Books, blog and other blather

Category: Music (Page 6 of 7)

Movies, Music, and Other Links

– My latest article is up at Korean-Content — this time a talk with director Jang Cheol-soo, whose film BEDEVILLED was screened at Fantasporto, the fantasy/science-fiction film festival in Porto, Portugal. I attended Fantasporto, too (greatly enjoying it, as always), and spent some time with Director Jang, walking around the old city with him, and taking a quick trip to Guimaraes to see the castle and old town.

Jang-in-Portugal-300x225
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– Which reminds me, Fantasporto is a really fun festival. Different than most, but in a good way (the festival organizers are more hands-off than most, but I like being more independent). And I really like Porto, the look of the city, the food. And this year, they actually had sunny weather (Porto is usually rainy this time of year).

– Speaking of Korean movies, as I write this, local films are taking in over 60 percent of the box office in Korea in 2011. Sure, attendance is lagging (there has been no AVATAR-esque blockbuster to dominate things), but still, always good to see a country’s cinema performing well.

– A bunch of articles have appeared on the web recently that talk about Korean indie music and my music website, the Korea Gig Guidea round-up on the indie scene in the March music issue of KoreAm magazine; a profile of the Gig Guide over at Groove magazine.

– And speaking of music, this is shaping up to be a pretty exciting time for Korean indie music. Four Korean bands are slated to play SXSW this year — DFSB Kollective taking Galaxy Express, Vidulgi Ooyoo, and Idiotape to SXSW, Canada Music Week and a couple of other gigs, and Apollo 18 doing their own 16-gig mini-tour through Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennesse. Plus 3rd Line Butterfly and W&Whale appearing on Monocle magazine’s podcast recently, and Balloon & Needle just had a mini-tour of Europe, showing their more avant-garde electronica. Seriously, the Korean music scene at the moment really reminds me of the movie scene back in 1996, full of talent and energy, just waiting to take off. Despite (because of?) the music industry being ravaged around the world, I am getting strangely optimistic about the chances for the Korean indie music community breaking out.
2K11 SEOULSONIC promo

– Btw, how cool is it that Apollo 18 got themselves included on one of the main posters for SXSW? That’s them on the lower left, on the same poster as Emmylou Harris and The Kills. Shawn writes a bit about Apollo 18 and their tour plans over at the Korea Gig Guide.

SXSW2011

– Terrible news coming from Japan, as that earthquake has been upgraded to a 9.1. Fortunately, no one I know there seems to have been hurt … but with so many thousands hurt, dead, and missing, tragedy is going to be overwhelming for some time.

Hee Sisters on Their Way

The ’70s disco group Hee Sisters are about to have an anthology released by Beatball Records. And remixed by DJ Soulscape, too. This could be a lot of fun. You can hear an overview of some of their songs, along with a bunch of cool pics and other images in this Youtube video:

Dreaming of Dream High

Over at Korean-Content.com, my new story is up, about the Korean TV drama DREAM HIGH. I was fortunate enough to have a good talk with DREAM HIGH’s executive producer Jimmy Jung (who is also the president of the Korean music company JYP Entertainment) about the program, how it came about, and JYP Entertainment’s plans for producing programs in the future. Here is an excerpt:

Actually, despite people’s preconceptions, combining singers and TV dramas is an old formula, one that JYP Entertainment learned with their megastar Rain. Rain acted in three TV dramas when he was first with the company, most famously Full House, the show that became a hit all over Asia and helped propel the young singer to the next level. “Through Rain’s three TV series, I learned how TV is a great promotional tool,” said Jung. “There are so many so-called hallyu stars in Korea, but compared to stars who only act, stars who can act and sing and dance have a much stronger position.”

K-Pop Rebellion

Interesting to see so many K-pop bands turning on their management companies these days. Girl group Kara is the latest, with three members basically telling their management to get stuffed. Good for them, and for the member of Dong Bang Shin Gi and Super Junior who did the same thing. And anyone else. But I doubt their actions are going to change anything, not unless people start to address the underlying problems.

Kara

The problem, in my humble opinion, is the fundamental difference between the management companies and their talent, along with the huge gulf between the powerlessness of the star wannabes versus the complete power of the stars.

The K-pop business model is basically unchanged since SM Entertainment created HOT way back in the mid-1990s. The management companies find aspiring young people, train them relentlessly for years, then create a group for their top talent and try to make them stars, mostly through TV appearances. Yes, you have the Internet now, and all the changes it has brought. And cable TV and established interest in Korean acts overseas. But for the most part, the formula is the same.

