KOREAN PSYCH-ROCK/POP & ACID FOLK/NEW TRADITIONAL new releases : Little Big Man & Kim Soo Chul

brief overview of some of his other works :

Kim Soo Chul : Chol Il Min (KO,198?)*

This is a real rock effort in western styles. Half of the tracks are hard rock driven, in a pompuous and teenage hardrock way, often on simplistic rhythms. Other half are uninteresting poprock song efforts, occasionally with English lyrics. Fourth track is a calm moody guitar track. Not really succesful.

Sohtdea Kim Soo Chul : Hit Album (KO,1986)°

First two tracks are Poprock songs, with some funky guitar, disco,..(Little Big Man ?), also following tracks are mostly rather mainstream poprock, except for the 5th, 9th and 14th track which are acoustic tracks.

Kim Soo Chuel : The Road to Hwang Chon / Hwang Chon Gil (KO,198?)**°°'

chosen for airplay : (Tr.2, "Han" 5 min), Tr.5, "The Lonely Road" 7 min

This is more like it. This is original filmusic with a personal style : Korean traditional elements and instruments (flute, whistle instrument, some string instrument, percussion, vocals) are combined with some (New Age like) keyboards or orchestrated keyboards and with acoustic guitar. The Korean instruments have an incredibly melancholic and sad sound. The music has a certain essential slow movement and simplicity and is very moody. 5th track has Korean percussion mixed with keyboard ideas, and funky electric guitar mixed with a traditional string instrument. An original combination of tradition with the modern world. Best work I've heard from Kim Soo-Chul so far.

* Kim Soo Chul - The Road to Hwang Chon : 1. The Road to Hwang-Chon (5:27), 2. "Han" (4:03), 3. The Vagabond (3:54), 4. A Sad Sound (7:15), 5. The Lonely Road (5:50), 6. Longing for Home (5:10), 7. Conflict (5:06), 8. Poongmul (6:23)

Kim Soo Chul : Bul Lim So Ri (KO,198?)**°

Slowly evolving moody filmic music with ethno-gothic keyboards combined with some Korean instruments. This music has similarities in idea with the 'Road to Hwang Chon', but this is much more like real filmmusic.

Kim Soo Chul : Pal man dae jang kyong / 80,000 great words (KO,1988)-

First track is keyboard driven gothic-rock filmmusic. Like the previous albums this is another attempt to make Korean folkmusic more modern. Here the keyboard sound a bit too gothic and home-recorded neo-melodic to convince me even slightly.

* Kim Soo Chul - Pal Man Dae Jang Kyung : 1. The gathering storm (07:03), 2. The tides of battle (11:42), 3. Journey to valhalla (05:56), 4. At st. peter's gate (16:12)

Mr.Kwang : "He started music career as Rock Band, late of 1970's. His rock band was good enough, did also some Pop-Rock which made him even a TV Star. His outfit is not very good for entertainer, anyway his music was good & he did several works. He has done several OSTs for TV drama & Movie. He released too many albums, over 30, and all of them are over average to great. But his best work & life object is, "Let Korean Traditional Music be Modernized." He made it fusion with Rock / New Age / Ambient, and much more. You might think about Oathean or Kim Do Kyun, if we talk about Korean Traditional Music & Rock fusion. But believe me. Kim Soo Chul did it much earlier, and did it much better. He released over 30 albums, and now, his own company re-releases it. Re-released CDs are only 10, not all of his past works."

Early discography : http://www.kimsoochul.com/library.htm

& history : http://www.kimsoochul.com/history.htm

Biography : http://www.answers.com/topic/kim-soo-chul

Available albums : http://www.livingsound.com/

OasisLittle Big Man with Kim Soo Chul (2nd album) (KO,1981)*°°

track chosen for eventual but not commited airplay : (Tr.2,5 min)

Varied rock and poprock album with a few more funky and a few more hard rock tracks. This is a good guitar driven rock track. A few tracks are better than others, especially the first 2/3rd of the album which are enjoyable, but still it's not a really incredible album.

Video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0lt7yZazMQ

History of Kim Soo Chul : http://www.kimsoochul.com/history.htm

& http://mrkwang.tripod.com/kimsoochul.htm

Mr.Kwang : "This is Little Big Man 2nd. album, early period of Kim Soo Chul music, as Rock Band. Kim Soo Chul is one of the most important Korean musicians"..."Little Big Man doesn't have Traditional Music Sound. This is before that, Old Rock / Hard Rock only. Anyway this is one of most important Korean Rock scene. Highly recommendable album by mrkwang himself."

* Living Sound Kimsoochul : Soponye (KO,2000)**°

chosen for airplay : Tr.1, "Millennium Crane" 5 min

Tr.4, "Chunhyang's Song-Party boy(Korean traditional melody)" 2 min

Tr.6, "Chunhyang's Song-The abandoned hut(in prison)" " ->231

Tr.10, "So Rit Che Pe Ga-Ceremony in the abandon hut " 4 min

Tr.11, "Chimchung's song-The wharf song(Korean traditional melody)" " 8 min 22

A movie that changed my life and made me open to Korea and its music. The soundtrack is partly (half Western) classical music mixed with Korean folk elements and a somewhat different ? folk version of the pansori singing style. Styllistically in the movie it reminded me of the gypsy travel and evolution where flamenco might come from, a very different perspective on something universal.

