Epik High is a Korean hiphop (well, mainly) / rap group. I know nothing about Korean, but their lyrics are loaded with meaning even in English.
This song is called "Fan", and it portrays the extreme perspective fans sometimes have. I'm not going to say much about it because it's not so much the lyrics that I want to share. That aside, I'm definitely impressed by their eloquence (which is about equal) in both Korean and English. Plus the fact that they can rap faster than a speed train and still have each syllable come out clearly. Amazing.
They performed this song at the 2007 Golden Disk Awards - which I gather is something like Korean MTV awards? - together with Honey Lee, who is also Miss Korea 2007 and a classical musician who majored in traditional music.
The first file is the original, while the 2nd is the live performance as described above. A unique fusion indeed, who would've thought traditional instruments could be used in such relevant music today?
Then again, it's been like that with all the electro-tango artistes. I shouldn't be surprised to see a similar phenomenon in another type of music.
I regret to say, that I am still in a tango mood. But this time, it's not a good one.
If ever there's a song that perfectly identifies with the depressed and completely in despair, it's Astor Piazzolla's "Oblivion". It was one of my favourite songs to listen to for awhile, because it gave a voice to many things I was feeling that I felt unable to express, mostly in line with "depressed and completely in despair". Actually, it still is one of my favourites, even though I no longer have such great sadness to express, simply because it is a beautiful piece on its own.
Anyway, at the moment, I'm not really sad, just extremely tired and feeling kind of alone.
One reason is because our salsa team has been having some really achey training sessions. All to make us better dancers / performers, yes I know, but still, it is tiring. Partly due to the heels that I shove my feet into 6 out of 7 days a week - compulsory for training, optional for work (but hey, for instant professionalism, why not) - but mostly due to the exercises we've been doing to strengthen the leg and core muscles. I'm not sure if it's working right now, but every morning I wake up, I feel like I'm not in the right state of physical fitness to even attempt the journey ahead to office. And even though we do the exercises as a team, the pain and journey of recovery / strengthening is still largely a personal thing.
The other is because of tango. My instructor is annoyed that I keep bugging him to make all the other dancers fine-tune their stuff. Given that we have less than 2 weeks left till performance, his reasoning is that timing of the moves with the music is more important than perfecting all the moves and techniques. While I do agree with him that timing is important, I don't think it's a justifiable to skip the fine-tuning.
Firstly, I've been bugging him to get everyone's moves fine-tuned since AGES ago, and any fine-tuning effort put in is only concentrated on the ones who flounder most, instead of across the whole team. There's no excuse to just skip it now because we started training early. Secondly, fine-tuning the moves enables us to control the timing of the moves with the music, so they're not conflicting objectives. Finally, we're not just developing people to be better dancers, we're developing them into performers. Training people to be the latter requires a certain standard of quality. It's okay if nobody starts out having that kind of standard, but it's not okay for them not to aim for it, and that's what I'm seeing in quite a number of the team members - they're concerned about doing the choreography well, but they're not concerned about performing it.
Any joker can learn to do choreography eventually, but performing requires engaging the audience. I'm extremely pissed off at my instructor for allowing them to "slack off" in the performance element, but that's possibly also due to the fact that he trained me with a lot more scoldings than them.
Okay, enough of a rant. Time for bed.
Or the "new tango", so to speak.
This will be a very tango-related post, partly because I have an upcoming performance in June, but largely because I got a lot of new tango music recently that's really good, and which I want to talk about. The exposure to the new music came about because some of us are required to do solo items, and so we have to pick our own songs.
Side note: I haven't been updating this blog as often as I like, because the only time I update it is at home, and since I'm using Opera on my PC, which seems to dislike Vox, updating it becomes a lot more of a hassle. Of course I could just switch to Internet Explorer, but I like Opera much better.
