Books, blog and other blather

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Best of Korean Music 2012

Last year was a great one for Korean pop music, but it was also excellent for indie music and other non-pop stuff in Korea. I only spent a couple of weeks in Korea this year, but it was clear from the shows I went to and people I talked with how vibrant the scene is these days (not to mention the music I downloaded and listened to). Back in 2008, when I started the Korea Gig Guide, I had this feeling that the indie scene was growing and getting stronger, like it was in the late 1990s. These days it is stronger still, continuing to grow bigger and more interesting.

Sadly, though, I don’t have a big list of my favorite new releases. For yet another year, I focused my energies in older Korean music, thanks to a huge batch of old records a friend digitized for me. I’m pretty proud of my collection of Korean rock, folk, and pop from the 1960s and ’70s now (thanks mysterious friend!). A related highlight of my year was meeting the great singer Kim Choo-ja. She and her husband nicely opened their home to me, and so I was able to absorb several hours of stories and good stuff.

(Oh, fyi, if you want to learn more about Korean classic rock, the blog Classic Korean Pop Music Archive has some good stuff).

As for new releases, the best of the year was probably Jambinai’s first full-length release, Différance (iTunes, Amazon). While not a fan of their more hardcore-tinged experiments with electric guitar, their core sound — driving postrock played on Korean traditional instruments — was as great as ever.

There was plenty of fun electro-based music last year, such as Glen Check (I particularly liked the single “84”) and Neon Bunny (her new EP Happy End was all quite fun). Love X Stereo is pretty good, too.

I am not a huge Telepathy fan, but their new version of “Flying White Pillow,” recorded for Fred Perry, was really intriguing, showing signs of growing into something more (a live show I saw of theirs in May backed up that impression).

And there were new released by 3rd Line Butterfly, Galaxy Express, and other big names.

But, as I said, I spent more time listening to old music, so I’m sure I missed a lot.

One of the coolest stories in 2012 was definitely Busker Busker, the Cheonan trio that appeared on an American Idol-esque TV music contest and somehow overcame all the producers’ preconceived notions of how the program was supposed to run, becoming perhaps the most popular group of the year. Yes, K-pop still dominates Korea, but the success of Busker Busker — a real band, playing real music — was one of the brightest rays of sunlight to shine through the bubblegum clouds in a long time.

(Not that there is anything wrong with bubblegum … I just value diversity).

Much more authoritative than my opinions, though, are the smart folks at Weiv, Korea’s longtime online music publication. They have put together another solid (and eclectic) list of the year’s top Korean music:

  • 9 and the Numbers – 유예 (Postpone)
  • Glen Check – Haute Couture
  • No Respect for Beauty – Why Perish
  • Lowdown 30 – first album
  • 404 – first album
  • 3rd Line Butterfly – Dreamtalk
  • f (x) – Electric Shock
  • Yoon Yeong-bae – 좀 웃긴 (It’s a Little Funny)
  • Electric Eels – 최고의 연애 (The Best Love)
  • Jeong Cha-sik – 격동하는 현재사 (Turbulent Contemporary History)
  • Jeong Tae-chun, Park Eun-ok – 바다로 가는 시내버스 (City Bus Going to the Sea)
  • G-Dragon – One of a Kind
  • Pure Kim – (Ieung)
  • Hwang Bo Ryeong=Smacksoft – Follow Your Heart
  • Various Artists – 블루스 더 (Blues)

 

The Year in Korean Movies (Spoiler Alert: ‘Wow’)

There have been a lot of ups and downs for the Korean film industry over the years, but 2012 was the biggest up ever, on so many levels. Just looking at the numbers (courtesy of KOBIS):

  • Total admissions: 195 million (old record was 160 million, 2011)
  • Total box office: 1.45 trillion won, or $1.36 billion (old record was 1.26 trillion, 2011)
  • Korean films: 58.8% (2nd best in decades, maybe ever)
  • Korean admissions: 114.5 million (old record was 91.7 million, 2006)
  • Korean box office:  835.5 billion won (old record was 613.7 billion, 2011)

In addition, 32 Korean films pulled in more than 1 million admissions (the old threshold for being considered successful … although, admittedly, that seems a bit low these days). Nine Korean films topped 4 million admissions, three topped 6 million, and two (The Thieves and Masquerade) topped 12 million.

Just to give you some perspective, before 1999’s Shiri, no Korean movie had ever pulled in more than 4 million admissions. Shiri blew away the records then, with 6.2 million admissions, but today that is not enough to crack the top-20.

