Origin Story:

Jupiter Mountain is an electronic folk project by songwriter Christian Hyun, who spent the first decade of his musical journey playing in an eclectic series of bands that ranged from sci-fi country to live music hip-hop. He fronted a couple of groups of his own in that time, a dark indie pop quintet (Melody Murder) and a four-piece acoustic rock outfit (the Davis Levels), and around 2012 began performing primarily as a solo artist. 

A few years back, in sweet, naïve 2015, Hyun set his mind to making the album he’d always wanted to make. He poured his heart into writing and recording for more than four years, obsessing over details and pushing himself harder than he ever had before. Throughout this process, many breaks were taken to spend time with family in Houston while navigating the reality of his father’s declining health, a reality which led to what he considers his most important work, the song “Going to the Mountain.” His inaugural solo record, Whole Colors, was released into the world on February 15, 2020. 

Whole Colors enjoyed about a month of existence before the pandemic hit. Performing to promote the record became impossible, and Hyun found himself stuck at home with nowhere to direct all the energy he’d been storing up to take his carefully crafted work on the road. He immediately went back into the studio, writing new music nearly every morning and channeling the uncertainty of the times into a fresh recording project.

It was that outpouring of sound that planted the seeds of Jupiter Mountain, a project that brings digital instruments into Hyun's folk songwriting and represents a relentless attempt to work through the stresses of a global crisis through music. The forthcoming album, Rain Sounds on Vinyl, is a soundtrack for self-reflection, sensitive to the perspectives and struggles of others and rooted in the earnest belief that everyone deserves a safe space to work through whatever needs working through. Hyun dug deep for the songs on Rain Sounds on Vinyl, drawing on his fifteen years of work in the mental health field to help create song-spaces that speak both to the fragility and the resilience of the human spirit. Live performances are fueled by emotion and whimsy, highlighted with homemade sweatsuits, improvised interludes, and cheap party lights.

Jupiter Mountain makes music for people who feel things. It’s composed with inward journeys in mind, but crafted in a way that lets the listener ignore that part if they prefer, grab onto a beat, and just have fun.