Mini-interview with Plastic People

플라스틱 피플 (Plastic People)
Tomorrow, Plastic People will release their third full length album – that means lots of good new music to check out for anyone into mellow folky stuff, and already three songs from it are streaming on MySpace. The male half of the duo, Kim Mingyu, was kind enough to answer a few questions for Indieful ROK:

Could you please start with an introduction of Plastic People?
Plastic People is a folk rock band comprised of two people, Min Kyu Kim (guitar and vocal), and Ju Mi Yoon (keyboard and vocal). Jae Han Ahn (guitar), Myung Dong Kim (drum), and Tae Sung Park (bass) help us out as session players when performing on stage. Plastic People started performing with the release of self-titled EP in 2002 and have released three studio albums and two EPs so far, including the third album Snap released on July 22nd. Plastic People wishes to connect Neil Young‘s folk rock and Buddy Holly, The Beach Boys‘ rock n’ roll with the recent indie pop/rock music.

Plastic People has been around for nearly a decade – how would you say that your music has progressed during this time?
We started from simple acoustic sound. We liked playing folk rock that we can play with only acoustic guitar, bass guitar and snare drum, sort of like Yo La Tengo during their Fakebook period. We started experimenting with the more “band-ish” sounds in a few songs when recording the first album Songbags of the Plastic People and tried to concretize the band arrangements of folk/indie rock for the second album Folk, Ya!. We’re still trying to figure out how to combine the charming repetitions of early folk rock with the indie rock of twenty first century. We also love the serene and yet melancholy slow-core of the 90’s

What can you tell us about your new album, Snap?
We wanted to capture the four seasons in the city as in the snap shots through twelve songs of the third album Snap. We also wanted to grasp the band sound that we’ve been maintaining since the second album more thoroughly in the new album. We just wished that people would hear the more detailed sounds of the band’s harmony than before.

“그늘에 서서,” “커피와 담배” are our interpretations of folk rock and indie rock, “우리들의 여름,” “농담으로 충분한 하루” are the songs full of our affection for rock n’ roll. There are also acoustic songs like “여기저기,” “구름게으름민요,” “노래하는 달,” and rock songs like “흑백사진,” “역사.” We put all these different genres together in one album because we believed that such diversity is the current state of Plastic People. We wanted to accommodate all the different emotions of every person in the city in different characters of each musical sound. We would be much satisfied if our music can be these people’s background music.

Perhaps it’s too early to tell, but I have to ask: will we have to wait another three years before we get to enjoy Plastic People’s fourth full length album?
Haha, I don’t think so. There actually was an EP Travelling in the Blue between the first and second studio album, and the reason the third album was late was that I founded a music label Electric Muse, and have been producing other bands’ albums; I had to put off Plastic People for awhile. Right now, we are planning to release one EP focused mostly on slow-core/indie rock and another studio album in two years.

Did you read that? Another EP and one more studio album to be expected from Plastic People within the next two years! As if getting Snap tomorrow wasn’t enough, I mean.

As you may recall, Plastic People is one of the Korean indie acts with music available on iTunes so if this duo is new to you and you don’t mind iTunes too much I’d suggest taking a closer look at debut EP Plastic People (2002) and second album Folk, Ya! (2006) right away. Enjoy!

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