10 November 2010

Korea Homesick Blues: Podcast of the Now; Also, The Last Rant Ever, I Promise

    A man called Dave Candler runs a blog that should alter the awareness of independent music of all genres in Korea tremendously. The blog has been running for a short while and has just published its 15th episode, featuring a few bands I hadn't heard of and am quite pleased to now know about. I had quit going out to shows in Hongdae since a brief run with 10 Magazine as a nightlife contributor. Talking to club owners about the music community was simply too depressing, and what I wanted to end up talking them into doing was unrealistic although by no means a new idea. More on that later.
    Because the music here is frequently awful; it is sophomoric, it is common, it lacks any sense of urgency to be known or original character. We have clones and copy bands; in fact we lost a round of a quote-unquote battle of the bands at the eternally wretched Rocky Mountian Tavern in Itaewon to the worst hiphop group I've ever heard in my life (a group that turned out to be very close to the judges, happily enough) and to a band that performed mostly covers of early 2000's screamo. Clearly they aren't looking for anything interesting. Popular live music in Seoul must be easily chanted by drunks and easily digested for the mentally challenged, predigested if possible for maximum absorption. It must be forgettable as well, or else people would eventually realize that it's a carbon copy of something else that while archetypal in its day is remembered by only a small, devoted cult following for a reason (which of course as a description does not describe me or my inscrutable affections). A few bands on KHB's podcast are up for worst band ever. But afterwards, The Good News!
                                         A poster from the unwitting Nazis
    We're letting Galaxy Express go; they're not worth the effort. So instead of a few poseurs with expensive leather jackets trying to invoke a decade they weren't old enough to experience (the 80s), nevermind their unconscious inclusion of WW2 era SS 'lightning bolt' in many of their posters and logos, we have a Epitaph cover band that is essentially an 'And Out Come the Wolves' era Rancid knockoff with First Round Heroes. We also have a latter-day Green Day knockoff, from Busan apparently, with Self Made Hero. No word yet on whether the bands called each other before deciding on their names. "Three words? Ok, and the last word should be something epic since our music is anything but..."
    The episode focuses on the ambiguously spelled Sighborg (often spelled with 2-4 Ss and a similar number of Gs), a local project I've come to avoid but which is improving. Having once obsessed over carnival loopiness with no sense of melody or progression, the duo has overcome their inability to invoke melody and while remaining on a meandering path in their aural construction, are now producers of pretty, if entirely scale-based, explorations of their synthesizers. The sounds work, usually, and they please the 8-bit lofi Nintendo pop crowd. I've been to a few Sighborg gigs, and the sound used to make me hallucinate, or nearly, in the worst possible way, and conjured images of a Satanic Pierrot masturbating over cribs with an enormous lollipop in one hand and simultaneously spattering blood out of its bedeviled toofy (spelling intended) grin. That's no longer the case, but focus will help these guys in the end. So they are, sadly, out of the running for Worst Band in Korea.
                                                       No longer awful
    It's hard to keep up the negativity, because it exhausts me as much as it does you, so while we let the two pseudopunker groups (can't blame them, pop punk's as easily to play as the name is to say, though it seems to be a bit of a challenge for the First Round Heroes) battle for suckitude, we'll look at something creative and inspiring.
    First up is not Matt Spence. An occasionally convincing acousticist (let's just invent new words in this land of pidgin English, shall we?), he is actually best when he's bad, like when he stutters on the tracks in a manner that makes me think maybe he did actually not know what to sing for a moment. It works, because it sounds sincere. The epic expositions about Dongdaemun are tiresome and I will not give any credit to a band (or musician) that tries to marry its identity to soju (cough, Heroes, either/or First Round or Self Made) or such specific places. That's what made musicians like Simon and Garfunkel or Dylan (selectively on both counts, I admit) great: you could see them singing about being anywhere, especially if it the place in quesiton was  unfamiliar to the listener. The familiarity kills it, and he reaches for rhymes when he should just be himself, which in this song he occasionally is, and should keep it up, should he want to come to be known for his quality rather than his artifice.
                              What's that, a Gibson Thunderbird? Very original...
