Postscript (Sick-Disco)

Untranslated Korean Title / Untranslated Korean Artist

via Lovefingers (06.29.09 - Fingertrack 898)

The End Is Fast Approaching

MP3 Chinese Farmer / The Ten Speeds

Left Seoul and returned to the States, so WPNOB will retire in a few short days, though the content will remain online. If all goes according to plan, this is the second-to-last post. As a courtesy to circles, it's a song by the mildly-Korean rockers The Ten Speeds, whom I wrote about at the very beginning.

Read the first banana note here. Read the last one soon.

Time, That Tasty Donut: 4 Convolutions of Jackson 5

Time: The Donut of the Heart / Bulssajo (불싸조) [2006]

Time: The Donut of the Heart / Jay Dee [2006]

All I Do Is Think of You / Troop [1989]

All I Do Is Think of You / Jackson 5 [1975]

In 1989, this was unthinkable. Sure, an aspiring R&B boy band might cover a Jackson 5 tune to flesh out their sophomore effort with a third single, but who, without the assistance of strong psychotropic drugs, could imagine a Korean post-rock band covering an American instrumental hip-hop track that reworked said Jackson 5 tune? (Not me, I was 7 years old.)

The result is impressive, musically speaking. But it's also more than that. Bulssajo's version of "Time: The Donut of the Heart" is a neat example of the way that American culture is/was digested in Korea. In general, one expects certain Western styles to emerge in Asia second hand. Korea opened to the West in the '90s and thus, to oversimplify, received both Jackson 5 and J Dilla simultaneously. Much of popular American culture was consumed vertically rather than horizontally. Take punk rock for example.

In 1998, Tim Tangherlini, Professor of Asian Languages and Culture at UCLA, went to Korea to explore the emerging punk rock scene. The result was a documentary, Our Nation: A Korean Punk Rock Community and a solid scholarly article, Anarchy in the UK, Solidarity in the ROK. The following is an excerpt from an interview with Tangherlini conducted by Meg Sullivan.

Tangherlini was particularly fascinated by the speed with which a single culture was digesting a whole musical tradition — albeit a contemporary one. Thanks to the liberalization of restrictions on rock music, nightclubs and foreign travel, the Internet and such music file-sharing services as Napster, South Korean youth in the 1990s enjoyed unfettered access for the first time to foreign rock, he explained.

“They got all of punk rock history at once — the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and Nirvana,” Tangherlini said. “It was like being in London or New York in 1978 and Seattle in the mid-80s, all at the same time.”

The corollary of this phenomenon is that if you're a Korean punker you needn't cite The Clash as an influence if you actually like Green Day better. A recent New York Times article included a quote from a young girl describing China, in it's love of Korean pop culture, as not postmodern enough for Sex and the City. I'd argue that Korea, and possibly urban China as well, has leapt straight over post-modernity into a phase outside time: meta-modernity. (The grad school bs-ing has officially begun.)

In this leap—a moment and an eternity—Green Day becomes The Clash. And this de-emphasis on originality, or "date of origin," is not limited to the sphere of popular music. Take fashion for example. If you grew up in Korea and first encountered ripped jeans in the late '90s, the difference between wearing through a pair of Levi's yourself, buying a pre-worn pair from a thrift store, and buying a pre-torn pair from Urban Outfitter's is minimized. It's much harder to argue for the authenticity of any particular band or style if you receive all bands and styles at once. After all, what does time matter if it's just a donut, if it just loops around on itself?

At the same time, you can't simply plead ignorance. Bulssajo represents a thoughtful approach to embodying the vertical consumption of culture, an approach that creates new possibilities ("make[s] it new") by paying attention to details. Their Jay Dilla cover suggests that when the donut of time is squashed, when a song's sections, intro and chorus, are folded together, when music history is compressed into a single moment, the original guises of authenticity (older, rarer, etc.) cease to be important. International borders disappear when everything good is everything to everyone.

Selecting a genre, or a history of influences, also becomes less important. Bulssajo's guitarist, who DJ's in his free time, is influenced equally by JD and the original J5; the band itself equally by Yo La Tengo and Velvet Underground. Unburdened by the history of western music, they aren't ashamed of the recency of their idols. And by condensing them all to a single point—by mixing rather than layering—they have no trouble looking fit to eat two dozen more while downing the entire first donut in a single bite. An infinite, and grossly beautiful, eating contest of sorts.

More Bulssajo here.

