nanoomi

A year goes by so quickly.

It’s January 10 and Indieful ROK is celebrating its 3rd anniversary! I’ve had a marvelous year and most of it can be attributed to this blog. I’m so very grateful for all you wonderful people reading and commenting, or contributing to the existence of Indieful ROK in some other way.

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Thanks to Violet Sweets I came across Into the K-LEAGUE, an album released earlier this month. It gathers songs from several bands – Galaxy Express, Go! Go! Boys!, GoGo Star, Lunatic, Napoleon Dynamite, No Brain, No.1 Korean, Sugar Donut, Super Kidd, Sweet Revenge, The Strikers, Yellow Monsters, and Yellow Puffer – and all can be downloaded for free from the K-League site.

Violet Sweets offers some of the story behind this soccer inspired compilation: K-League dedicated album

The ambient/post-rock-ish traditional Korean music trio JamBiNai (잠비나이) will release its debut EP on August 25. Although not counting more than three tracks, the self-titled release still achieves a play time over 35 minutes.

The EP’s first track, 손끝에서 손끝으로, accompanied Indieful ROK’s JamBiNai mini interview in a live recording (download here). To get a better idea of the energy offered in second track 나부락, there’s YouTube. And finally for a taste of the 17 minutes strong 나무의 대화 YouTube is helpful as well: part 1 : part 2. Visit MySpace for brief samples of the studio recorded tracks.

I’ve been listening to the EP over the last couple of days and with their truly unique sound and tasteful sense of melody it’s something I’d definitely recommend. Also I love how the blobs on the cover actually can be seen as the three members playing their instruments.

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Happy days! Long at last, Indieful ROK favorite Sunkyeol will release an EP!

Four demo songs as written & recorded by Kyoungmo Kim (formerly of Especially When) and Joe Hollick (of Wolf People) can be found on it, including the beyond fantastic I’ll Write When I’m There that can be sampled through MySpace alongside EP track Aphex Convention. And you can trust me when I say the other two songs are just as wonderful.

The EP will be released via Electric Muse on August 10. For more on Sunkyeol, here’s Indieful ROK’s interview from last year.

In addition, in her enthusiasm for Dear Cloud, Widhi has proposed making a fan video for them, to be handed over at the August 20 release show following the band’s upcoming EP. To particiapte, check out [Wiz Project] Episode 1.

Got so much catching up to do, especially with the release updates, so I’ll just start with something that caught my interest just now: “electro-trip-hop duo” Kafka is back with a new EP!

Kafka’s self-titled trip-hoppy debut from 2004 ranks as one of the most interesting Korean indie albums I can think of, and I’ve been keeping the duo in high regard since. This EP, The Most Beautiful Thing, is their 2.5 and it has been out since July 1.

Three songs from the EP can be sampled via MySpace and through YouTube: The Most Beautiful Thing is an electronic affair; for When You Wake Up they’ve incorporated a generous amount of rock elements; and Silence shows Kafka just the way I like them best.

And in other news, thanks to Widhi, we can learn that traditional Irish music project Bard will return to Europe this month. The group will play at the An Spailpin Fanac pub in Cork, Ireland, on July 10.

If you’d like to learn more on the band, I’d like to recommend checking out a recent post over at Widhi’s own blog. That post also includes a lengthy review of Bard’s first full-length album, released May 6: [Wiz Players] Bard: A Journey to the Eire.

And if you’re in the mood for something a little more summery to celebrate the season, there’s Ukulele Picnic, which is the subject of much buzz. Today I finally took the time to find out more, and realized that it’s a trio gathering former Broccoli, you too?/current Autumn Vacation member Gyepy, TJ of Hachi & TJ, soundtrack composer Lee Byung Hun, and a bunch of ukuleles.

A first self-titled album was released on June 17 and while it appears to contain a few original songs, most of the material is made up of summery covers. The main track, 작은고양이, is an updated version of the song with the same name from Lee Byung Hun’s former band Voy whereas 우리두리 was originally a Hachi & TJ song.

Also found on the album are new takes on familiar songs Sleigh Ride (featuring YouTube celebrity David Choi),Sugar, Sugar (supported with vocals and instruments from IS), A Lover’s Concerto, Fly Me To The Moon, New York, New York (with Taoka Miki from the Indigo), and Mexican guitar tune Maria Elena.