I've already introduced some really good new-age tango songs, now it's time to introduce some of the artistes in this genre of nuevo tango music. They combine traditional tango orchestra instrumentation and the element of dramatic emotion with rhythmic loops and synthesized effects suitable for chill-out. Today's focus is on three such artistes - Gotan Project, Carlos Libedinsky, and Otros Aires.
1) Gotan Project
In my opinion, they're the first name that comes to mind whenever anyone mentions tango and electronica in the same breath. They are also the reason I don't tag all electronic tango music as "Neotango", because their music transcends what is typically tango, and have been used to complement various media unrelated to tango.
The group is based in Paris, which probably explains the slick-chic-urban feel of their music. I like their treatment of vocals as a complement, which is partly contrary to the view that vocals should be supported by instrumentation. The difference is that usually, a song would still make sense and retain most of its original character if the vocal parts are unaccompanied by instrumentation, whereas for Gotan Project, a large majority of their songs make no sense with vocals only.
This track "Vuelvo Al Sur" is from their first album, La Revancha del Tango, it's a remix of a traditional tango song of the same name, and also my favourite nuevo tango track. I personally feel that this remix is not merely another interpretation, but almost a complete reinvention. The emotion is strongly captured, but quietly expressed, so it doesn't have that sense of "dramatic tragedy" which one often finds in sad traditional tango songs. Furthermore, the music also manages to create a very ethereal setting that seems detached from reality. Gotan Project really saved the best for last on this CD.
2. Carlos Libedinsky
An Argentine musician, composer, arranger, singer and guitarist, also founder and director of music institute, TADEMUS, in Buenos Aires, and Narcotango is his neo-tango project. I have both albums Narcotango and Narcotango 2, the latter being acquired more recently.
While "tango" and "electronica" are equally descriptive of Gotan Project, "tango" seems to carry more weight in Libedinsky's music. An average person could listen to Gotan Project and not think about tango, but not so for Libedinsky. In other words, Gotan Project's music transcends "tango" far more easily than Libedinsky's, and Libedinsky's use of electronic elements is more to enhance the emotional elements in tango. Anyway, enough comparison. I wanted to upload some of the files, but Vox is not accepting them, so I'll skip the brief song review.
I've picked "Otra Luna", 3rd track from Narcotango, for my solo item. It's a fairly relaxing piece, not too emotionally extreme or too dramatic. Rather like the background music to the moment before lovers must reluctantly part. Now, how or what to choreo...
3. Otros Aires
Otros Aires is closer to Gotan Project, except that they're based in Barcelona. They typically use samples of early tangos and milongas mixed with modern electronic sequences, melodies and lyrics. Their music has a sense of zany ingenuity which my Spanish friends exhibit as well (I guess it comes with being a Spaniard?), and has more vocals than Gotan Project does, although sometimes not unlike Gotan Project in that it complements instrumentation.
To date, they've released two albums, Otros Aires and Dos. I actually like Dos better, Otros Aires was much more varied, and it's a little hard to listen to electronic music if it keeps switching between different styles. Guess one could say that Dos is more "listener-friendly". Nevertheless, there are great tracks on both albums, and I regret to say that Vox is not accepting any of them either.
We will be using "La Yumba" from Dos for a group item. I find it musically humourous, which isn't exactly quite the same as musically surprising. It's like listening to a musical version of stand-up comedy. Anyway, it's a refreshing remix.
There was Chinese New Year, and a friend from Germany visited during that weekend. Work's been great, there's been lots of meetings with business partners; I've been attending a shipbroking and chartering course, and we've also had our company's 12th anniversary party. One of the dance team's favourite friends cum instructor from overseas has been in town so we've had to ENT and also take up at least one course conducted by him. And on top of it all, I've been singing for church as usual. It's been crazy.
During these two months, there's also been a lot of influx of new music. Park Jin Young's "Back To Stage" album (I romanize his name as Jin-Yeong, so I can remember how it's pronounced), High Society's "Shanghai Jazz" album, and Pink Martini's second CD "Hang On Little Tomato". Also some old music rediscovered, like Salvador's "Worship Live" album. I got the CD 3-4 years ago from my previous worship leader, and only just got around to listening to the whole CD. It's good stuff, Christian worship music imbibed with pop, funk, and latin influences. I like, oo yeah.
