K-pop (2015)

Listening to it I realize I'm not sure I've heard anything from them since their chart evergreen with IU.

They had a sad song earlier this year that had some promise.

Pretty sure soyrev thought you meant that Hitchhiker song had the same structure as the HIGH4 song, I can see how it was confusing

yeah sorry, we weren't talking about the same thing. nvm~

high4 has a few good songs. "say yes" starts with the "just the two of us" changes and goes some pretty cool places.

still enamored by the lim kim collab. the lyrics on that are so good but don't translate well in english.

M3LAQ's new mini-album is *solid* adult-contemporary mid-tempo RnB and I support their decision to open it with 4 instrumental tracks that are each under 45 seconds long

whoops nvm, I was listening to the tracks out of order... there are a still a lot of short instrumentals on this though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwEGV6CaF7g&index=2&list=PLgIqF-gjplXbaiqp2tYuhBpJBRx_eA1St

Throw out 24 hours, Hey U, and Mirror. The other tracks can stay.

BTW I don't think we ever talked about 90s-throwback-group 1Punch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3D5MjwJVts

Maddie once described BTOB's "Wow" as "90s music as performed by kids born in the 90s"... but the younger kid in 1Punch is not even that as he was born in 2002 >___>

They're the latest Brave Brothers project group, which is probably why I like their sound

From the Airport x Gyuri (of KARA): https://youtu.be/kwP7jplJY5Y

xpost from Big Bang thread (whoops):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2pFB1dCSo4

2PM sounding like a mix of themselves and TVXQ

I don't care about Dok2 at all but really awesome that he got Young Chop, Jahlil Beats, and DJ Mustard to produce tracks on his next album.

!!!

HIGH4 is going up on my list, the less sleep I get the more I listen to Baby Boy...

And on the episode end of the spectrum, Nu'est's foray into Jpop has a nice, characteristic melody:
https://youtu.be/ZBypdTJGv8k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pBgMBBsv4k

that's some good shit

Fun music video but I'm a bit disappointed? The chorus doesn't really stick its landing.
The chorus starting with those three stresses made me think of My Copycat.

re: the mini, 'Really Really' is a fun ballad and 'Chocolate' is sleek

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

Really feeling this one. Just as *cool* as "I'm Sorry" but maintains momentum throughout the entire thing. Love how C.A.P sounds when he raps.

Really dislike girl group comedy videos. Not hearing anything in the song either.

I can't listen to AOA - there's that one girl (the one who raps sometimes?) whose voice really annoys me.

The Teen Top otoh is great, excellent dancing too.

AOA is rly busy, but I dunno if that's in a good way... the underlying song seems weak.

Teen Top's whole mini is pretty good. "HOT LIKE FIRE" and "Please" are two other tracks I like:

https://youtu.be/6AaLoQvfiuQ
https://youtu.be/-n936H4YMg4

Roz, Jimin's rapping at a lower pitch in this AOA song... everyone else is pitched up though, I'm not sure how they're gonna do it live.

I think this might grow on me actually.

OK I take it back, that AOA song is gr8.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z7UVf26KS0

This might be the most generic Sistar has ever been

definitely their worst summer song. is it just me or has this year been pretty poor, singles-wise, for established girl groups?
4minute is the big exception that comes to mind immediately.

The big clash of girl groups this summer is turning into an anticlimax, for sure. If SNSD can deliver something semi-decent they'll stand out. There's still Nine Muses to come too.

check out some puke: http://www.k-pendium.com/004/

Is Nan Arayo really that flawed? The instrumentals seem pretty dedicated to underscoring the vocals, so the song sounds pretty tight and purposeful to me. And the sudden genre shifts stop it from sounding dated.

I hope someone can tell you were that East! Coast! sample comes from.

Nan Arayo still sounds like it could be released today. The chorus is so k-pop even on its own.

maybe i was looking in the wrong places, but i really did put some time into trying to place that bit. '92 was pretty early into the whole east coast west coast thing, but i scoped all the public enemy, run-d.m.c. etc i could, even that one footnote of a chuck d cosplay loser who fired shots in like '91 or '92...no dice. not sure, but kinda incredible how the legacy of meaningless east coast/west coast repping in k-pop continues to this day ("woof woof" by shinee, for one).

and yeah, i really do think "nan arayo" is pretty awful. it's charming for its melody and its ambition, but it just sounds like such a trainwreck to me. (interesting, though, sure.) the fact that it could be released today is more a testament to its influence than its quality, it's tough to find k-pop songs that jumbled nowadays, even messier examples like that jjcc "fire" song or that blady "oochie walla" song hang together better. there's some nice stuff on that first album, but i don't think STJ reaaaaaally got his shit together until recently. (Quiet Night is awesome)

Unrelated to the song at all but man it's a real shame that Snowpiercer is the Bong Joon-Ho movie that people know when I find it to be the worst thing in his filmography aside from maybe his debut. Then again, it makes sense re: distribution, it being in English, having star power in Evans, Swinton, and Bell.

