Randomness #30

Time goes by so quickly. This is nothing new, of course, but I think it holds more true during summer. And I thought having a family with a young kid staying with me and my husband for a month would feel like a long time, yet now it seems they left too soon. The 4 days of vacation I allowed myself in July were super nice, and I was again reminded how lucky I am to work and travel with such great people–amidst mosquitoes and black flies, they put up with listening primarily to Lasse Stefanz the entire time.

Recent Listening

When not listening to Swedish dansband classics, this month has been primarily spent repeating my new Spotify k-indie playlist. That is until Soundcloud alerted me that FIRST AID had uploaded a song featuring Earip, reminding me to also pay attention to fresh music. Earip has been one of my favorite Hongdae songstresses since her Sweater days–pretty much for as long as I’ve listened to Korean indie music. This particular song, “Floating Old Faces”, is almost ethereal and lingers. The song originally comes off FIRST AID’s Portraits of Goner, released back in January featuring also 4 other 12 minute long tracks that FIRST AID himself describes ‘more like blurry 5 sonic shapes than musical pieces’. All well worth a listen. Two more tracks from the release are expected to be revealed with new vocals from Earip.

 

A few days later Kirara put up “Rain Dance” on Soundcloud. Not only does it have a title that fits well with the rainy weeks Sweden has seen of lately, it also samples one of my favorite 015B songs, “텅 빈 거리에서“. I can barely get enough of listening to this track over and over. Doing so my mind plays me this awesome, never-ending music video with pixellated cars driving around a city running in my mind–inspired by a lunch conversation some months ago over EU rules requiring electric cars to make sounds and how awesome it’d be if any sound was ok and the cars could sync up their sounds when close to each other to play music together. I really wish I had the skills to actually make that a real music video.

 

It was only just this morning that I managed to give up Kirara as Twitter informed me that Mimyo has a new song on bandcamp. “Go Wild” features 2story vocalist Kang Yejin and does sound a lot wilder than what I’ve come to expect from Mimyo. It’s a song I would love to see included in the next Katamari game.

 

Random News

This is several weeks old by now, but as I have yet to hear the album myself and the music video for album lead track “젊은이” is so awesome I’ll anyway mention it here: Goonam released 3rd full-length album Sun Power on July 7th. The track list also includes “피” from Hyundai Card’s Artist Zoom-In and album version of “사과” originally release on the Mood of Cavare 2013 compilation. With four years since the second album, Sun Power was much anticipated and placed at #29 on Gaon’s Korean album chart the week it was released. Not to be missed for sure.

 

On to something newer: Galaxy Express will be releasing a new album on August 6th. It’s the trio’s 4th full-length album with almost 3 years passed since the release of the self-title 3rd full-length. Those that have been lucky enough to catch Galaxy Express live in recent weeks are likely to have already heard a few of the new songs already. Walking On Empty boasts 10 tracks total with two lead tracks: “날 내버려둬” and “시간은 간다“.

 

Rumors of Top Band 3–a third season of KBS2 band audition show–actually happening came already during spring and have been confirmed now. Auditions are about to start and the show itself should have the first episode broadcast on Saturday October 3rd, lasting 12 episodes. According to Soompi, this season will differ from previous in that individual musicians may also audition and form project groups to compete. Having been entertained by the first two seasons myself, I’m looking forward this already. Would be fun to repeat the band intros and commentary series from Top Band 2, if time permits.

Blog Related

There are too many posts I’d like to write now, but I’m struggling to find the time required to actually make any happen. I should also see if I can make a few interviews and other posts on the theme of Modern Sky Helsinki as I’m very excited about having that kind of event happening so close to home. Let’s see how much will be possible. But although there may be few real posts, I’m back to updating the IROK Events Calendar. Something, at least.

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