Bela

bela was based in Seoul when they began to develop the framework for 'Noise and Cries (굉음과 울음)'. Chewed up by a society that's slow to embrace those who exist on the margins, they and their close friends became fixated on the concept of death. "I wanted to cry, I wanted to die," they recall. "The precariousness of living in South Korea hits different. I thought, let's share what is killing us." bela refused to lose hope, so they inventoried the sounds, experiences and emotions that had formulated their identity and wondered how this might form a different sort of South Korean musical expression. They considered the guttural death metal growls and industrial music they heard when they began to interface with Western culture as a a teenager, the idiosyncratic folk rhythms that rattled away in the background of state events, the evocative, euphoric drones that had offered them solace, and the heady, cybernetic maximalism that's come to define contemporary queer club music. If this was going to be an album about death, bela knew couldn't it be preoccupied with loss, but rooted in a deep desire to regain the will to live.
By weaving together such divergent elements, the album offers a remarkably complex picture of not just death, but rebirth. 'Noise and Cries (굉음과 울음)' is an unflinching examination of South Korea's cultural evolution, and despite its concept, it's overwhelmingly positive. bela fantasizes about what life could offer for a queer Korean, and how the country's traditions might provide tools for insight and self-discovery when wrestled away from reactionary gatekeepers. They operate between binaries, alloying high and low culture, ancient and contemporary ideas, loud and quiet, harmony and dissonance, leaving just as many questions as answers. "Ego melts away," they assure. "It's not me - we.”