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parannoul is an anonymous shoegaze artist based in seoul, vaguely college-aged, who accrued mild internet recognition when his self-released album blew up across various music microcommunities in 2021. he has a large catalog of post-rock songs that used to exist on soundcloud under the moniker laststar (끝이별), now principally goes by parannoul (파란노을), and also makes some ambient side project stuff under mydreamfever. most of his popularity comes from an international audience—he is largely hated by the dc post-rock gall, his music is often viewed as noisy trash by domestic cynics, he will never be nominated or recognized by kma, etc. etc. but he is distributed by poclanos in korea so there's that. tstnpotd vinyl coming out soon!

you can learn more about him in this sonemic interview, this woove interview, this blank slate elyria interview, this sleep like a pillow interview, or this pitchfork review.

[Interviewer]: How would you describe your music to someone who hasn’t heard your music before?
파란노을: trash disguised as amateurism

Eventually, when I became an adult, there was no one around me. I didn’t even achieve anything musically for 3 years in high school, nobody listened to my music while I was making about literally 130 songs. If I had been bullied, I could have blamed others. But I knew it was purely all my fault, so it was even more painful.

Well, sadness is relative. It seemed very big to me. To bear that situation, I focused on making the album. It was like running away from something. [...] I don’t feel bad about being a loser, jobless, hikikomori, and loner who makes songs alone in my room. Actually, I feel proud about that sometimes.

the reason i wanted to make this post is that it was the one-year anniversary of To See the Next Part of the Dream (2021 AOTY) (to some) (to me) a few days ago, and to commemorate this occasion parannoul released a b-side ep with a few demos and songs that didn't make the album's final cut. and of course after digesting it i was like oh wow... this guy actually has enough tracks under his belt for me to start discerning things......


so that's what this post is.