Mini-interview with Dringe Augh

Dringe Augh (드린지 오)
A couple of weeks ago, while trying to find some more info on Dringe Augh and his Individually Wrapped EP, I found myself welcomed in Swedish when entering the peprermEnt site, which Dringe Augh was clearly an associate of. As a Swede interested in Korea, it’s always fun to find a Korean interested in Sweden so I set out to listening through all of the demos posted there. I found myself enjoying his acoustic guitar play – and of course the delightful sound of his songs too – and eventually set out to ask him a few questions for Indieful ROK that he kindly agreed to answer:

Who is Dringe Augh?
I’m from South Korea and live in a small town near Seoul. I’ve been playing guitar in clubs since 1997. My name is Sangsu Augh in Korean, but I want to be called “Dringe” in my music career. It means that Dringe is a kind of borderline between ‘as musician’ and ‘as a person’.

How would you describe your music?
My songs are talking about my recalls and my yesterday’s dream. It is very private and my lyrics are very unclear & ambiguous. So, when people listen to my songs, I hope that they feel their own somethings. I hate to explain my songs and lyrics. I want people not to understand but to listen easily. I want to describe my songs as life-background music. Simple sound is my motto.

From what I can hear, you’re quite skilled with the guitar. How did you first learn to play and are there any guitarists in particular that you feel have influenced your style?
I remember when I was 13 old years, I bought my first nylon classical guitar. And I learned to play by myself, and wrote my first song 2 weeks later. I think I’m not skilled :-).

After of all, I’m beatlemania. The Beatles is a big part in my songs. Also I love British folk. In my iPod, there are Nick Drake, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Marc Brierley, Jackson C. Frank, Jackie McAuley, Roy Harper, Heron, Spirogyra, Forest, Fairport Convention.

Recently I got to know Sibylle Baier from my girlfriend, and I’m interested in female singer-songwriters. Oh, I love The Clientele and Stereolab so madly.

When entering the peprermEnt site one is greeted in Swedish; Frisyr i London is a band with a name and several song titles in Swedish; and even as Dringe Augh one of the songs on your demos has the name of a Swedish soccer player. What is your relationship to Sweden?
It’s just that I like Sweden and Swedish winter. That’s all. When I was a teenager, I hoped to go to Sweden for a studies, and I learned Swedish by myself for 4 years :-). But I don’t have any relationship to Sverige.

In details: Sweden held myself tightly after I watched the movie “Bear’s Kiss”, with Rebecca Liljeberg.
Marcus Allbäck was my favorite player in the PSP game “Winning Eleven”.
Frisyr i London came from a headline in Stockholm Metro online.
In Frisyr i London, All the songs are in Swedish, but my female singer cannot read Swedish. So you can not hear Swedish but English words in the demos of F.I.L..

As previously mentioned, Dringe Augh has several demos available for online streaming, right here. For a taste of his guitar play I highly recommend Drem (occasionally reminds me of Tunng), and for the singer part Younger is an excellent example. Though as good as those demos are, Dringe Augh has really outdone himself on Individually Wrapped – expect a sample here in a couple of weeks!

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