So much for clearing out that list of music on my D drive.
On the bright side, I could possibly be posting a little more, since I've had to reinstall Windows Live Messenger, and I enabled sharing folders. Which means I can upload music from office. It's significant because I don't bring my music storage device to work.
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First artiste I must mention is Park Jin Young. I really liked his album, and I can't believe I got it from a friend so long ago, yet I didn't post anything about it. Producer for Bi Rain, and like the Korean version of a more matured Justin Timberlake. Smoother, quietly heartfelt rather than soulful, and with gentler beats than JT's tracks, but similar in that both artistes produce tracks with very memorable beats. You'll know what I mean when you listen to this song.
Translated, the track title is "The House You Live In". Supposedly about a man who's forced to watch his ex-lover live with another man. I sometimes find it strange that songs about heartbreak can be so groovy, it just seems a mismatch between the content of the lyrics and the music, but this track's not too bad. I suppose it helps that I don't understand Korean.
And it's definitely not a report card I'm talking about.
I never realised how gorgeous Ella Fitzgerald's singing was till I heard this song. It quite accurately describes how I feel towards someone sometimes.
A line from the Nokia N82 advertisement. Man I really like that advert... Hehe.
I was actually looking around for Lindsay Lohan's tracks when I found this one - "Best Friend" by Aaliyah and Missy Elliott, from Missy Elliott's debut album "Supa Dupa Fly".
(Not that I'm such a great fan of Ms Lohan, just that with all the news about her fairly recently, I wanted a refresher on her music since it's conveniently evaporated from my music library.)
It's kind of like chillout R&B/hiphop. Got groove, simple (and hence not over done) beats, and no overpowering girl-power lyrics either, if you know what I mean.
Actually, not quite. This song just happens to be on the soundtrack to the movie.
It's a very sensual song. Very sexy indeed. It half illustrates the relationship between the movie characters, where they share this great chemistry between them that really heats things up, yet when it comes to actually talking to each other, their words make no sense at all. (Which is rather true for the song too, the words are like snippets of half-finished conversations.)
In the pub where I go to salsa, they usually play this for bachata. It's a great song for dancing close to someone, but a little too dramatic for bachata. And with En Motion's bachata competition, I thought it might be a great idea to use it as a competition piece for bachata and theme the item "Mr & Mrs Smith", incorporate the large sweeping steps of tango and some tango moves, as well as the showmanship of rumba. That would really sizzle, don't you think?
But first, I'll need a partner willing to play along. Hmm. Will see how it goes...
What's the best gift you received this year?
A great year. Seriously.
The audio kind, rather than F&B kind, and another song from the soundtrack of k-drama "Soulmate".
Finally got around to posting an entry about Corinne Bailey Rae. I particularly like this song of hers, and it was what sparked me to look up her other songs. There's a sad, dark tone about it, as if someone is downing Bailey's and patiently waiting to get drunk while thinking through all the love issues described in the song. No melodrama though, and it really captures the thought, "yes I know, I should get along with life already, but I still can't help thinking about these things at the moment."
As per a quote I found somewhere, the song robs the moment of its impermanence. Which is not always a good thing, but well, enjoy it anyway.
Discovered this track while randomly checking out John Mayer tracks. It's from his self-released debut album "Inside Wants Out" which doesn't seem to have been as talked about.
Strip the instrumentation down to a guitar and vocals, break out of pop's typical song structure, and wa-lah - you can actually hear that the lyrics are heartfelt, because all the other song elements no longer distract your attention from them. Then thread in some elements of blues and jazz, and the result is something more expressive of particular emotions that aren't explicitly expressed in the lyrics.
Pure genius. I generally like John Mayer's stuff, but this has got to be one of my favourite tracks from him.
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