The Turning Gate / The Korean soundWave, Part IV

The Korean soundWave, Part IV

New albums from Clazziquai, Humming Urban Stereo, Donawhale and Fanny Fink, plus rumblings.

Summertime, and the living is sticky. For the second year in a row, the rains have come early. Seoul is waterlogged and humid, making it an excellent time of year to lock yourself indoors with the air conditioner blaring, and some new music blaring even louder – after all, what better way to drown out the drone of cicadas?

As in my previous articles, this article contains some hangul characters, which will only be visible if your computer has Korean language support enabled. If you see boxes or gibberish, that’s just because Korean language support is disabled on your machine. In the interest of serving all readers and listeners, the MP3s accompanying this writing have been giving English-character filenames.

Clazziquai

At some point in time, dance music fell under a horrendous pall: the now widely accepted misconception that, in order to be dancible, music must also be a bland, repetitive, throbbing stew of BOOM-BOOM-BOOM with little or no variation whatsoever. So it is that the genre very rarely produces bands of such quality as Clazziquai.

Clazziquai should be applauded for producing popular music that doesn’t suck. They should be celebrated for creating all-ages dance music that never sinks into baseness, ghetto cliché or any of the degenerate values that MTV propounds daily. They should be lauded for making music of such quality that it’s as easy to appreciate for its musicality as it is to dance to. For my money, there’s no one, in any country, producing better commercial dance music than Clazziquai.

Love Child of the Century, released June 7, is Clazziquai’s third official album and another solid contribution to the band’s exceptional discography. Any of the album’s three opening tracks, Prayers, Lover Boy and 생의 한가운데 / Our Lives would make an excellent single, with Lover Boy having already received the single green light and video treatment.

For me, tracks five and six comprise the album’s low points. Gentle Giant is a mixed bag of good, quirky music and poor lyrics, and would be right at home on the Shrek soundtrack; I’d probably like this song better were it in Korean and beyond my comprehension. The lyrics are really irksome – He is big, yet a likable man / He is strong and only kill bads / In this kingdom full of the innocents / He is the one to save our home from the Neverlands. Last Tango is fair, but too sleepy; the sort of thing you’d expect to hear in a fancy bar that only serves drinks with umbrellas, but never serves beer; the sort of place where all the men wear white evening jackets, and all the women wear gowns, where the lights are low but everyone wears sunglasses, where no one smiles because smiling isn’t cool. Despite all of this, they’ve already made a music video. Ahem.

Survive these, however, and the album gets back on track with 피에스타 / Fiesta, Next Love, Romeo n Juliet, Flower Children and so on – all songs of classic Clazziquai calibur.

Each of Clazziquai’s previous albums, Instant Pig and Color Your Soul, was followed and surpassed by a complementary album of remixes and new tracks, ZBAM and Pinch Your Soul, respectively. Love Child of the Century seems a solid foundation on which to build in this manner, and I have every hope that it too will be followed upon in kind.

While not a perfect album, Love Child of the Century is definitely worth the price of admission and lives up to the standards of quality already set by Clazziquai’s previous work. If possible, pick up the limited edition version of the album which includes a bonus DVD of all of Clazziquai’s music videos to-date and a live performance, as well as special packaging.

Right-click to download Lover Boy.

Humming Urban Stereo

In my last update on Korean music, I neglected to address the latest Humming Urban Stereo record – an unintentional oversight. Baby Love is Humming’s third full-length album, unleashed quickly upon the heels of the Monochrome EP released late last year. Supporting the album, Humming headlined two shows with The Melody in March, and has since made a number of appearances on television programs and in smaller venues.

Baby Love continues in the same vein as previous Humming Urban Stereo albums, but retains everything that made prior releases so endearing. If you’ve heard Humming before, then you should know what to expect. Newcomers can expect a melange of lounge, jazz, disco, electronics and sampling woven into dance tracks more Japanese indie than Korean in sensibility.

Since the album’s release, I’ve seen Humming perform twice. On both occasions, Rainbow and Baby Love made the live set. Performing Rainbow requires three vocalists, and the song shifts from loungy, half-spoken, half-sung verses, into lurching, heavy choruses, then spins into sections of hyperactive, speed-rapping. It’s a frenetic song and works very well in concert.

Baby Love is altogether different, as saccharine as Rainbow is wild. It plays out as a almost-too-cute duet between Humming main-man Lee Jeereen and his chosen female vocalist. It’s the sort of song that could give you a sweet tooth.

Since the release of Baby Love, I’ve twice seen Humming in concert. And, to my sadness, on neither occasion did my favorite new song make the translation to stage. Space Loves Disco is exactly what you’d expect from the title – a spacey disco song. The opening lyrics set the tone for the song, which never takes itself very seriously: When I was listening to Jackson’s Billy Jean / I imagined I was space traveling, and on the song goes about a disco dance party in outer space. Four minutes and thirty-three seconds of pure fun!