I've Misplaced My Pants

Hi / The Underwear Band

안녕 / 우리는 속옷도 생기고

Mexico Line High-Speed Train / TUB

멕시코행 고속열차 / 우리는 속옷도 생기고

Along with Bulssajo, these pantsless Korean post-rockers opened for Mono on Saturday, April 8th, in Seoul. The show was good times. The three guitarists remained seated, two facing the amps and away from the audience. The bassist is a girl; she stood in the middle doing her thing, as if the three guitar players were in competition for her hand. They wooed away, each in search of the largest dowry.

But the drummer and his mallets actually stole the show. When their go-to song, "Hi" (or "Annyeong," for AD fans), peaks and the spotlight turns upward on the audience, something is really happening. The sound and the light crest, eventually, but you are left with a feeling, and staring at the drummer. Try 6:32 in the studio version.

TUB disbanding on May 2nd, but they have a show this Saturday in Seoul with the psych-rock band, The Mustangs. One can only hope that, like the five elements that form Captain Planet, these two will unite to form The Musty Stanky Underwear Band.

Living Things Living in the Subways

비단사슴 / 3rd Line Butterfly [2000]

View of the Rain / Urge Overkill [1995]

3rd line butterfly | Butterfly of Line 3 | Line #3 Butterfly

In the future: every band is born on a screen.

Every band emerges from its cocoon to be replaced by tiny costume players. From atop a small translucent table, these men and women mime the motions while the real musicians are kept underneath where they are strongly encouraged to build albumsworth of material to be showcased over the course of the drama's life. If you watch from far away, you're not sure which men and women are onstage. You're not sure whether you're at a filming or a performance. When you try to focus on the individuals, they transform into people you know, but just barely: distant cousins and former two-doors-over neighbors, coughing shopkeepers and kids you only recognize from speed-walking practice.

But first, before they were born, the band sits in a tiny apartment and records something of its own: Self-Titled Obsession. Before they end up projecting themselves through what will be praised as the best-written Korean television drama of 2002, Ruler of Your Own World, before they sometimes forget what their own faces look like, they write thirteen songs for no special reason. Most of them approach Blonde Redhead, but in the ninth track is hidden a song that sounds like The Magic Numbers covering the chorus of "View of the Rain" by Urge Overkill—also a ninth track. Magic number nine, number nine, number nine.

In English, it's called "Merely the Deer." In the future: that it is there.

ATTN Musicians: Sample These Clips!

The Rhythm Method / TOEFL Listening

Hobbies / TOEFL Listening

Let me briefly explain how TOEFL Listening classes work at most hagwons in Korea: The teacher stands in front of a group of 10 to 15 Korean middle schoolers or high schoolers with a small boombox, a tape, and a book. He or she plays a recorded lecture from the tape while the kids fill in blanks in their workbooks. This is difficult for the students, so the teacher will often rewind and replay short pieces of the lecture. The primary skill required of the teacher, then, is an ability to maneuver a tape deck expertly. Basically, you end up playing tiny portions over and over, as many as five or six times, spaced only by the sound of an old tape rewinding. This part is fun because it sounds like a glitch-hop song, like the teacher should be simultaneously beatboxing and manning the decks.

But TOEFL Listening class really gets interesting when the content of the academic lecture is something special itself. Sometimes you learn that crows are smarter than chimpanzees. Sometimes you are provided with a thorough answer to the age-old question "What is a sneeze?" My absolute favorite lecture, however, is entitled "The Rhythm Method of Birth Control." When I play this one for my 11-year-old students, the number of questions they ask is simply inspiring. It's particularly fun to navigate the rocky moral terrain of not really describing intercourse while making it clear that the rhythm method is not effective—but still more effective than the pull-out method.

The highlight from "The Rhythm Method of Birth Control" occurs at 41 seconds in when the female lecturer announces, "The method's main flaw lies in the menstrual cycle itself."

The second clip is of a TOEFL conversation in which a man is asking a boy and a girl about their hobbies. The highlight occurs at 16 seconds in when the man does his very best impression of a sexual predator and says, "That's interesting... How many car models do you have?"

Welcome to the Delihouse

Chow Chow / Deli Spice

March 1st is "Independence Movement Day" in Korea, a day to commemorate the 1919 student demand for liberation from Japan, which was not achieved until after WWII. In celebration of the holiday, and because I haven't posted a Korean song in a while, here's an indie classic of sorts: "차우차우 (Chow Chow)."

