bela - Korean Love Sonnets (2026)

How much detail might be imprinted on a voice? Language is only part of the story; each tonal shift, pop or inhaled breath communicates nuance that, even subconsciously, lubricates understanding. On 'Korean Love Sonnets', bela impels their voice into the spotlight, augmenting it with electronics to free its buried subtleties and often presenting it unaccompanied to reveal the full scope of its fallibilities and complexities. And as the title suggests, it's used to unravel the concept of the humble love song, examining romance and (in)humanity and questioning genre, aesthetic, performance and identity itself. Looking deep inside, bela amplifies their inner dialog and asks what emotional residues might linger as a result of love's mutual contamination. What expectations might we impress on the sounds we hear, anyway?

bela knew they needed to make something beautiful, but had to free themself from what that actually meant. "It's a soothing album about love," they explain, but that might not be the whole truth. Their sophomore album is anchored in anxiety-provoking memories - specifically a period when they were working long late-night shifts as a clerk in a karaoke joint, reciting the Buddhist heart sutra ("form is emptiness, emptiness is form") while they watched guests interact and perform on CCTV - and uses these triggers to inform revelations. As K-pop anthems played silently in the background, bela's inner voice had to become deafening to reject their grim reality. So, rising to the challenge, bela needed to embody two simultaneous realities, creating sonic density and genuine beauty without trampling over their ethics.

On opening track 'Palaces in the air', their whispers, growls and screams are layered with humming resonances and creaking, ratcheting textures until it's not clear what's a voice and what's not. It's ominous in its own way, but this is the sound of bela embracing their voice in all its nakedness, each and every little sound. A whistle cuts through the noise for a second, possibly signaling the romance love bela promised. But 'Union Valley' is even more bare and even more unsettling. Here, bela stacks their wordless groans into a thick wall of harsh, gravelly noise that's more human than human, discarding human authority in the sonic realm. All the while, bela asks us to ponder what might be pleasing and question what is even real.

Using extended technique, they rupture the stoic institutional purity of the form, using the technology at their disposal to create a non-linear alternative. The sounds are drawn from within but augmented, inspired by the limitlessness of MIDI or even the humble player piano: music that can't possibly be performed by human hands. 'Korean Love Sonnets' cannot be sung by human voice alone, yet it's the most vulnerable music bela has allowed listeners to engage with. The album's most telling moment comes with the contradictory 'Devotion', a piece of music that appears to engage with bela's own mythology, juxtaposing an unprocessed, ethereal voice with their biomechanical diphonic chants.

Set against a backdrop of scraped metal, the voices engage in a ritual of sorts, turning ugliness into preciousness while casually, almost comedically, breaking down the boundaries between sacred and secular love. Here, bela isn't reframing their inherited culture, they're working with it as an omnipresent aspect, inviting listeners to reconsider what they might expect from a Korean artist. Do we want truth, authenticity? Are we ready? It's a soothing album about love, no need to say it's not.