Pansori is a kind of folkopera style with long folkstories into poetry-music, simply accompanied by hand drum. In the movie and this soundtrack you hear the struggle of a perfectionist father and the grieve the music has as foundation. The soundtrack CD isn't as good to see separate from the movie, because you miss the context and story of the movie. The last track is where brother and sister (-blinded by her father after the brother's departure, also in attempt to make her back singing), who didn't see each other for years, instead of going for their recognition of each other, just only sang together, not to see their grieve of the whole story of their life.

The composer made except other movie soundtracks, strangely enough also more mainstream poprock and folkpop music. So I asume the pansori is traditional, but the additional soundtrack music is Simkoochuls, which combines well here. There's also a strength of performance of singer / performers of the pansori.

More about CD : http://www.kimsoochul.com/livingsound/cd/e_sopyunje.htm

Folkie Jin : "SOPYONJE is a Western Style soundtrack album, and marks the first time this approach was used in the Korean music industry. Prior to the So-pyon-je's release, Korean movie music was only a collection of songs and as such lost much of the connection to the movie. So-pyon-je tells the story of a Korean family of traveling musicians. It follows the main characters through childhood and into early adult life. Set around the time of the Korean Civil War, the story shows the characters's struggle to survive in a time of rapidly changing cultural values. There are happy times along with incidents of great loss and personal tragedy, all of which are complimented with this powerful and emotional soundtrack. Both the movie and the soundtrack won multiple awards both domestically and internationally. Awards included, "Best Picture"of the year at the 1994 Singapore International Film Festival! (was from his home page : http://www.kimsoochul.com/disco.htm)"

More on composer : http://www.kimsoochul.com

folkie Jin comments: "This music director Kim Soo Chul was leader of Little giant which was great Korean psych band in early 80s. He was a genius about Rock music and guitarist but he tried to popularize the Korean traditional music after he talked with some foreigner. Someday, he played psych rock music on some stage and after it he meet a foreigner. He asked to Kim Soo Chul " Hey Mr.Kim now your plaing music is not ou r country music and it is western music. Please listen to your country music."

Introduction on pansori : http://www.mct.go.kr/english/K_heritage/pansori.html

"The term pansori is derived from the Korean words pan, meaning “a place where many people gather”, and sori for “song” "

More on pansori : http://www.parandeul.co.kr/dongpyunje.htm

Samples on pansori : http://madang.ajou.ac.kr/~moon/pansori.htm

Guiness record perfomance of more than 9 hour performance of pansori (with audio that gives an idea): http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/content_pages/record.asp?recordid=53378

???Im Kwon Taek : Collection -5DVD box set- (SKO,1989-2000)??

This is a good box with some of the movies from this extremely talented filmmaker. Soponye and Chunyang are both essential movies that show the essence of the Pasonri music style and the stories involved in it. I hope to review the box later.

Box content : Come Come Come Upward = Aje aje bara aje (1989), Sopyonje = Seopyeonje (1993), The Taebaek Mountains =Taebek sanmaek (1994), Festival = Chukje (1996), Chunhyang (2000)

Video from Sopyonje on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kojKqZk_zHg&feature=related

Watch "Chunyang" on line : http://asianovela.com/blog/chunhyang-part-1-of-2/ and trailer here

Watch Spoyonje on line : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiMc1q7LuQQ

and about movie : http://www.beyondhollywood.com/sopyonje-1993-movie-review/

& http://www.mstrum.com/onmywaytokorea/2009/10/19/sopyonje/

& http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=318917

& http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-214B-29451C12-3A42D059-prod2

About Chunyyang : http://www.mediacircus.net/chunhyang.html & http://www.epinions.com...

Korean film history : http://koreanfilm.org/history.html

YB MusicKim Soo Chul : The Way to Hwangchon / One Man Band (KO,re.2011)****/*

This soundtrack is comparable to his other one, “Soponye”, and is a very good filmic introduction to Korean traditional music, to prepare a mainstream public, in a form that could reach a whole wide area of music lovers. The first track is led by Korean clarinet, the second by Korean violin, the third by flute, all also accompanied by texturing keyboards, and the third track by acoustic guitar too. Then we have a real Pansori track (singing, hand drum rhythms and some texturing bells). Extra arrangements include an exotica hayhayhay backing choir baritone singing. The next track is led by Korean clarinet only, continuing the descriptive emotions further, each track working very consistently together. This continues with sparse and somewhat orchestrally arranged keyboard arrangements. Then keyboard strings and acoustic pickings continue the atmosphere with the clarinet leading further. The next track is drum percussion led with special sounds of arranged keyboards. The last track is very different. It concludes the score with a funky rock track with funky guitars and rock guitars and keyboards/drums improvising in a funk/rock way on the traditional tune on Korean violin. It also has some wilder blues solo on electric guitar.

Making this kind of accessible accompanying music to introduce Korean folk music pretty much is Kim Soo Chul’s strongest achievement, and this album remains one of his most successful in that formula.

It is paired with his “One Man Band” release, which is not really the same because this is from his home studio, solo with songs accompanied by texturing keyboards, some drum machine and some tracks with funky keyboards and electric guitar. For not understanding any of the lyrics, the songs still sound a bit too much as entertaining itself with obvious chords and lack of emotional richness. Most of this sounds really OK, but it can’t attribute much to the music scene outside the Korean song music context.