The title of this post is a throwaway comment Bruce Sterling made in his lecture, “The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole” (mp3, video with terrible audio), in the course of mentioning that most scientists who are able to do the scary stuff that frightens Bill Joy are unlikely to be willing to take up residence in the caves of Afghanistan or up in North Korea just to get the freedom to research things that have been banned by everyone else. It reminded me of a funny thing an ex-student in Beijing told me — this blog is blocked …
Tag: korean indie
Star Wars: 스타워즈 프로젝트 컴필레이션 (2008)
Quite a long time ago, K-indie insider helikoppter of Indieful ROK emailed me to let me know about an album she figured I’d be interested in. The reason she thought I’d be interested was, you see, my ongoing series about SF in Korea. (How she stays on top of music in Korea is something everyone paying attention is amazed by, considering she’s not actually in Korea. Such is the power of the internet… and strong passions.) Now, this is going to be delicate. See, there’s such a thing as genre-media-inspired music in the West. It’s called filk, and it generally …
Hwang Shin Hye Band and Bulnabang Star Sausage Club — Live at SangSang Madang
This is a review of the 불나방스타쏘세지클럽/황신혜밴드 show at 상상마당 last night. If you’re interested in Korean indie music, here’s my skewed and fannish take, behind the cut.
Pipi Band and Po-keu Song
Yay! Lime got me a few of the CDs I asked her to order for me. Among them, 불가능한작전 by 삐삐밴드 (Pipi Band). Often referred to as “punk,” I find them more a kind of mixture of freakiness, electronic, and rock. Apparently they spat onto a camera or the ground or something while they were on TV once, and people thought they were bizarre and rude as a result. They’re not really around anymore, but that CD was still available. Bizarre stuff, moreoso if you’ve had the lyrics explained. As I have had, though I may sit down and try …
Me?
Sometimes I google my on name to see what other people (say, students) will see when they google my name. It kills me that in Korea, on one of the major music sites, I’m listed under “Indie Rock/Modern Rock”. It’s not surprising, since that’s the only kind of band I’ve played with here long, but I’d have never expected that. Would be nice to get “jazz” or “avant garde” added to that sometime while I still live here…
eclexys » Tunes (with me in ‘em)
Seeing that Dabang Band CDs seem to be all sold out, and seeing that as far as I know, we have no outstanding legal responsibilities to Cavare (the label for the Product CD, who’s never disclosed how many CDs sold or how much money was made, or any other contractual stuff since the contracts were signed and disappeared) I’ve gone ahead and updated this site’s “Tunes (with me in ‘em)” subpage to include all tracks from the first two Dabang Band CDs. I’m going to confirm with the other band members and then if they’re okay with it, release it …
Taxi Blues and Other Dabang News
Here’s some surprising news! Myoung Jae, with whom I used to play in the Dabang Band, informed me that a film that played at the Busan film festival, titled Taxi Blues, is being prepared for general release in Korea. The film features a snippet of the band’s performance of the original song “Taxi Blues” (one of Myoung’s babies) as well as having the whole song play over the closing credits. So anyone in Korea, if you want to see my OST debut — meaning the first and probably last time anything I’m involved in gets onto an OST — make …
Bugsmusic Dabang
I know it’s a little late since I quit the band a while ago, but some of you haven’t heard the songs from the more recent CD. I walked into the office to hear one of the songs, which was playing on the office PC. It was being streamed from Bugsmusic, and this is the page where all the tracks can be viewed and streamed from. UPDATE 20 January 2005: That link above doesn’t display all of the songs we have online there, but this one does. And here are links to where you can check out some of my …
Listen To The Words
The fiendish Adam asks us this week: What are your 5 favorite lines from any song? Not the song itself, but specific lyrics that you dig, and find yourself repeating in your head. Oh, now, that’s just not fair. I listen most of the time to instrumental music, man! I mean, no singing, no words… Well, I’m gonna have to cheat a wee bit, choosing songs that were at some point important to me, however brief that moment was; so please, please bear with me. The complete lyrics of the Nat King Cole song It’s ONly a Paper Moon, which …
Tongueless in Jeonbuk
Well, I’m not tongueless but it feels like I have no tongue. This medicated mouthwash I’m using is making it feel as if my tongue is just not there, at least for nine of the first ten or so minutes after I use it. (The first minute, it feels as if it’s haloed in burning light, perhaps transfigured, so to speak.) Last night we played an okay show to a rather big crowd, big considering the venue. I should have brought my mic, but I thought we’d be playing “unplugged”, ie. with an acoustic guitar and minimal mics. Turned out …