A big company like SM Entertainment (or JYP or whoever) will likely have 50 or 70 kids in training at any one time. That’s a lot of ramyeon noodles and dance instructors and real estate to pay for. The big companies especially need a steady revenue stream to pay for all of that. So it is no surprise the kids are treated like commodities, like links in the supply chain. After all, the supply of young hopefuls is endless. The number of successes available is very small.

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The stars and the fans, however, tend to see things very differently. The young stars and starlets are savvier than ever. They know what kind of money they are making for their bosses. They know they are the show. Japanese management might be able to change Morning Musume’s members almost every year, but Korean fans freak out when management tries to change their bands (ie, the 2pm and Super Junior fiascos).

Japan, though, is changing the situation in Korea a lot. Japan is now the biggest music market in the world (as they are just about the only ones still buying CDs). Ever since DBSG had a huge 2009 in Japan (earning around $100 million, for CDs, concerts, and ancillary rights), everyone has been excited about Korean pop there again… Kara and Girls Generation did great in Japan last year. From what I have heard, K-pop is the biggest it has been in Japan since the heydays of Boa and WINTER SONATA.

Korea has never been a big market for music. While the Korean movie market is much larger than you would expect for Korea’s economy, the music market is much, much smaller. So the labels and managers have always had exports on the brain. But I doubt they have ever had a year in Japan as good as 2010.

So you have three members of DBSG break off and form JYJ, trying to make it on their own. Two or three members of Super Junior leaving the group. And now three members of Kara leaving their agency. But will it really make a difference in the Korean music industry? I doubt it.

Maybe the band are getting paid better, maybe they have control over their own lives — great for them. The Korean courts have generally been supportive, but the management companies are not about to let go easily. But I do not see any fundamental shift in how talent is discovered or groomed. No change in how the music is produced. No change in how fans get to experience and consume that music.

Look at Rain, who left JYP Entertainment three years ago to forge his own career, only to go back to JYPE last month. The prodigal song.

Now you have a situation where the Korean management companies can find and develop the top talent, but they cannot hold on to them. And the aspiring wannabe stars cannot develop on their own, without the expertise and connections of the management companies. Clearly, the Genie (For Your Wish) is out of the bottle, and something has got to give.

TashaandTiger

I think the Korean music industry is basically the victim of its own success. Their business model has taken them about as far as it can go, but now something different is needed. Hip hop is good example, as groups and performers like Epik High, Tasha (Yoon Mi-rye), and Drunken Tiger have escaped the management system and had great success on their own while (most importantly) making better music. With iTunes, Soundcloud and other online music portals, no band needs to be controlled by managers/labels anymore, like they were in the age of terrestrial TV dominance and record stores.

Korean indie bands going to SXSW and other music festivals (as Galaxy Express, Vidulgi Ooyoo, Idiotape, and Apollo 18 are this year) is also a big step forward. The summer music festivals, like Jisan Valley and Pentaport, also help open the market and show people other ways of doing things.

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This is not an argument against pop music–I like good pop, as much as any genre. But I am saying that the current way the Korean pop music industry is built is inherently broken, and until the management companies and the aspiring talent and the fans all recognize this and make changes, nothing is going to change.

Top Korean Music of 2010

Well, 2011 is well underway, but I am still putting together my thoughts about 2010. This certainly is not a complete list, but it is a short list of recommendations of some good Korean indie music that I came across. Hopefully the music scene can keep up the momentum and turn it into more mainstream success soon. But to give you a quick rundown here:

1) DJ Soulscape – More Sound of Seoul
Far and away the best album of the year. DJ Soulscape mixed together a huge smorgasbord of great Korean music from the 1970s, most of which you’ve never heard before. It’s as educational as it is fun, and all-round brilliant.
(Yes, this was released in late 2009, but it was such a great album, full of wonderful and obscure Korean songs from the 1970s, I am putting it in this list)
more-sound-of-seoul-cover-400
Then, in alphabetical order:

Apollo 18 – Violet and Red
One of Korea best rock/post-rock bands today put out two interesting albums this year. Red was a re-release of last year’s album, but completely re-recorded and with a few extra songs added (thanks to the money they earned from a KOCCA grant, after their Hello Rookie win in 2009). Together with 2009’s Blue, each album has a slightly different feel, while still being a unified sound.

