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Jazz songstress and recent KMA winner Nah Youn Sun is touring Europe again. Already tomorrow, March 1, she will be making a performance in London – something already noted over at London Korean Links: Nah Youn Sun at Pizza Express Jazz, Soho.

The other dates on the current tour are the following:
March 8: Stockholm, Sweden
March 10: Göteborg, Sweden
March 11: Sint-Truiden, Belgium
March 15: Yzeure, France
March 17: Paris, France
March 18: Ibos, France

Nah Youn Sun will then return to Korea for a few dates before returning to Europe in April, when she will also visit Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Italy. Details are available on the official site.

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With the big American music festivals closing in, some Korean participants have been getting some extra hype. Yesterday SXSW posted a bit on Apollo 18 for the front page news: Korean Apollo 18 to Land at SXSW Music 2011

Also yesterday, The Creators Project posted another interview with EE talking a bit about Coachella. In the interview the duo reveals that they are currently based in London and have made plans for a new release to come some time this year: Coachella Music Preview: Q&A With Korean Indie Darlings EE

Thanks to byul.org I found out that UhUhBoo Project vocalist Hyunjhin Baik is about to release a new album. It is a live album called Basis of Planck Time recorded at Seoul’s Welcomm Theater in November last year, and it’s currently scheduled for release some time during the third week of February. Tracklist and some words on the recording from the artist himself are available at the byul.org website.

Oliver Philpott posted the first interview on Seoul Music Room earlier today. Hyosun of Trampauline had answered questions about the light electronic pop act itself as well as questions on the Korean indie music scene in general: Interview With Trampauline.

While some names remained on the list of Korean favorite bands it seems her taste in music has developed more towards the rock side since the interview with Deathrockstar.info a few years ago.

Here’s a bunch of live reports and related material that showed up online during the last four months or so.

First up something fairly recent: Oliver Philpott of Seoul Music Room checked out the Seoulsonic gig at Welcomm Theater a couple of weeks ago, where he was blown away by Apollo 18: Big Phony, Idiotape and Apollo 18 at Seoulsonic: Friday, January 21st 2011

Little over a week later Oliver headed to Live Club Ssam where he checked out Gullivers, Pika, and Trampauline: New Romance Party, Club SSAM ‘30/1/11′

Lee Ga-on from 10 Asia made it to the SangSang Madang part of last Thursday’s Moonlight Nymph’s beneficial, previously mentioned here: [REVIEW] Concert in memory of Moonlight Fairy Lee Jin-won. The original article in Korean comes with a generous amount of photos from the evening.

Hot Potato lives have been given some coverage over at 1 night 2 days fansubs. The same site also shared the news of a Hot Potato CD+DVD set, Thank You! Good Night that was released November 30. Seoulbeats followed with a tracklist and live version MV for 시소.
- Hot Potato – Green Plugged Festival (May 21, 2010)
- Hot Potato – Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival (July 24, 2010)

Hot Potato – Grand Mint Festival (October 24, 2010)

More from the 2010 edition of Grand Mint Festival was offered by 10 Asia: Grand Mint Festival takes place under a star and a moon

Mid-October, the weekend before GMF the first Daejeon Rock Festival took place. Finbarr Bermingham was there and later shared his disappointment with the event in a blog post: Daejeon Rock Festival

Even earlier that same October Widhi had made it to another festival, about which she wrote for Smashing Mag: Playground Music & Camping Festival @ Jungdo Island, Chuncheon (Oct. 2 – 3, 2010)

Over at Omona They Didn’t a few months ago there was a post collecting a couple of videos from Winterplay’s visit to London: Winterplay in England [Instant Play]

Another video was offered by The Creator’s Project, as they filmed an interview with DJ Soulscape after he played at their Seoul launch event: Live Music Week: DJ Soulscape Gets Seoul Groovin’

Melissa Schumacher too performed an interview, after seeing Like A Fox play at Woodstock in Itaewon. This well written piece blends her impressions from the performance with the story of vocalist Doo: A Rockstar in His Korean Cage

During the last evening of my last trip to Korea I ran into another Swedish girl outside of SPOT. Turns out she too has a blog, where she’s shared some of her experiences from Hongdae:
- Punk in Hongdae
- Smacksoft, The Swindlers releaseparty, Korean Barbeque and Soju Soju Soju.
- New Favorite Korean Band!

Continuing from the list of the artists I listened to the most during 2010 posted at the beginning of this month, here are the songs last.fm claim I listened to the most. The top two songs were included on my list last year and with only three all new songs in total I suppose this could serve as another example of my changing music listening habits. I’ll be the first to admit that it seems a bit one-tracked, but I really do love Apollo 18’s Red… Find my complete top 10 after the jump.

Anna’s Most Listened to Korean Tracks 2010

1. Apollo 18 – Warm (5) [MySpace]
South Korean MAP song of January, 2010.
My favorite Apollo 18 track turned even better when the pace slowed down a bit. Nothing – and I do mean nothing – beats the sensation of being in place in some small venue when Apollo 18 play this song live. It should’ve gotten a 3D music video during 2010, but it was canceled as they couldn’t make a short enough version of the song. Wishing the song would last even longer – how could I possibly blame them?
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So I already posted links to a fair bunch of “best of 2010″ collections, but I missed some then and more have come since so here’s another roundup.