This 1997 hit still seems to be Deli Spice's calling card even though the band's been around for almost 10 years now. It starts with a nice dream-rock guitar lick that would sound at home on Seam's Are You Driving Me Crazy? or The Problem with Me. The rest isn't as good as anything on those two albums, but Deli Spice does manage to reel in the K-pop penchant for melodrama just enough to make for a solid song.

I have yet to hear the rest of the catalogue, but it's gotta be awesome if the title of their second LP Welcome to the Delihouse is any indication. Ranks right up there with Welcome to My Face.

Put On Your Party Socks

Mr. Lee / The Disketttes

One day my boss says to me, "Jeremy, I have the best life in the world!" Taking the bait, I ask, "What makes your life so good?" (Beat.) I suddenly realize that he is being sarcastic. Even though he said "I have the best life in the world," he actually meant "I have the worst life in the world."

This all being quite complicated, I decided I would just give him a cheery song to make him feel better. I chose "Mr. Lee" by the Diskettes because his name also happens to be Mr. Lee. As I handed him a burned CD with only one song on it, I was fully aware that he might not enjoy it. Mr. Lee, the boss, is a 40-year-old Korean man with a wife and a son; Mr. Lee, the song, is a sock-hop clapfest appropriate for birthday parties in which the guest of honor is under 7 years old. Fortunately, the CD did not go to waste. Mr. Lee's son happens to be well under 7 years old, and he has recently fallen in love with "Mr. Lee," transferring it to cassette in order to listen to it on a Walkman everyday at school. An elementary school in Seoul. Just where it most belongs.

A number of other songs by the Diskettes and their friends can be found here. The band is also often happily featured at Said the Gramophone.

Crash and Bizzzurn

Crash and Burn / Anokha

Take Ecstasy with Me (Magnetic Fields cover) / !!!

We all know about the didgeridoo, mostly from summer camp counselors who thought they were really "out there" because they knew how to blow into an aboriginal Australian instrument. Amber, one half of Seoul-based Anokha, plays the sucker like they wish they could in northern Wisconsin.

Nowhere is that truer than on the explosive two-minute instrumental that opens Anokha's 2005 debut, Rough. On "Crash and Burn," the didgeridoo sounds like a pulsating lightsaber. Or rather a pair of pulsating lightsabers scratching and courting each other. Meanwhile, Anokha's other half (Pam) bangs away on the drumkit like a crazy ninja. All in all, it's some awesome ultra-violence.

The rest of Rough is a mixed bag. The other instrumentals are worth a listen, but most of the songs are weighed down by lyrics that read like they were lifted from poems locked away in a sixth-grader's journal ("Burn out desire, smite it with fire," "I'm choking on the pieces of my broken heart," and the like). This short viddy of Anokha performing "Crash and Burn" proves they've got the frantic energy to do better.

The !!! cover of "Take Ecstasy with Me" shares two extremely important qualities with "Crash and Burn." First, it begins with a similar lightsaber-ish sound, though synthed. Second, it rules. That's the other thing.

Best of the Best

Nothing new today. But in case 20 songs was too much to handle, I've hand-picked the best of the best from the Lunar New Year Extravaganza. These three should make Eric Roberts proud.

Best of LNYE, Pt. 1: Las Cruces Jail / Two Gallants [American]

Best of LNYE, Pt. 2: Ha Ha Ha Song / Jaurim [Korean]

Best of LNYE, Pt. 3: Bijt Mijn Tong Af / Spinvis [Dutch]

LNYE, Pt. 1
LNYE, Pt. 2
LNYE, Pt. 3
LNYE Condensed: Best of the Best

LNYE, Pt. 2: Purple Rain... Forest

A Side / Jaurim
Vlad / Jaurim
Ha Ha Ha Song / Jaurim
17171771 / Jaurim

Jaurim is the foremost deity of Korean indie pop. The four carefree bicyclers pictured above emerged in 1997 as Ugly Duckling, quickly changed their name to Jaurim (which means "Purple Rain Forest" in Korean), and awoke to fame after recording the soundtrack for a popular Korean television drama (The Man with a Flower). Over the following 9 years, they released approximately 10 albums—it's hard to keep track because lead singer Kim Yoon-ah kinda-sorta left the band in 2002. Since then, she's released a number of solo efforts, the remaining band members recorded an album as the Chococreamrolls, and they've all collaborated for live shows and their most recent LP, All You Need Is Love (2004).