Those aren’t the officials numbers, btw. Just my quick look at KOBIS. But clearly 2012 was pretty freakin’ incredible for Korean movies, especially for someone who first traveled to Korea in 1996 when the movie industry was in shambles financially (when they made 23% of a 203 billion box office).

The Year in Korean Music

Obviously this has been a big year for Korean music, thanks to Psy’s “Gangnam Style” becoming the biggest song ever on Youtube and surpassing 1 billion views. And like any uber-popular sensation, people’s enjoyment of the song moved inversely with its ubiquity.

But even without Psy, it would have been a pretty notable year for K-pop, as YG, SM, and JYP and pushed harder (and, arguably, more successfully) than ever into the United States and the West. SNSD appeared on Letterman. Big Bang sold out shows (and won critical praise) in the US, Peru, Britain, and all over Asia. G-Dragon’s “Crayon” got plenty of notice by pop critics (one New York Times critic named it a top song of the year … and the song won Pop Dust’s Song of the Year poll). Choe Sang-hun and I had a 1,500-word feature on K-pop in the New York Times back in March, long before Psy’s hit had dropped, and since then there have been oodles of stories in all your major media.

Despite the endless ink spilled (and pixels illuminated) over K-pop, I think most of the media still has not really wrapped their collective heads around “what it all means”. One common bit of idiocy has been the idea that K-pop has somehow “failed” because no one was able to follow up Psy’s “Gangnam Style” with another chart-topper.  Talk about missing the point — as if this musical age is all about Billboard and chart rankings.

If you want a symbol for the year in music, it may well have been Grimes, the 24-year-old Canadian electronic artist. “Oblivion” was widely regarded as one of the top songs of the year, even though it never spent much time on any charts and has only 4 million Youtube hits. Grimes has been quite clear, though, about the influence K-pop and J-pop have had on her music. As she wrote in NME recently:

 It’s the insane art direction in K-pop music videos that got me addicted to it. I like the misguided appropriation of western pop tropes in the videos – because they’ve got it wrong, it’s kind of better.

I mean, check out her video to “Genesis” — aside from the budget, it could be the latest 2NE1 video:

And then just to make things really scrambled, Dan Deacon mashed up “Oblivion” and “Gangnam Style” to create “Gangrimes Style.” Quite catchy, too:

Anyhow, the point is to ask what people mean when they talk about K-pop (or any music genre) succeeding. K-pop draws plenty of fans to its shows. It sells in its niches. It draws on pop influences from around the world and influences the world in turn  (here’s a story on K-pop in Chile). That’s really not terribly different than dubstep or EDM in general. That’s the world of music today, full of cross-references and cross-fertilization, without any one act dominating the way U2 or Coldplay or Janet Jackson once did.

Could K-pop go mainstream in 2013? Anything is possible, but I would argue that it doesn’t need mainstream success to be considered successful. Would anyone argue that Korean movies have not been successful over the past 15 years? And yet no Korean movie has made significant money at the US box office — save D-War (with about $11 million), the “Gangnam Style” of Korean movies.

Aside from K-pop, it has been a good year for Korean music in general. It seems like there are ever more electronic-based indie bands, pumping out catchy, fun music (Love X Stereo, Glen Check, Telepathy, Neon Bunny), postrock (Apollo 18, Bulssazo), twee rock, folk, hard rock, traditional-modern hybrids (Surisuri Mahasuri, Jambinai), just plain weird (EE, Mukimukimanmansu), and more. Apollo 18 had two successful tours of North America. Galaxy Express was the first band pictured on this year’s New York Times feature on SXSW. If there is a fertile area in which Korean music could really grow in 2013, I suspect these non-pop genres have more potential.

Anyhow, it should be a fun year. That’s so much to look forward to.

Not-So-Fast but Definitely Furious: Pyongyang Racer Game

Did not see this one coming — the fun folks at Koryo Tours have teamed up with North Korean game developers to make a free flash game for the Internet: Pyongyang Racer.

Okay, it’s not the most exciting flash game ever put on the Internet (maybe for PR2 they can add US soldier zombies to run over). But it is still kind of fun to get a street view of Pyongyang, along with all its iconic buildings and landmarks. And getting admonished by a North Korean traffic policewoman is pretty amusing.

I wonder if the South Korean authorities will allow the game into the country or if they will ban the URL. SK authorities so rarely have a sense of humor about these things.

Good News Brewing in Korea?

I don’t drink much beer these days, but I used to consume my share, and even helped brew it way back in the day. But even if I do not drink it much now, I do still appreciate a good beer, and I appreciate a culture that can make good beer. Which is why I was so heartened to read that beer culture in Korea appears to be on the upswing.

