Yi Sung Yol Returns with New Album

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Launching his musical career in 1994 through modern rock duo U&Me Blue–sometimes called Korea’s first indie band–Yi Sung Yol made a celebrated solo debut in 2003. His third full-length album Why We Fail came out two years ago and on May 24th he stands ready to offer new album V.

Not a typical studio album, its ten tracks have been produced under the lead words ‘ambience’, ‘muddle’, ‘estrange’ and ’emancipate’. There’s the ambience from recording at a live venue. There’s the muddled sound that comes from recording all the instruments of the band together instead of having one microphone for each. There are the English lyrics, making the songs freer and overall estranged from the Yi Sung Yol of the past (‘I take myself too seriously’). There’s the emancipation from the strict studio recording process.

As a consequence of how the album came into existence, Yi Sung Yol has been performing several of the songs live before the release. Fluxus Music has already published a set of ‘recording’ and ‘live sketch’ videos. The song “Fear (Don’t Let It Get The Best Of You Darling)” was released as a digital single on May 21st while the recording video was published on YouTube:

 

From the look of it, the “Fear” video was shot at Veloso–a semi-big live venue in a Hongdae basement–just like the recording video for “We Are Dying”:

 

Folk songstress Jang Pil Soon is featured on a song called “Bluey”, here set to clips from Yi Sung Yol’s SXSW performance in March this year.

 

Not just Fluxus, but fans too have filmed Yi Sung Yol in action. Here he is performing “Secretly” during a show at Veloso last year:

 

Yi Sung Yol will be one of the artists heading to London for the 2013 K-Music Festival in June. For more Yi Sung Yol in English, tune in to tbs eFM and Indie Afternoon every Sunday.

Via: Hyang Music; Bugs Music

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