Glittering Blackness, Fall – EP
Glittering Blackness, Fall is one of the most interesting of Korea’s many instrumental, “post-rock” bands. Their EP is just four tracks long, but each is a surging blast of noise and swirling progressions.

Jambinai
One of the most unusual new bands around, Jambinai uses Korean traditional instruments, but cannot really be considered “traditional” music at all. With their ambient, surging style, they are closer to post-rock than anything from the Joseon Dynasty. But their use of Korean traditional instruments makes their sound incredibly haunting and captivating.

Lee Sang-eun – We Are Made of Stardust
With her 14th album, Lee is quite a veteran of the Korean music scene. But while some of her albums can be repetitive, and sometimes boring, this is one of her most creative and lively in quite some time. A little uneven, sure, but most of the songs here are quite pleasant and catchy. Even more surprising, her voice sounds clearer than it has in quite some time. Has recording technology found a way to reverse the effects of 20 years of smoking? No idea, but this was a good album.

Lowdown 30 – Another Side of Jaira EP
Growling blues rock, like the Black Keys. Not all the songs work, but the best are gravelly, heavy fun. The first song Jungdok is especially good.

Oriental Lucy – Midnight Hotel
More quirky and electronic album (and Portishead-like) than their first EP, Oriental Lucy is more alternative/indie rock, like the kind of thing you might hear on KCRW or some college radio station in the West like that. At times more New Wave sounding, singer Soohee’s brings their songs an unusual urgency and energy.

Sunkyeol – EP
A moody, acoustic ambient release, I found Sunkeyol a pleasant surprise. I am not sure what I was expecting, but their album was surprisingly moving for such a simple sound. I am told it was actually recorded in 2006, but just released last year.

Swimmingdoll – 8winningdoll
One of the more interesting and unusual entrants into the post-rock, shoegazer genre. Swimmingdoll songs start out pleasant and haunting, but then jar with odd atonal shifts and dubs.

In general, I think 2010 was a very good year for Korean indie music*. I had not even noticed until I started putting together this list, when I kept rediscovering one solid album after another. Not simply strong in one genre or another, the Korean music scene is more diverse than I can remember it ever being, with great hard rock bands, acoustic, postrock, dance and whatever Jambinai is.

But one strange thing I have noticed is that, in general, Korean bands’ recordings are is much stronger than their live performances. When I first got interested in Korean indie music, back in the 1990s, the opposite was very much true. Considering I live in Europe these days and do not get to Korea often, this is a development I am happy with. But at some point, bands are going to have to develop stage presence if they want to break out of the Hongdae underground (especially if I am going to keep running the Korea Gig Guide).

For more opinions on top Korean albums in 2010, you can check out the Korea Gig Guide, where I share my thoughts, along with contributors Shawn Despres, Dain, and Kim Jongyoon of Scatterbrain. You can also read some interesting columns over at Philip Gowman’s London Korea Links — Anna Lindgren, Saharial, and Philip himself.

As for non-Korean stuff… It is hard to keep track of releases, but here is what I could recall really enjoying:
Black Keys – Brothers
Grinderman 2
Holy Fuck – Latin
Janelle Monáe – The ArchAndroid
Japandroids – Post-Nothing (yeah, this was 2009, too, but I just heard it in 2010 and I loved it, so I am including it)
Naked and the Famous – Passive Me, Aggressive You
Robyn – Body Talk
Stromae – Cheese
Tron OST
Zoey Van Goey – The Cage Was Unlocked All Along
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*The rise of Korean indie music this year also boosts my little (and not very serious) theory that the success of Korean movies and music are inversely related. The better one does, the worse the other seems to do. Last year, Korean music was really good, but movies were remarkably mediocre. Go back to the 1950s, and it seems like, again and again, whenever one areas gets better, the other takes a dive. Movies flourish in the late 1950s, then drop off in the later 1960s—around the time music takes off. Then Park Chung Hee kills of the great Korean rock scene in the 1970s, and soon after movies make a small comeback (well, the 1980s were a tough time artistically in Korea for all art forms, I think). The 1990s saw music rise up again, then crash spectacularly after the financial crisis, just as movies going on their amazing run. It’s spooky, I tell you.

Myspace and the Perils of Online Value

Word is out that Myspace is going to be cutting staff by 75 percent this year, after its user based dropped over 24 percent in 2010. And to think Newscorp bought Myspace for $580 million just two years ago.

