There’s more to the South Korean music scene than K-pop, you know. That’s just part of Hallyu, or the Korean Wave – the name given to the phenomenon of South Korean culture’s increasing global popularity. Black String, who bagged a 2018 Songlines award after releasing their debut album, Mask Dance, the previous year, are a fine and notable expression of this tendency. The four-piece’s second album, Karma, is full of music that is deeply rooted but at the same time knows no boundaries and is relentless in its exploration of ever-fresh ingredients for sonic fusion. The instrumentation is traditional and also thoroughly contemporary. There’s intense Korean shamanic singing set against rising rocky rhythms on ‘Exhale-Puri’, a great instrumental cover of Radiohead’s ‘Exit Music (For A Film)’, a couple of guest appearances from French-Vietnamese guitarist Nguyên Lê, while closer ‘Blue Shade’ has been described as delving into “Far Eastern prog rock territory” and features a guitar solo inspired by Ornette Coleman’s ‘Lonely Woman’. It’s a great way to end an inspiring album.