(Doremi media, March 2006) I think I’ve been overdosing on Korean R&B and ballads recently. Included in my recent YesAsia delivery was Vibe’s third album – another speculative purchase because I was under the mistaken impression that they were going to be playing in London so I thought I would see what I would be … [Read More]
Category: Music genres (page 98)
Coming Soon
It’s going to take me a while to digest yesterday’s concert in the Fairfield Hall, but it’s going to get a thumbs up. In the meanwhile, I share with you a snapshot (apologies for the poor quality – it was taken, Korean-style, with a mobile phone) of Lee Soo-young, Kim Young-im and Joo Hyung-ki leading … [Read More]
SG Wannabe 3rd album
I know I’m not going to make myself popular with some of the visitors to this site, but I’m not going to give this CD a rave review. If I say that it’s the sort of music a teenager could put on the CD player and not have her father say “what are you listening … [Read More]
Crying Nut: Best — Wild Wild Live
I’m doing my preparatory work for the Korean festival, and put this on my CD player last night when I should have been going to bed. The resulting explosion from the speakers can’t have endeared me to my neighbours. The sound of Crying Nut reminds me a bit of the Kaiser Chiefs in I predict … [Read More]
Mayday transport wanted
As I write this, I’m listening to Lee Soo Young’s 7th Album. And while there are elements which are identifiably and obviously Korean (someone needs to do a detailed analysis of the harmonic progressions in Korean romantic popular music to substantiate the claim that there is such a thing as identifiably Korean music, but there … [Read More]
Never trust KBS. Ever.
Sorry to disappoint you (and myself), but the alleged concert by Lee Soo Young, SG Wannabe etc in London on 24 May is a figment of KBS’s fevered imagination. Trying to find anyone in London who knows anything about Lee Soo Young’s appearance at all is a huge struggle anyway (and details are STILL not … [Read More]
A little gripe about CD packaging
I’m turning into one of those grumpy old men who gets annoyed by the stupidest of things. A very trivial rant today prompted by the latest delivery from YesAsia (I’m mugging up in preparation for the K-pop concert which I hope is happening on 24 May but which no-one apart from KBS seems to know … [Read More]
Sorry, another rant
So it seems that in order to find out what’s happening in the UK we all have to be avid followers of Seoul-based K-Pop forums. Further to my post yesterday I ran another google search on “Think Korea 2006”, and I found out that three days ago there was a posting at Soompi.com that broke … [Read More]
Frustration at more examples of poor Korean organisation
Thanks to Hyun-ho Khang for letting me know about a Korean performance by the Royal Philharmonic at the Fairfield Halls on the Mayday bank holiday. And absolutely no marks to the organisers of Think Korea 2006 and the Fairfield Halls for not publishing the programme. The RPO’s website doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of the … [Read More]
Theatre visit: Eun Me Ahn’s Chunhyang – an impossible love
I’m afraid I lack the critical faculties to describe the evening adequately, but it’s well worth going to and I think I might be going back to see it again tomorrow. It’s two nights only. I went along with an avowed non dance fan and someone who was hoping for something very traditional, and both … [Read More]
Think Korea: Korean Song and Dance, at the Malden Centre
The third performance of this year’s official Think Korea 2006 programme: Korean Song and Dance Date: 7 pm, 29 April 2006 Venue: The Malden Centre | Blagdon Road | New Malden | Surrey KT3 4TA Programme PIANO: PARK Young Ah, Kang Hyo Jin CHANG Ilnam com A Tree-tombstone HWANG Seung Kyung Kim DongJin Wish to … [Read More]
A Scent of Eastern wind: music at St James’s Piccadilly
At very short notice I head of a Korean classical music fusion concert entitled “Scent of Eastern Wind” at St James’s Piccadilly on 6 April 2006. I approached the concert with some trepidation, being nervous about the blending of eastern and western instruments, particularly in playing western music. I was partly right. The least successful … [Read More]
Elevator music leads to defection
To many it’s the sort of music one would endure all sorts of hardship to get away from — but to a talented North Korean pianist it was a revelation which led him to defect to the South. Yes, it’s the easy-listening grooves of Richard Clayderman which inspired the conversion. It says something about the … [Read More]
Think Korea: Ahn Eun-mi’s Chunhyang, at the Peacock Theatre
Ahn Eun-mi adapts the Chunhyang story for this special show at the Peacock. Chunhyang (An impossible Love) Date: 11-12 April, 2006 Venue: Peacock Theatre Introduction Chunhyang (An impossible Love) is the tragic tale of love between a rich governor’s and a cuurtesan’s daughter. The tale is one of only five surviving examples of Pansori, ancient … [Read More]
Hyori withdraws “plagiarism” single
Lee Hyori has decided that discretion is the better part of valour, and has withdrawn performances of her single Get Ya!, from her album Dark Angel, which allegedly steals from Britney Spears’s Do Somethin’. [Read More]
Korean protests baffle Belgians
I can’t put it better than the Chosun Ilbo’s own headline. One of the more peculiar stories. In fact today’s Chosun is packed with entertaining stories: Britney Spears’s songwriters accuse Lee Hyo-lee of plagiarism; and a sex survey by pharmaceutical company Bayer finds Korean men the most selfish in bed. [Read More]