Matt over at the great blog Gusts of Popular Feelings has a good overview of the current beer situation, particularly the appearance of 7 Bräu, a new brewer in Korea, the first to get a new bottling license since 1933 apparently. 7 Bräu apparently has an IPA (link shows an English story at the Korea JoongAng Daily) which is available in Home Plus stores around Korea. Nicely done!

Korean beer has long been pretty terrible—maybe not Michelob terrible, but still pretty bad, as I blogged about a few years ago. The Economist slammed Korean beer a couple of weeks ago; although, strangely, it did not mention 7 Brau or anything about the history of brewpubs in Korea. Still, the article upset many in Korea and inspired this retort in the Donga Ilbo—which was highly, uh, factually challenged (Koreans prefer lager while European prefer ale?) and completely missed the point.

Anyhow, great to see progress slowly being made. When brewpubs appeared in Korea about a decade ago, I had high hopes they might change Korea’s beer culture. Not that beer is so important, but variety and choice is an important part of life, and I’m happy that Korea is increasing its beverage choices.

Brubeck, Gould, and Me

Like many, I was saddened to read about the passing of jazz great Dave Brubeck a few days ago. Although, to be honest, I was not an expert in the man’s works — I owned Take Five, of course, but not a lot more.

But for me, when I think I Brubeck, one of my thoughts is of Glenn Gould. It’s from the liner notes of the 1992 remaster of Gould’s Goldberg Variations, where Michael Stegemann talked about how huge the album’s sales were when it first appeared in 1955 — quoting Norman Snider:

Indeed, if a college girl had one record of serious music among the Dave Brubecks and Kingston Trios, it was likely to be the Goldberg Variations.

Wonderfully sexist and condescending stuff, isn’t it? But, aside from that, I love the layers of meaning in that quote:

  1. Glenn Gould’s classical record was a No. 1 hit.
  2. The epitome of shallow, empty pop was Dave Brubeck.

It is almost trippy to me to think of Brubeck being so dismissed, thought of the way people today think of Lady Gaga or Sarah Brightman — or maybe Snider was just a huge snob.

Anyhow, sad to lose Brubeck. Maybe I’ll download a couple of his albums and listen to him before going to bed …

 

View From a Seoul Window

So, Andrew Sullivan put a Seoul VFYW up on his blog a couple of hours ago — a very pretty view of the city streets covered in snow (although it appears not to be a view from a window, but a street view from a pedestrian bridge).

I feel like I should know that stretch of road, but for the life is me, I cannot figure out where it is. Does anyone out there in Internet-land have any idea where this pic was taken?

Catalonia Tourism Without Tourists

Barcelona — like much of Catalonia and Spain — is a great place to live and explore. There is so much wonderful architecture, nature, food, and other good stuff, it can be a real embarrassment of riches. However, that great stuff does attract a lot of tourists, and the most popular locations can be crazy busy. Park Guell, Montserrat, Tibidabo, the beaches, the old city center of Barcelona are all wonderful, but they can get a little overwhelming.

Which is why it is so much fun to discover wonderful locations that are not on the usual tourist map. Yesterday I made a trip out to the medieval Catalan village of Rupit, and really enjoyed it. High recommend, if you are coming to Spain and are looking for places to go.

Rupit is located in a hidden river valley about 100 km north of Barcelona, not far from Vic, another lovely town in Catalonia. It has roots over 1,000 years old, was built up more in the 12th century, but most of the buildings there now are from the 17th century. The buildings are all stone, like something out of Lord of the Rings. The river is gorgeous, and there are plenty of great walks in the area.

The food is pretty much all Catalan (lots of Catalan Butifara sausages), but quite good, and most of the restaurants have amazing views of the river and gorge. This is a pic of the restaurant where I had lunch, from the other side of the river.

Grid and Bear It

Korean indie-pop group Love X Stereo is back with a new EP, Off the Grid. And, much like their first EP Buzzin’, this one features three hook-laden and very danceable tunes.

The songs on this EP are a bit longer than before, with two topping 6 minutes and the other nearly 5 minutes. I guess that moves the bad a bit away from pure pop to something grander, more involved and layered. Or maybe they just wanted to have the space to have fun and rock out. Anyhow, I like it.

Here’s the first track, “Soul City (Seoul City)” (which happens to be the song I like the most):

But feel free to buy either album over at iTunes’ Love X Stereo link — they’re cheap and good fun.

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