K-pop (2015)

Haven't listened to the rest of the mini yet but "Kontrol" from Infinite's Sunggyu is really good! He should sing in his lower register more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fBODWRrnWM

He killed it live on M Countdown... and the ballad song too.

Speaking of lives, very good staging on BESTie 'Excuse Me' this week: https://youtu.be/QGfYnQPuWjE

Too much sax-hook in this song but I love the switch into the second chorus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ-ORItaQ7o

next k-pendium entry is gonna be the one that started it all. given seo taiji's reputation (especially then) for being a bit obvious with his influences ( the album also includes blatant ripoffs of mc hammer and ac/dc), i think my due dilligence involves identifying every sample/reference in this song that i possibly can. wanted to see if anyone here hears something i've missed.

+ "yeahh boyee" and "bass!" sampled from "bring the noise," of course
+ "stop!" w/ dramatic silence going into rap verse a clear "ice ice baby" thing
+ opening synth strings? to my ears a tangerine dream/vangelis type thing, but that's probably one degree of separation from whatever taiji's pulling from
+ that's totally a sample of some guy repeatedly shouting "east! coast!" isn't it? at 0:09? driving me crazy, can't place it (did a run through all pre-92 public enemy but can't find it there; weirdly early for the whole east vs. west thing...)
+ at 0:17, not even sure what that infernal thing is, but this is the one that really keeps me up at night
+ 0:27 synth sounds like early detroit house/techno to me, like an inner city song...but like tangerine dream i think that's a shade obscure for taiji to have heard in '92
+ hard rock riffin' at 1:00...reflects influence sinawe had on taiji, but could be many things
+ descending synth twinkles in chorus is a new jack swing gesture, very new edition
+ not sure what the beats and basslines are pulling from, at times sound to me like a kind of sampled break thing and others more a standard dance or new jack reference
+ on the whole, i'd say the biggest influence on taiji's additive logic (and rough tonalities) here are most indebted to the bomb squad

get the feeling the things i'm missing are very obvious. the samples and grifts i've identified so far on this record are some of the biggest hits of public enemy, mc hammer, ac/dc, and vanilla ice, plus "gonna make you sweat" and bart simpson...so yeah. also realizing i really need to revisit run-dmc for this purpose

Fun fact about 3 Ninjas Kick Back, executive producer Shin San-Ok was a famous-director-turned-refugee who'd been kidnapped 1973 by Kim Jong Il, who wanted him to help develop the N. Korean film industry.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2003/apr/04/artsfeatures1

The song IU wrote for her new \sexy dance singer\ drama character sounds good, especially the chorus. I hope we get whatever she's writing in character released in full, not sure there'll be other chances at hearing her having a go at the genre. Also there's some solid meta potential in this series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAPUON3eoS0

k-dramas release OSTs so aggressively i'd be shocked if they didn't for one where IU is the singer (especially if she wrote some of the stuff)

TREN-D following the trend and going new-trot, sounds good: https://youtu.be/SkfDHESqheI

push it, push it good

PREPARING FOR DEEP SHINEE IMPACT IN T-MINUS 90 MIN

deep house, that is.

xp Well it's happened before.. in any case she's releasing a digital single that's not that song in ten minutes, so the Big Bang reign of terror on the charts could end

IDK abcfsk, Loser got a *perfect* score on Inkigayo yesterday. But then it was also Taeyang's birthday.

Listening to SHINEE's album, so far it all sounds like Jonghyun.

it gets a bit weirder, and then a bit less weird.

"trigger" is by far my favorite. up there w/ "one minute back" as their most progressive, visionary music...then "alive," which is a bit more linear but still wild how i like it. "view" could've really benefited from some added odd in the bridge and/or last chorus, and has some pretty iffy editing decisions (mistakes?) if you listen carefully, but on the whole has a nice grace/balance to its general vibe, which no k-pop act has even attempted to date (let alone as a single)

xp Well music shows are a different story, and she won't be promoting it there (or anywhere) anyway. Will definitely top instiz though.

will be interesting to see how "view" does in korea. i guess SM is placing a bet on the burgeoning edm/house/ultra market in korea also having an interest in that kind of sound combined w/ idol pop, which is definitely not as sure a thing as is, say, "loser" (or a new IU ballad)

If any SM act could pull it off it'd SHINEE, they've got some credibility as musicians with the general public from what I understand

I keep hearing fx "Shadow" in Romance. But yeah Trigger, Alive and View are the standout tracks for me too.

Listening to SHINEE's album, so far it all sounds like Jonghyun.

― hurricane weather (forapper), Monday, May 18, 2015 12:47 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

B-but there's so much Key and Onew on it.

solid record, liking' the summer house ~vibes~. "Woof Woof" is basically their musical theatre side gone gonzo - so cheesy and terrible, but also weirdly right for this post-Uptown Funk world.

