Mini-interview with donawhale

도나웨일
Last week I exercised a bit of Korean while engaging in a brief exchange of messages with donawhale‘s guitarist, Youn Sung Hoon. As he agreed to answer questions for a mini interview, I turned to mrkwang who kindly agreed to help out with the translation. And so Indieful ROK readers now have a chance to learn more on the upcoming album from this very fine band:

Can you please start by introducing donawhale?
Donawhale is a 3 piece team,
Youn Sung Hoon (guitar)
You Jin Young (Piano & Vocal)
Jung Da Young (bass).

It formed 6 years ago, and released the 1st. self-titled album donawhale in 2007. Kim Min Joon (ex-drummer) was a member from the beginning, but retired early 2009 due to personal situation.

What can we expect your second album to sound like?
We’d like to express such things – Image around us, Echo of space, Sound of wind, Smell of grass, Memory, etc, fluttered feelings because of them.

Without division of genre, various paintings of color senses.

What we enjoy while we play, acoustic sound which has noise in the room, more psychedelic, band feeling, etc. We considered them important, and worked 2nd. album.

What are your current plans?
The 2nd. album will be released in mid September this year – not much time left. We are mixing it now and are almost finished.

Where do you see donawhale in a couple of years?
Maybe doing 3rd. album, with fluttering songs.

Donawhale’s album debut was one of my favorites from 2007, and of Jenny Wu’s too. Jenny also wrote a really nice review on it, describing well the loveliness that is donawhale: Donawhale debut album.

Check out donawhale’s YouTube channel if you have yet to hear what they sound like or feel like watching a soundless clip from the 2nd album recording.

7 Comments Mini-interview with donawhale

  1. Anonymous

    THANK YOU for this wonderful interview w/Donawhale! They’re one of my fav. groups–their first album was STUNNING–& I’ve been waiting to hear news about them for awhile! Am anticipating their next album! :D

    Reply
  2. helikoppter

    Stunning indeed! mrkwang explained that the answer to the second questions was too poetic to be well translated, but even so my anticipations for the second album have increased.

    Reply
  3. Yung

    Thank you so much for this interview! I’ve been waiting so long to hear about them. It’s sad to hear that one of the original members is now gone, but I still can’t wait for new releases. I hope they know they have some non-Korean overseas fans like myself who, despite not understanding the lyrics to their songs, are still able to sense and enjoy the “fluttering feelings” that their music evoke -exactly why I adore their song Echo (My favorite so far). Thanks again for this!

    Reply
  4. helikoppter

    It is, although (I think I heard somewhere) South Korean regular users can’t upload videos to YouTube since Google figured that’d be better than implementing support for the real name system demanded by South Korea – that’s why so many South Korean accounts are listed under another country ^^

    Reply

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