Hye-Jin Park = Hye-Jin Park - Before I Die (LP + 7") - 45RPM Hot Pink Vinyl

Park Hye Jin’s debut album, Before I Die, arrived on Ninja Tune in September 2021, and it plays like a diary written in club lights. She wrote, produced, and performed the whole thing herself, switching between Korean and English with a cool, inside-voice delivery that hits harder than a shout ever could. The record came together while she was living in Los Angeles, and you can feel that combination of distance and possibility baked into the beats. It is lonely at times, but hungry too, always inching toward a dance floor, even when the room is empty.

If you’ve followed her since the early EPs, the core DNA is intact. Minimal house rhythms, clean drum programming, a knack for loopy hooks that sneak up on you, and bass that thumps without showboating. What’s changed is the intimacy. Before I Die is less a set of club tools and more a portrait. Her voice sits right up front. It murmurs, chants, asks, answers. She is producer and narrator at once, folding tiny emotions into small synth figures and clipped vocal phrases. It makes for a record that you can live with. It’s not built to blow out a festival main stage. It’s built to trace the shape of a week.

“Let’s Sing Let’s Dance” is the natural entry point, a single that sounds like hope with edges. The groove is steady and unhurried, the kind of pulse you can ride from early evening through closing time, and her refrain feels like a promise to herself as much as an invitation. “Whatchu Doin Later” taps the same power in a looser way, leaning on repetition and space, the kick and hi-hat doing most of the talking while her voice flickers in and out like a thought you keep returning to. She does this often on the album. A phrase becomes a mantra, then a room to think in, then a hook you can’t shake.

The production is all about subtraction, which is part of why it works so well on vinyl. She keeps the palette spare, then makes every element count. A dry clap, a light synth line, a sub that behaves itself. You can drop the needle on the Before I Die vinyl and feel how much air she leaves between the drums. That space is her instrument too. It gives the record that late-night drive quality, the one where you take the long way home because the song hasn’t ended. If you collect Park Hye Jin vinyl, this one is the keeper, the context-setter that makes the earlier EPs feel like sketches.

Context matters here. In the year before the album, she teamed with Clams Casino and Take A Daytrip on “Y DON’T U,” which hinted at a broader palette but still kept her voice central. On Before I Die she doubles down on that point of view. No big cameos, no outside producers. Just her, threading club patterns with confessional fragments. It feels personal without sliding into melodrama, and it lands in that sweet spot where house music becomes story. Not plot, exactly. More like atmosphere with memory attached.

Press took notice when it came out, and not just in dance circles. Publications from Pitchfork to The Guardian weighed in, picking up on the way she turns restraint into something immediate. Fans did the rest, passing around tracks that spoke to the quiet weirdness of 2021, when everyone wanted to dance and half the world still felt like a bedroom. The album isn’t chasing trends, and that helps it hold up. Every listen reveals another small decision. A hi-hat that tucks in early. A bass note that arrives a shade late. Choices that make you trust the person behind the desk.

If you’re crate digging in a Melbourne record store, this sits comfortably next to gently melancholic house records from the past decade, but it doesn’t copy them. It sits on its own shelf, the one for late-night statements. And if you prefer to buy Park Hye Jin records online, the pressing has the kind of clarity that flatters her minimalist approach. For collectors who like to file artists by feeling, slide this under “solitary but hopeful.” It is a modern Ninja Tune album in spirit as well as stamp, quietly adventurous and easy to live with.

The best way to hear Before I Die is simple. Let it run while you’re making plans you might cancel. Let the steady pulse tidy up the day. There’s heat here, and tenderness, and a producer who trusts her own instincts. Park Hye Jin albums on vinyl tend to reward patience, and this one builds a small world you can revisit. If you’re browsing vinyl records Australia shops or checking a local listing, don’t overthink it. Pick it up, take it home, and let that first kick drum find its way into your room.