Tim Koh, An Sun - Salt And Sugar Look The Same (2024)

Hazy and hypnotic, Tim Koh and Sun An's collaborative debut is a collection of 18 short sketches that blur fingerpicked American Primitive with mangled samples and distorted ambience.

There's a bleary-eyed quality to 'Salt and Sugar Look the Same' that sounds as if Koh and An are trying to uncover memories without offering too many clues. They wrote the album remotely, shuttling ideas back and forth between Los Angeles and Berlin, but connected the dots between shared experiences of being Korean American in California. And the album's linking thread is incense, that's referenced throughout: on 'Lemongrass Citronella', they capture the pungent odor with ruffled, hallucinatory instrumental loops and high pitched squeaks, signifying burning remains on 'Incense Holder' with Fennesz-like bit-crushed crackles, and the sweet smell of sandalwood with naive synths on 'Sandalwood in the Summer'.

Elsewhere, the record is more tangible, slipping into instrumental folk on 'Besafe Airtel' and veering towards weightless West Coast new age on 'Somewhere in Time'. But Koh and An sound most confident when they're walking on the astral plane, concocting hypnogogic slowcore on the swooning 'Can't Stand In The Past' or floating up to the clouds on the wooly title track.

Tracklist:
1 01. Tim Koh; Sun An - Bye Bye Betty (02:01)
1 02. Tim Koh; Sun An - Moments Of Joy (02:04)
1 03. Tim Koh; Sun An - Lemongrass Citronella (01:06)
1 04. Tim Koh; Sun An - Can't Stand In The Past (02:18)
1 05. Tim Koh; Sun An - Besafe Airtel (01:42)
1 06. Tim Koh; Sun An - Today Only Happens Once (02:09)
1 07. Tim Koh; Sun An - Incense Holder (02:37)
1 08. Tim Koh; Sun An - Salt And Sugar Look The Same (03:37)
1 09. Tim Koh; Sun An - A Lead Balloon (03:06)
1 10. Tim Koh; Sun An - Sandalwood In The Summer (00:58)
1 11. Tim Koh; Sun An - How They Made It (01:42)
1 12. Tim Koh; Sun An - Somewhere In Time (04:37)
1 13. Tim Koh; Sun An - Old Plates And Desirable Traits (00:49)
1 14. Tim Koh; Sun An - Drawing To Relax And Pass The Time (02:47)
1 15. Tim Koh; Sun An - The Maybes Are Endless (00:57)
1 16. Tim Koh; Sun An - Yume-No-Yume (01:49)
1 17. Tim Koh; Sun An - Twice (00:59)
1 18. Tim Koh; Sun An - Expected To Fade (02:13)