Anyways, coming from someone who got into K-pop because of Seo Taiji, I obviously think Nan Arayo is a pretty great song. Kind of shocked you don't dig it, what other songs do you like more on the debut? "이 밤이 깊어가지만" is the only other one I revisit anymore. (In fact the only other kpop song I listen to from this time is this). I assume there won't be many posts of early/mid 90s kpop songs you like if you didn't like "Nan Arayo"? I find the worst thing in the song to actually be the vocal performance albeit it's a bit endearing in its amateurishness. Pretty understandable though as to why anyone wouldn't like it, or anything Seo Taiji did. If there's anything about his music that reflects contemporary K-pop aside from genre mish mashing it's how late he was to certain trends ;)

The article is nicely written and definitely informative but kind of baffled by how you said the intro of the song is like Tangerine Dream? Just because a synthesized string is played for a short amount of time doesn't mean it's close to any sort of kosmische music. If an artist or producer actually cited them as influences then I'd be kind of shocked.

Don't mean to be a downer though, excited for this project still of course. Are you not gonna be talking about anything that happened pre-Nan Arayo then for the K-pendium?

Snowpiercer is pretty great but obviously The Host should have Jaws like respect by now. Also I think about it a lot when I read MERS-news from Korea.

Snowpiercer is awesome but i probably like The Host more. Snowpiercer just pertains to the point more directly.

i like plenty of '90s shit! "nan arayo" is just a mess. and yeah as i wrote, vocal perf is wack, but the melodies are distinctive and as close as "arayo" gets to the greatness of later STJ. off that first album, i'm away from my itunes but i dig the vanilla-ice-inspired-but-actually-good ballad, the one that always reminds me of "bizarre love triangle," and the "missing" closer which is slight but sweet. maybe one or two more.

and lol you're good, T Dream was the one reference i stressed the most about. it reminds me of the worst of their late '80s stuff, cheesy synth string melodrama, but there's definitely a much better point of comparison that i'm just not hearing. STJ listened pretty broadly back then, from what i understand of some recent reading i've been doing...but i too would have to doubt that's where he learned that particular vibe. could honestly just be some more dramatic new jack swing tune but i need to do more research-hearing before i can sub in something likelier.

and the next entry is pre-"nan" by many decades!

Shin Jung-hyeon then? And all the associated artists presumably. I think I mentioned this earlier but "Now" is my favorite Korean album maybe ever

Oh and yea Snowpiercer makes sense for the article, just sort of expressing how it's the only film westerners know from him and how I find that frustrating when I love his other films so much. (I could complain about Park Chan-wook and Kim Ki-duk's popularity but that's another story)

Can you cite the sort of stuff Seo Taiji was listening to or were there no specifics mentioned in what you read? I'm definitely interested in that sort of info but a part of me is really skeptical considering the sort of music he made (because obviously he listened to nu-metal and then pop punk/emo to make Ultramania and then 7th Issue). I also feel like this might be a similar case to that ASAP Rocky piece in Billboard recently where Mark Ronson was saying how Rocky's "musical knowledge runs far and wide" and then they namedrop Tame Impala, Portishead, Massive Attack, T. Rex, The Stooges, and The Kinks.

I think the biggest question is: did the collage of sounds/genres that appears in "Nan Arayo" even exist in korean art throughout the 90s and early 2000s?

To say Nan Arayo affected the way directors approached film seems really misguided, especially when Korean films were no way like that in the 90s at all and still aren't like that. Like there's Snowpiercer and Save the Green Planet! (2005), maybe The Quiet Family (1998), and a few mainstream comedies that toy with that but they're 1) not common and 2) feel representative of stuff going on elsewhere (e.g. Takashi Miike, Sion Sono, "Holy Motors"). And even then, the sort of gags/humor present in those movies are pretty standard for Korean humor. I highly doubt Bong Joon-ho was influenced by K-pop or its effects in any way, especially when we have interviews where he cites his influences (sci-fi films and comic books). Seo Taiji didn't have a hand in the works of other artists in the way Shin Jung-hyeon or Hosono did nor did he have an immediate effect on the musical landscape of korean popular music w/r/t this specific collage of disparate sounds. I mean, Les Rallizes Denudes had monumental influence on the Japanese underground (and the film/music/theater people during this time influenced each other and were friends). Seo Taiji doesn't even come close to that immediate influence and he was a huge pop star.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYuAcCLQPk0

alt link

I *knew* this was one of their Japanese songs!

It sounds better in Japanese with this lighter-touch mix, honestly (though it's still just okay).

Weren't synth melodramatics a staple of late-80s Japanese Bubble music?

Like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIVGQ-B9G38

Of course, Tangerine Dream could have been an early influence of the Jpop songwriters who incorporated synths, but I was under the impression that this sound was widespread in the late 80s.

WonderGirls are coming back

!!!

Super exciting! Apparently Sohee isn't participating but oh well.

With Sunmi? Is it confirmed?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6KN_OQC-oM

I used to watch this every day

yes with sunmi

<3