Hong’s Cave

o. “the first snow” by Yim KyungA

I guess this is a rare album for Korea. It’s a jazz vocal album all written by Ms. Yim. She is accompanied by Marco Panascia on bass, Scott Frdrick [sic] on drums, Song Young Joo on piano, and Gianni Chiarello on guitar.

It’s encouraging that a jazz album (and original at that) is being produced in Korea. However, her music is a bit too generic and I didn’t particularly feel much attraction from listening to it. But still, I hope to see more original efforts on jazz in Korea.

o. “like the bible” by Big Mama

Big Mama are Lee YeongHyeon, Shin, YeonA, Lee, JiYeong, and Park MinHye. It’s mostly an R&B album. They have beautiful voices, but still nothing special.

Actually, what’s most interesting about this group of ladies is the fact that they are consciously not advertising their faces and looks. You know, these days in Korean pop music scene like any other fields, the looks or the images are the utmost marketing point. What I read was that these four ladies had beautiful voices and great musical talents, but their looks were what most music management/promotion companies wanted. So, this is what they tried. Isn’t it sad? I have seen their pictures, and I thought they didn’t look that bad.

Anyway, as far as the album goes, it just felt that it was a collection of works from four individual artists, rather than a group (which might not be that surprising). I hope they would have better luck next time.

o. “Native Place” by Counter Reset

For some reasons, I think of Blink 182 while listening to them. All the regular tracks on the CD are in English (two bonus tracks are in Korean). This is not too rare for underground bands, it seems. I think it might be that some portion of musicians that populate the underground scene, has lived in the U.S. at one time or other (if you look at how many U.S. Ph.D.’s Korea have). Actually, the lyrics don’t make sense mostly, but that doesn’t seem to matter that much, I guess.

Anyway, they are Choi Ji Hoon (vocal, guitars), Lee Hyung Suk (guitars, vocal), Jung Woo Yong (bass), and Kim Sang Won (drums).

o. “bluedawn” by PuReunSaeByeok

From the website, I get the feeling that they started out on the web by publishing their demo tracks on their site. That atmosphere carries over to their somewhat anonymous identities. They are sorrow (electric guitars, etc.) and dawn (vocal, acoustic guitars, etc.). It seems they usually have a guest drummer. Also, interestingly, their website contents are hosted under the website of The The.

I really like their style. They are slow, dreamy songs, in a folk style. However, they also bring in a lot of electronic elements into it as many other contemporaries do. The lyrics are short and simple, but the music and the voices seem to carry most of the emotions.