The draw is definitely Yoon-ah; her voice is Jaurim's superpower. On tracks like the brief "A Side" (off of 1999's Bijungkyojakob), a perfect opener or closer for a mixtape, she twees her way lightly through a single minute of la la la's. On "Vlad" (from 2002's Vol. 4) she flexes her muscles a bit more, running alongside crunchy guitars, singing in Korean, and yelling English fragments like, "Time to die" and "You'll be mine." But it's on the recent "reunification" album All You Need Is Love, that Yoon-ah really demonstrates her range. On "Ha Ha Ha Song"—the album's sing-along standout—she moves adroitly back-and-forth between a Latin lounge-singer persona and a punkier guise, oftentimes within the spacing of a single phrase. And on "17171771" (which boasts a melody so familiar the song sounds like a cover), she poses as the delicate type despite knowing full well that she's a great deal more.

LNYE, Pt. 1
LNYE, Pt. 2
LNYE, Pt. 3
LNYE Condensed: Best of the Best

Increase Your Sexual Potency (With Distortion)

MP3 Immortal Seal's Gallbladder / Bulssajo
불멸의 해구신 / 불싸조

MP3 Furious Five / Bulssajo
퓨리어스 파이브 / 불싸조

That's right, the name of the first track off Bulssajo's debut LP Furious Five (2005) translates roughly to "Immortal Seal's Gallbladder." Apparently, in Korean the title is a pun that references a popular television drama; a sea captain who developed some sort of turtle-shaped warships; and the real practice, among Korean men, of eating the gallbladder of seals for increased (i.e. everlasting) sexual stamina. Also known as "staminamina."

Bulssajo itself is a three-piece dream-rock outfit. I saw them play a short set last weekend where they opened with an impressive song of their own and then played a faithful cover of Yo La Tengo's "I Heard You Looking." I figured being as white as Ira Kaplan and knowing it was enough of a reason to talk with the guitarist, Sangchol Han, after the show. He was friendly and explained that Bulssajo is currently in the studio recording their first real album (Furious Five was just a "test recording"). He said he likes YLT but also rattled off People Under the Stairs and Mr. Lif as influences because he spins on the weekends.

The two songs posted above both remind me of Seam, but the guitar work has a harder edge, and the vocals are mixed so far back you can't understand the lyrics no matter what language you speak. As a whole, the album is rough but very consistent.

More Bulssajo here.


MP3 I Heard You Looking / Yo La Tengo

MP3 I Heard You Looking (live 6/20/95) / Yo La Tengo

One of my favorite rock instrumentals of all time. The guitar's droning march becomes more and more weirdly joyful each time it emerges from its own distortion.

I Heart The Lord

No Job / I Love JH

Oh My Darling / I Love JH

Word on the street has it that the mysterious letters in the name I Love JH refer to both Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jesus H. Christ. But listening to the first single from ILJH's debut LP (which came out yesterday), one gets the sense that they might as well stand for the singer's middle-school boyfriend and that delicious Josh Hartnett. Whatever you believe, "No Job" is gummy and reasonably representative of Korean indie pop. The lyrics are in English and only occasionally of any interest ("I don't wanna talk about life"), but the hooks are in all the right spots.

Mildly related: According to both Dan Brown and part four of the Bible, Jesus' full middle name is Herbert. But they are wrong. Like Harry Truman, Jesus has a middle initial that refers only to itself.

A Teeth-Whitening Pep Rally

MP3 Lovely / Kim Jong-guk [down]

This is the very beginning of the soon to be eminent We Pass Notes On Bananas, so the two songs for today are supposed to represent the opposite extremes of music in South Korea. This one's by Kim Jong-guk who's been around ten years and still has the voice of a castrated angel, not to mention hair that appears to be unshatterable. "Lovely" is from his third album, This Is Me (2005), and can currently be heard on every radio in every convenience store throughout the land. I'd tell you to buy the album and support Mr. Kim, but the melody is so catchy and the song so ridiculous that you probably won't want to. Plus, he's got to be a jillionaire by now.


MP3 Ping / The Ten Speeds

In contrast, The Ten Speeds barely exist. They only record when their London-based guitarist visits Seoul. They have no drummer. And their bassist is a Canadian who's been living in Korea for ten years and plans to leave soon. (He wears a Paul McCartney hat and drives a purple scooter.) But "Ping" is good, if unpolished, Ian Curtis worship, and the band somehow continues to survive in an underground scene focused primarily on punk and noise. I'd tell you to buy the album, but it's not an album and it costs nothing. "Ping" and five other tracks are available at the website for Double Riche, the band's moniker before it was rechristened The Ten Speeds. Like, you know, a bicycle.

More on The Ten Speeds...