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Category Archives: Park Hyun-bin

Park Hyun Bin #1: Gondre Mandre

02-May-07
(Released August 2006) Stern(1,g) Possibly my most disappointing speculative purchase ever, this is the second stop in my journey through the younger generation of artists who appear to be involved with the Trot revival. As with my first encounter, I can't make the connection between what I'm hearing and what I'm told Trot is all about. At least with SuJu-T's dreadful single there was something concrete to react against. This album is peculiarly characterless. The music style is more south or south-east Mediterranean than anything else, although the instrumentation in most of the numbers is so synthetic that it's difficult to locate anywhere. Possibly the most distinctive track is the third, which opens with a nod to Enrico Morricone's soaring film scores, and ...
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Trot makes a comeback

21-Feb-07
To be perfectly accurate, I don't think Trot ever really went away. Rather, like many trends in popular culture, its fanbase was getting older and there would come a point when no-one was listening to it any more. But when Trot compilations are selling millions through street vendors (see chapter 7 of Keith Howard's book), it's not dead yet. But what has been happening is that it's finding a new, younger audience. Just as Robbie Williams and Rod Stewart have been exploring the songs of the Rat Pack, so a young generation of K-pop singers have been exploring the popular music heritage enjoyed by their parents and grandparents, reintroducing it to the new generation. The revival is generally dated to 2005, when ...
Also filed in Jang Yoon-jeong, Music: K-pop, Music: other, Super Junior | | Comments (0) »