Forming MurderMartyr in summer of 2024, musicians Lee Sungnok, Syun, Kim Jo and Lee Jinwook quickly decided that they wanted to invert and redefine the concept of shoegaze in South Korea.
Inspired by the avant sensibilities of musicians like Mid-Air Thief, Scott Cortez, and Parannoul, Poemfornothing is MurderMartyr's thesis statement on the coalescence of influence into a singularity of creation.
Brimming with instrumentation taken from Ambient, Free Jazz, Sound Collage and Glitch, Poemfornothing seeks to establish their brand of shoegaze as a complex palette of sounds that are simultaneously unified, yet in complete opposition with each other.
"Harpsidream" stutters, but never lags -- building guitar dissonance into a cinematic patchwork of feedback and programming. "CeilingMusic" blends thick walls of sound with futuristic sequencing, stretching the stylizings of glitch pop and folktronica into a post-rock framework. Exploring the border between GAS and M83, "C'estPasMoi" manipulates samples and noise into a sprawling ecosystem that trills, flows, and flowers.
"Vertigo" reigns in ascendent guitar passages with the chaos of Avant-Garde Jazz; containing an unyielding energy while maintaining dominion over the direction of its current. "OceanofAntique" bookends Poemfornothing with glistening guitarwork, interlocking serrated feedback with a rhythm of electronic loops.
Shoegaze has long been relegated to a monolith of the electric guitar, representing the artistic terminus in which guitar tones are stretched and manipulated. In a bold subversion of that ironclad tradition, Poemfornothing illustrates that texture is the central fixture that guides shoegaze, and that the only limit to sound is the extent of imagination itself.