Three of the seven tracks from the 2006 Monochrome EP make encore appearances on Baby Love. Insomnia is mixed identically on both albums. 지랄 comes in at 3:42 on Baby Love and 3:21 on Monochrome; the two mixes otherwise sound nearly identical. Sera Un Zoro from Monochrome appears as Siempre, Sera Un Zorro on Baby Love and is thirty seconds longer; the mixes otherwise sound identical.

Baby Love keeps up the tradition of the Waltz Sofa; being the third full-length album, we get Waltz Sofa #3 – the best Waltz Sofa yet!

Erotic Actress closes the proper album, and is surely destined to be a Humming Urban Stereo classic with its kitschy subject matter, sweeping disco string section and undeniable appeal.

There are two bonus tracks. Hawaiian Couple first appeared on Humming’s second, Purple Drop. Baby Love offers up a remix by Japan’s 8-bit pop masters YMCK, just in case you ever wondered what the song might sound like coming out of your Nintendo Entertainment System. There’s also a mostly instrumental mix of Mambo Mood with sprinkling of scat towards the tail end; Mambo Mood appears in its original form on track three of the album.

Of note, this may be the last we hear from Humming Urban Stereo for a while. Lee Jeereen’s late in his twenties and still hasn’t done his military service, mandatory for all physically able Korean males. Jeereen is ideologically opposed to service, but that’s not good enough; rumor has it he’s running out of excuses for procrastination. Of some consideration to fans, by the time he finishes service – two years out of the business and two years out of practice – will he be able to pick back up and continue making records?

For the time being, at least, Baby Love makes a worthy successor to Humming’s previous records. Fans won’t be disappointed.

Right-click to download Rainbow and Space Loves Disco.

Donawhale

Donawhale’s self-titled debut, released last month on Pastel Music, is the latest Korean record rocking my world. Donawhale is your typical rock band – two guitars, keyboards, bass, drums, girl singer – writing layered, textured, beautiful alternative pop rock songs.

The opening track, Close Your Eyes, offers good listening advice: Close your eyes, open your ears and settle into this sonic feast without distraction. Stunning, textural guitars create an inviting gateway into a prepossessing musical landscape, extending all the way to album’s end.

Donawhale’s songs are complex and vibrant, multi-faceted and melodically driven. Instruments weave hypnotic tapestries in which one could easily lose oneself. Throughout the album, vocalist Yu Jeon Young shines. She sings with confidence and strength, while the music frames the perfect backdrop for her voice – the common thread that runs through each of the album’s thirteen song tapestries. Following this thread, listeners will find themselves being led by the hand through a mellifluous forest of magic and wonder.

Obviously, I love this record. Musically, Donawhale sometimes reminds me of The Church, circa Starfish, but with a female lead. Tonally, I’m occasionally reminded of The Cure’s Disintigration. There are moments I think of Sweater’s less disco-like material. But, in the end, I find that Donawhale has made something I’m not able to adequately draw comparisons to, something distinctly their own. But if ever I compare another band to Donawhale, you can be sure it will be meant as a compliment.

Right-click to download Close Your Eyes.

Fanny Fink

Another album I’ve been falling in love with is Fanny Fink’s Mr. Romance, a fantastic album that combines all the best traits of Donawhale, Sweater and Misty Blue into a varied collection of wonderful songs.

Mr. Romance has got hooks in spades. Nearly every song finds a way to grab your ear and get into your head. And while the album definitely maintains a sense of unity, each song exudes a personality all its own. There’s a bit of everything here: guitar melodies and riffs, swirling electronics, quiet soundscapes of plucked, nylon acoustics, strings and more, more, more.

The most difficult thing about featuring Fanny Fink in this article is choosing which songs to offer up as compelling samples. The album has twelve tracks, and all of them are good enough for presentation.

Got brains? Get Fanny Fink.

Right-click to download 향을 담은 비 (For Haru) and 좋은 사람.

Miscellaneous Rumblings

In the realm of general updates, having fulfilled his contract with Lupin Records, Casker has signed on with Pastel Music to release future records. Casker main-man Lee Juno will also be producing records for some of Pastel’s other artists.

Yojo, of Sogyumo Acacia Band, is said to be working on a solo record, to be released by Pastel Music. I’ve been told that Lee Juno will be helming production for the album. I have high expectations for this one. See Yojo in action on YouTube.

A solo album from Dawny, former Bluedawn vocalist, is still slated for release later this year – perhaps by summer’s end – and that’s something I’m very much looking forward to.

I was sitting in on recording sessions with The Melody about a month ago. The band was recording new tracks for an upcoming EP, due for release in late summer or early autumn. At least one of the songs, 유 (Yu), is currently being played in television drama Coffee Shop. (Pictured: Kwang-Young and Go-eun standby in the sound booth, listening to Taru lay down a vocal track for 유 (Yu).)