In the mood for some music that’s perfect for say, a live-action Ghost in the Shell movie, possibly a Blade Runner sequel, or pretty much any film that may have a strange, dystopian sci-fi score mixed with a few dashes of Northeast Asian twang? Then allow Luna Lee’s rendition of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” on gayageum fill your ears and transport you to a world where it’s probably dark all the time and little schoolchildren run in a single file line with their yellow umbrellas bouncing beneath the rain.
In the video above, which comes via Laughing Squid, gayageum master Luna Lee goes pluckin’ crazy with a cover of Pink Floyd’s iconic 1979 track(s), and the result is both marvelous and bizarre.
Lee, who’s covered a huge library of contemporary and classic rock songs on YouTube since 2009, is reinventing the way the gayageum (pronounced kaya-goom) is used in modern music. She notes on her Patreon page that she’s taken the gayageum, which is a traditional Korean zither-like instrument with anywhere from 12 to 21 strings, and modified it to make it compatible with amplifiers and playable alongside loud instruments like the drums and bass guitar. She notes that this was necessary because the gayageum was traditionally played by her ancestors in “a small room.”
In the Patreon video below, Lee gives a rundown of her history with the gayageum, as well as how she had to modify the traditional instrument in order to allow her to play alongside contemporary musicians:
What do you think about Lee’s cover of “Another Brick in the Wall”? Does it transport you to a strange sci-fi world, or simply make you want to stand up and tell some teachers to leave them kids alone? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Images: Luna Lee