Other than "Odd Eye", could do without any of the slow-tempo ballads though ("Skip the boring bits!" okay, Key).

Trigger is fun, dig it when Kenzie goes batshit. Some other cool sounds on the album for sure. Still prefer the IU song, though.

I had to laugh at my own SUPERIORITY in k-pop listening when I arrived at the last track on Shinee's album (which threw me off since it's so.. traditional) and immediately made the connection with Jessica and Onew's ballad 'One Year Later'from 2009, and true enough, same guy wrote it. I really liked that song back then. Well I still do. It made me fall in love with Jessica's nasal voice as well.

@abcfsk nice ear on that!

and yeah two k-ballads on an 11-track shinee album is excessive, to say the least. especially when one is the closer and the shinee album is called 'odd'

what's a good international/western hit analogue for "view?" for me it just calls to mind stuff like disclosure and clean bandit (and uh, the verse melodies are sort of like that one good chromeo song), but there's a modesty here in arrangement/vibe (very little aggression) that feels different from those groups' hits for me. i looked up what else i could find by LDN noise but that stuff's even less close than disclosure, i think

I think Kiss My Lips is by far the better song, but Who Are You is showing some great longevity in the face of new releases, still instiz top 5. Happy she gets that hit even if it's not the song that deserves to be huge.

Not the first time this year a buzz single / b-side / whatever turns out become the real hit, though.

where on earth is the "view" video tho? i feel like this could really hurt their impact this time out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF53cptEE5k

love it

not a dance-in-a-box video, yay! also it's nice to see SM has finally discovered instagram filters.

The indie aesthetic MV teased by f(x) and partially achieved by Red Velvet finally arrives

Make sure you eat your meals even if you're tired, guys https://youtu.be/Ibb5RhoKfzE

Prefer Zero Gravity but this is touching, and he spent about 70% of his #hashtag interview talking about Crush which was cute

Wait, were SHINee kidnapped?

And did one of the kipnappers break a beer bottle over Minho's head at 2:16?

yea they were fake kidnapped by a bunch of hot girls so that they can all go buy beer and party. and then at the bar some dude hits on one of the girls, Minho goes to rescue her, gets a beer bottle over his head and then he gets laid while presumably recovering from a beer bottle-induced headache. SHINee, living out every k-pop boyband's dream.

People spent a good amount of time from the teaser release date to now discussing whether the girls in the video were white and then realizing they were thai and then actually half thai in various ways.

One of the things I love about the pretty simple IU single is the consonance of sh and ch sounds and the wave of harmonies crashing in on them.

I don't think they were fake-kidnapped... I think they were actually kidnapped (or in a best-case scenario, thought-kidnapped) and what follows is a sasaeng fantasy that SM & SHINee are too polite too contradict. That's why the police sirens play at the end.

In other words the MV is definitely a dream, but whose dream is it? Idols present according to their fans' dreams.

"Reality" is in black and white, "fantasy" is in color... the scene where Minho "agrees" to be kidnapped is in color while the kidnapping is in black and white. The MV ends before we go back to reality.

Leading the charge into normcore on MCountdown https://youtu.be/mvhJfM2BPSA

http://www.thefader.com/2015/05/22/diplo-cl-riff-raff-og-maco-dr-pepper

CL's verse is the best I think. Nothing too special, and not sure if this'll be winning too many fans of ATL rap, but good for what it is.
Riff Raff and OG Maco aren't doing anything too out there either which makes it somewhat more accessible for k-pop fans I guess.

man that zion.t hashtag interview is great and that phone call was amusing

Isn't it??? Zion.TxCrush 4ever.

http://www.xxlmag.com/rap-music/new-music/2015/05/listen-riff-raff-og-maco-diplo-cl-doctor-pepper/

xxl on the money w/ "CL doing a pitch-perfect impression of urban radio’s biggest pop stars," been trying to place those for a couple days now. 0:54 is an obvious (almost spooky) rihanna, anyone catching other clear vibes?

Nicki, specifically Nicki on "Did It On Em" which CL has covered before.

It's not just because I'm not cultured enough that this track sounds lazy, right?

Cause I listen to urban radio and like... Riff Raff's verse sounds like it was phoned in (literally - or sent as an LQ email attachment more likely), and the flash of sadness at "always traveling" is the most interesting thing about CL's delivery... but then it's hard to believe the rest of her tough-girl delivery.

Thinking very seriously about going to KCON NYC, if the tickets aren't highway robbery.

Meanwhile if you are just starting to learn English (or Hangul), SISTAR are going to teach you some very basic phrases/symbols: https://youtu.be/zlwsggJUwuI

YOUR BODY. WOW BODY.

not sure if i'd call the track lazy but it's very -safe-
also ahaha i def laughed at "your body wow body"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhlU34DloDY

ha the first 30 seconds made me think of daphne & celeste, though that was just because of that girl's voice (dunno names at all atm). song is pretty alright albeit well-produced