LEENALCHI restage a moment from Korean court speech in “Crying Softshell Turtle.” 별주부가 울며 여짜오되 is the narrator’s cue, spoken in the deeply honorific register a subject uses addressing a king: “Officer Turtle, weeping, humbly says to the king.” It repeats three times across the lyrics, each time introducing a new plea from a soldier turtle on his knees before the Dragon King, begging to cut open a captured rabbit’s belly before the animal talks its way out of the trap.
LEENALCHI is a seven-piece band from Seoul, four pansori-trained singers fronting two bassists and a drummer. Park Soo Bum, Choi Su In, Ra Seo Jin and Ahn Yi Ho carry the story’s different voices and its narration between them, while bassists Jang Young Gyu and Ejae lock into drummer Oh Hyung Suk‘s groove underneath.
That groove tightens hard on the KCRW session. Midway through the track, the two basses drive into a punk-edged instrumental break that sharpens the standoff between the turtle’s frantic pleading and the rabbit’s swagger, and the singers trade lines rather than harmonise over it, snapping into pansori’s guttural, high-pitched delivery to voice each character as the scene turns. The rabbit gets the last word, daring them to open him up: “You will find nothing but dung.”
The song comes from Sugungga, an 18th-century pansori epic about a Dragon King who can only be cured by a rabbit’s liver and the turtle sent to fetch it, and LEENALCHI built their 2020 album of the same name by stripping that centuries-old sung narration down to bass, drums and voice.
Bassist Jang Young Gyu leads the band and has also scored the films The Wailing and Train to Busan, and this year has been a busy one under his watch: LEENALCHI signed to Luaka Bop, released the EP Here Comes That Crow in June, and will finally put Sugungga out worldwide on 2 October.
The release opens a fall tour that runs through the US before crossing into Europe in mid-November, with UK dates in Dublin, London, Bristol, Leeds and Manchester closing out the run.
Watch the full session live from KCRW HERE, including “Crying Softshell Turtle“, and get Sugungga, out worldwide on 2 October, via THIS LINK