Banned in China: Your Assurance of Quality Content

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 …

Continue Reading

Star Wars: 스타워즈 프로젝트 컴필레이션 (2008)

This entry is part 29 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

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 …

Continue Reading

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 �?�?밴드 (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 …

Continue Reading

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…

Continue Reading