Korean Indie Music: My Super White

Clazziquai Project “Can’t Go On My Own”

Starting out with the return of Clazziquai Project. We are really happy about their return because we have all of their albums and we’re craving for something new by them. Now we were honestly a wee bit disappointed with this first single only because we loved DJ Clazzi’s single “How We Feel” SO MUCH for its dreamy electro-pop feel. We get a little over saturated with acoustic guitar coffee shop music since the Indie scene in Korea is overflowing with a plethora of duos and trios starting bands like this. In turn, we were hoping from something a bit edgier from Clazziquai Project, but it’s not like this song is bad. I mean, their angelic voices alone are enough to make me feel like crap for singing along with them in my home. Hopefully we’ll here more electronic/synthy/DJ Clazzi tunes from them in the future, but for now I’ll just enjoy their melty voices.

Nell “White Night”

The video for this song is so confusing yet so clearly filled with symbolism that is makes me itchy. I just want to watch it a million times and write a 14 page essay on it and have my Professor tear into it for why it’s all wrong. Wait, now that I think about it, I don’t want to write an essay EVERY AGAIN!!!! But then again, staying up all night editing videos for the site does make me feel like I have an essay due the next day at 10am again. Back to the video. If we weren’t so brain dead from our huge work load this week, I would analyze this in detail, but the basic feeling we get is that this is a living re-enactment of what someone goes through when they end a relationship. It’s like a physical re-enacting of our inside emotions as we re-live memories and moments from our past relationship coupled with trying to get through everyday life without your ex-lover. I don’t care to explain further but the lyrics seem to match up with my theory. *Professor Martina closes her notes and walks about* The song itself is much more upbeat then their last single, and it’s divided into rock ballad vs ballad ballad, but my favourite part is the amazing vocals at the 2:34 second mark with the painfully beautiful “I CAN’T GET OVER YOU”. Love it.

Cassette Swarzenegger “Super Hi Fi”

Okay, so first off, big pet peeve about Korean Indie bands. It’s like they don’t want anyone but Koreans to buy their albums. This band, Cassette Schwarzenegger, released their album “1집 Gym With You” in January 2012 and it’s available on every single Korean music buying site but NOT iTunes. So unless you read Korean and can sign up to these sites with the proper ID, you can’t even buy their music. I bought their single off iTunes as soon as I found out about them from our requestor today (thanks Sara! or Sarah!) but then I was surprised to find an entire album available when I did more research on them. Seriously. So when people complain that Kpop is the only thing advertised in Korea, you’ll notice that most kpop bands have everything on iTunes as well as official YouTube pages, but Korean indie bands? Often no official YouTube page or album available for download. You’re not making it easy for us to support you! Okay, rant over! This band deserves a Korea word to express my happiness. DAEEEEEEEBAK!!!! I love anything synth-heavy and this has a lovely combination of synth + funky disco feels. I feel like I should drive around in a car with my best friend and listen to this while the background behind us is rainbow and we wave at passing cartoon animals who are bouncing to the beat. I just want to clean the house when I hear this kindof music. That sounded weird, but this is dance/clean music for me. And if Cassette Schwarzenegger or their management or any friends of them can let us know where to buy their albums, or if we can get them to put it on iTunes, please let us know.