Monocle, the upscale magazine edited by style guru and FT Fast Lane columnist Tyler Brulé, has long taken an interest in musicians who are off the standard beaten track of Western commercial pop and rock. From Iceland to Japan, Brulé and his team usually have some interesting recommendations, and back in 2006 some of them made their way into his FT column, including a track from my favourite album by Roller Coaster, Sunsick.
In December and January they supplement their bumper seasonal print edition of their magazine with a few podcasts, the Monocle Winter Series, in which they combine conversation with music. This year they feature two critically-acclaimed bands from Korea: electro-pop quartet, W&Whale, and alternative rockers, 3rd Line Butterfly.
W&Whale played on their podcast released on Christmas Eve, playing tracks from their 2008 album, Hard Boiled, which almost made it into LKL’s list of recommended albums for that year (probably one of the strongest of recent years for Korean music), but won Korean Music Awards for Best Electronic/Dance Album and Song of the Year in 2009.
Nominated at the 2010 Korean Music Awards for Song of the Year and Modern Rock Song of the Year honours, 3rd Line Butterfly belts out a blustery medley of their favorite festival anthems on the January 7th edition of the podcast. In celebration of their 10th anniversary as a band, 3rd Line Butterfly has just re-released completely remastered versions of all their albums on iTunes. The band was included in both Philip‘s and refresh_daemon‘s picks for album of the year 2010.
A collection of W&Whale’s tracks have been re-released on iTunes by DFSB Kollective:
And here’s a sample of 3rd Line Butterfly’s tracks available from the same source:
The podcasts are available on the Monocle website and as a free download on iTunes.