it doesn't even allow the songs and compositions on this record to be anywhere near as good or as appealing as After the Magic, which, again, for me, makes this album a pretty noticeable step down, even if there are some, again, great tunes, melodies, structures, and performances to be had.

Which is why I am feeling a light to decent six on this record.

Anthony Fantano. Parannoul. Forever.