“It opened my eyes to another facet of the cross-pollination taking place in the melting pot art form known as jazz.” Aidan Levy, Village Voice

A virtuosic jazz drummer, Australian Simon Barker had reached a plateau. He could lay down rhythms on the drum kit, improvise around them with subtlety and nuance. But he wanted to be freed from the percussive predictability of Western tempos. Then he heard a rare recording of Korean shaman Kim Seok-Chul, a master drummer whose official designation was “Intangible Asset Number 82.” Paired with his voice, Seok-Chul's drumming is a complex extension of shamanic ritual that strives toward ecstatic visitation. Director Franz's equally rhythmic film follows Barker to South Korea as he tries to locate the elusive master drummer. Along the way, he encounters Kim Dong-Won, a professor of traditional music, who agrees to serve as his “bridge” between cultures, and Bae Il-Dong, an amazing pansori singer who lived in a hut for seven years while he learned his vocal craft. Barker's quest to expand his rhythmic dexterity leads him to an unexpected revelation: music is not technique but an expression of a culture's spirit.