When the man behind must-read book Pop Goes Korea picked the best releases of 2010 he put forth DJ Seoulscape’s intriguing mix of several decades old Korean grooves as number one. Also on his list were releases from Apollo 18, Glittering Blackness, Fall, Oriental Lucy, Sunkyeol, Lee Sang Eun, Jambinai, Swimmingdoll, and Lowdown 30: LKL Critics’ Choice 2010: Mark Russell
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Apollo 18 and the Seoulsonic bands won’t be the only Korean acts making it to North American festivals this year. Yesterday word camethat Indieful ROK’s favorite electronic act EE will be making it to California and Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival mid-April. They’ll be going there as one of the groups collaborating with The Creators Project, that have previously had a chat with the duo.

A day earlier EE’s label, Foundation announced the launch of EE’s official website.

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It’s a new year so I figured I should at least make an attempt to start fresh and keep all chart postings going. Unfortunately I ended up a bit too busy/tired already last week, but with a bit of extra time on my hands tonight (albeit not enough to get around to posting a Bugs chart) I decided to get on with the Indieful ROK TOP10 aritst charts.

The charts presented below are the unique artists chart for the Indieful ROK’s last.fm listener group, representing not what its members listened to the most but what was unique in the group’s listening habits compared to other last.fm users. And now that I have discovered that we also have a track chart the sample song for each artist is also the one song from each artist that got the most listens from members in the group.

Indieful ROK TOP10 – week 2, 2011

1. Clazziquai Project (+1) [Futuristic YT audio]
2. Donawhale (+6) [Echo YT audio]
3. Nell (new) [Thank You MV]
4. Jaurim (new) [Carnival Amour MV]
5. Mot (new) [What A Wonderful World Left 4 Dead fanvid]
6. W & Whale (new) [오빠가 돌아왔다 live]
7. Shin Seung Hoon (new) [사랑같은건 믿지 않지만 MV]
8. Loveholic (new) [차라의 숲 MV]
9. Fanny Fink (-3) [24 live]
10. Humming Urban Stereo (-7) [지랄 YT audio]

Indieful ROK TOP10 – week 1, 2011
1. Casker
2. Clazziquai Project
3. Humming Urban Stereo
4. Bye Bye Sea
5. Epik High
6. Fanny Fink
7. Misty Blue
8. Donawhale
9. My Aunt Mary
10. Peppertones

Don’t feel like the chart reflects your taste in music well enough? Join Indieful ROK’s last.fm group and maybe next week it’ll look a little

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Though it may yet be a little thin on contents, there is now a new English language resource covering Korean indie music: ‘Seoul Music Room’ 서울 뮤직 룸

It is managed by Oliver Philphott, whose own music got a mention here a couple of weeks back. The first post came live two days ago and highlights so far include a bit of appreciation for Trampauline andrecandplay.net in A Little Bit of Heaven and for Dave Candler, the man behind podcast series Korean Homesick Blues, in Spotlight Indie.

View the more from IndiefulROK here

Yesterday SXSW announced another round of bands for the festival and this time they included Apollo 18 (must say I’m both surprised and happy to see Indieful ROK quoted). The band also aspires to do a bit of touring while out of the country - check here if you think there’s anything you could do to help out – and thus have been keeping very busy lately. In spite of all the preparations, the band’s guitarist, Hyun-seok, kindly answered a few questions for Indieful ROK:

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Much like in 2009, I’ve kept using last.fm to keep track of what I listen to. My music listening in 2010 has not been what it used to be though, because of various reasons (primarily non-working CD drive at home followed by a lack of address to order CDs to) I haven’t been listening to even remotely as much new music as I usually do. A lot of what I did get around to listen to wasn’t scrobbled, but looking at my last.fm charts they do seem to present a reasonably fair image of what music I enjoyed the most during 2010. Numbers here.

Anna’s Most Listened to Korean Artists 2010

1. Apollo 18 (3)
One of my very favorite bands already in 2009, that position was further reinforced during 2010. The re-recorded version of the Red EP that came out early January is my most favorite release ever and as if that wasn’t enough they also offered a brand new EP a couple of weeks later, so naturally their numbers would have to be a bit inflated. On top of that Apollo 18 is the best live band I’ve ever seen (the May 1st show with The Plastic Day was far beyond awesome) and they’ve provided material for plenty of other memories I’m more than happy to revisit. I wish them all the best in their endeavors to take on the world in 2011.

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Recent Releases

Bossa nova duo Bossa Dabang released its first EP, 찾아가기, on September 16. The four track release features fellow bossa nova musician Hwan Jong Ryul on a track called 다짐. Check out the 음악이 들려오네 music video

The same day trio Jinsungyoon Band put out an album called Music Tree. It follows Jin Sung Yoon’s New Folk solo effort from 2008 and includes a re-recording of 그럴까봐. The official YouTube channel has plenty to sample.

Punk band Swindlers is getting ready to release its first single, The Cheat, on September 28. The release show was held tonight and alreadyDada Music has uploaded a video of Swindlers performing For The Christ. To hear more visit Hyang Music that offers samples from all tracks on the EP.

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