Which is one reason I am extremely skeptical about about how these online social networks are valued. Facebook is now, theoretically, worth $50 billion? Groupon is worth $6.4 billion? Sorry, but I just don’t see it. Few (or none?) of these online ventures have the solidity to be long-term bets, and you are going to see a lot of investors lose a lot of money, over and over again.

So what’s it really worth to capture a few million eyeballs over the short term? This is an especially important question considering that the moment your ads start to get intrusive, you lose market share–big time. I think a much better method is needed to determine value for online start-ups, especially those in the extremely nebulous world on social networking. But until the greedy and gullible learn their lesson (the hard way), this is going to keep happening. Yes, the Internet is reshaping business models all over the world, at a very deep level. But there is something to be said, too, for business basics.

More Korean Music Notes

– I wrote a little article about some Korean bands playing in London and North America in the coming months over at the Korean Contents website. 3rd Line Butterfly and W&Whale have been invited to Monocle Magazine’s Winter Series (I will supply the iTunes link when it is available). And then Vidulgi Ooyoo, Galaxy Express and Idiotape are going to be traveling to SXSW and the Canada Music Week in March (and maybe make a few more stops around the continent).

– Shawn Despres has yet another good article about Korean indie music, this one about the band Sunkyeol, over at Groove magazine.

– And as long as I am linking to Shawn, I really should mention his recent article about Chang Kiha & Faces and the Rocktigers in the Japan Times.

– The Joongang Daily has a fairly long article about the Hongdae scene (translated from the parent publication, the Sunday Joongang). It has a few quotes from a lot of the biggest names in Hongdae (Sung Kiwan, Lee Sang-eun, Lim Jin-mo) and is a decent introduction … although it does not talk about the publishing side of Hongdae, which in many ways was the foundation of the neighborhood, back in the early 1980s.

– And, of course, if you are interesting in learning more about Korean indie music, Anna’s blog Indieful ROK is the best place to learn about new releases and pretty much everything about the scene.

Bits and Pieces

– My music blog, the Korea Gig Guide, was just named the blog of the month for November by 10 Magazine, probably the best of the English-language, dead-paper publications about life in Korea. That is rather nice of them. Many thanks.

– Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade invests in TV dramas and movies? Really? That seems like such a bad idea, for so many reasons. The Ministry invested in the movie BAREFOOT DREAM, and is contemplating investing in a TV drama.

– A documentary about a Korean missionary to the Sudan, titled DON’T CRY FOR ME SUDAN, has rung up over 160,000 admissions. Is that the best showing for a documentary in Korea since OLD PARTNER? Anyhow, SUDAN was produced by KBS.

Something’s Off About Korea’s Online Music

There is a very interesting article over at the Hankyoreh’s website about the state of online music in Korea, in particular the bum deal that the artists receive from most music portals.

The lede comes from the recent death of Lee Jin-won, the singer behind Moonlight Nymph (aka, Moonlight Come From Behind Grand Slam), which the Hankyoreh relates to his money problems. I did not know the singer, and I think he had not performed in about a year, or at least quite some time. But it is sad news, regardless.

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The main problem mentioned in the article is the very low rates artists receive for their music here. In the rare instances where someone actually pays for a download (what a radical thought, I know), Korean portals typically charge 500 won, less than half of what iTunes charges. And then, the portals share much less of the money than Apple does, around 55 percent. Then there is 13.5 percent that goes to various rights groups (some of whom are extremely dodgy in Korea, and do not distribute their money fairly, if at all). So in the end, the artist and production company get just around 200 won to share.

Of course, the music sales sites would point out that they have to compete with streaming websites and all sorts of illegal downloading, so have no choice but to pick a low price point. But I think that misses the point. It is in the portals’ interest to have a strong, flourishing local music scene, so more people want to listen to more music. It is in the portals’ interest to support that scene. By being so short-sighted, the portals are just hurting themselves … not to mention all the artists struggling to make a living.

Shin Joong-hyun in Stars & Stripes, 1963

Thanks to Matt at Gusts of Popular Feeling, I just discovered this old article from 1963 in Stars & Stripes about the godfather of Korean rock’n’roll, Shin Joong-hyun (refered to in the article by his stage name when he played for the US Army, Jackie Shin). It is a short article, but complementary, saying that Shin played “the meanest guitar in Korea.”

I am not sure how accurate all the details are in this story (for instance, I thought that Shin got started before 1962, and I think he was born before 1940), but it is interesting that Shin was getting noticed early in his career. I did not know about him winning the KBS jazz contest.

Jackie Shin 1963 S&S

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