    ... And, wait, just a moment! It seems like I've gone and made a mistake! I've confused a punk-pop band for a post-punk band! They get so alike... I've invoked two bands from the 15th podcast and mixed them with the 13th, which includes Kachisan and ...Whatever That Means. Not a lot to say about either of them: you've heard them before without ever having heard their names. So they're like a live jukebox, which means that they're more fun to watch while not challenging your taste or making you come to terms with originality, torturous feat that that is, and, at least in Korea, are probably much cheaper to hire for a night of music than installing an MP3 player.
    Almost awesome is The Bell and The Hammer, a folksy band that I loved until the singing began. Great tones, wonderfully simple instrumentation. Actually, genius instrumental tones. Dry, wooden bass and guitar (the kind on which you can hear the fretting action, which I'm a sucker for, for some reason), dry, loose drums, perfectly matched to occupy a balanced spectrum, played simply, convincingly reminiscent of a bygone style often imitated but rarely repeated well. It is repeated well here, but I cannot bear the sappy, overly beautiful and overworked fluctuations of the female lead, though the male backing portion is suitably minimal. I'm not saying any of these groups are bad, simply that I don't like them at all and the reasons behind that sentiment.
                                                            Kachisan
    But I apologize, I meant to speak of music that is creative and inspiring, and got caught on a tangent of ill will there. But I'm not this guy at least, so I will have a good thing to say: D.Y.D.S.U. is awesome, excellent minimalism. Sparse, empty, textured, slow to make itself known: a perfect execution of restrained evolution. Also making something unique is Dean Jukes, with a wonderfully executed electronic track that excels in the mastery of layered expectation, evolving, receding, and returning like an organic entity pulling itself out of null space. Two acts to be keen on.
    And before we get off-track, I mean to say good things about the Korean Homesick Blues Podcast and its creator, David Candler. Let's say I provide a negative enthusiasm to balance his positive enthusiasm. His encouraging remarks are often wonderful, and perfectly accurate. I certainly am not a taste-maker.. I would have to have taste in the first place, which in lacking, I have only enthusiasm, imperfectly and selectively. It's a love it or hate it binary relationship.
    Before you get on me, I know, I know: I'm a bastard, I'm being mean, being negative. But I want new, I want original. I want ugly, if necessary, I want it INVENTIVE AND IRREVERENT AND ALIVE. And I want it straight from a creator, someone who doesn't care a lick about any of these 'scenes' that pass for community. Community is glued together by adhesive that lasts, and what lasts is innovation, not repetition. Stop referencing, quoting, and inferring and START SPEAKING! Or put down that instrument and glue yourself to reruns of MTV from whatever decade you're trying to invoke.
    So: check out Dean Dukes and especially D.Y.D.S.U. I'm not saying it's good, I'm saying I like it.
                                              D.Y.D.S.U.
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NOTE/UPDATE: Give that there has been some increased traffic to this blog for reasons unrelated to this post, and given that time provides altered perspectives as situations change and likewise do our relations and values - anyway, I am leaving this up even though this post encapsulates the lowest point I've ever been at personally, creatively, during my time in Korea. I keep this up even though it risks rubbing old wounds open and offending those mentioned, as well as risking relationships which have only recently rekindled and which are sometimes friendships, are sometimes acquaintances of utility, or what have you.. I keep this up as a memory of what it was to see this way, of where I was and where I am.. as a warning, a reminder of where I may return if i ignore those things, those people, those movements which have pulled me, at times by my own effort, at times by the efforts of others, at time as pure accidence, only at some times though concerted will and clear intent, from this negative mire which was every bit as toxic to me internally as it appears to be from the outside. This is the blog post of a rabid animal who knows only a fever of sharing its infection - and so I keep this up. I hope that anyone who takes offense to my past positions may be in the present more gracious than I was in the past and by being so may appreciate that this no longer, and for a long while now, represents any of my sentiments towards the creative pool of artists in Seoul and elsewhere and that as I've said, remains up for what is perhaps a selfish and potentially volatile reason, only to remind me of where I have been and may end up if I'm not careful, if I neglect myself and fail to appreciate the creative efforts of others no matter how much we may diverge in taste. 
October 12th 2012

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