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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!

Had a busy last week, but things are looking better now. Here are some links I should’ve posted sooner:

Violet Sweets shared news on upcoming releases from Guckkasten, Gate Flowers, and Oh Ji Eun and The Wolves: Short News Short

It appears a new album is in the works for cute electropop act Trampauline as well, since she recently wrote that she had just finished the demo for her second album.

Even closer to release is Casker’s fifth full length album. The other day it was getting a second mastering and a release may be possible till October 20.

In addition to some information on the upcoming releases from Chang Kiha & The Faces, Violet Sweets also offers some details on the recent changes in lineup: The present situation of Jang Gi Ha and The Faces

Fine label Electric Muse too offered some more insight into some upcoming releases during last week. In November the ’70s group sound influenced Bihang Girl will release its debut EP, and some time during next year we can expect Big Baby Driver and Telefly to release their first albums; Atombook and Oyster Boys to release their second albums; and Dringe Augh to release his second EP.

After going out strong with Galaxy Express a couple of weeks ago, Live Planet has followed with more studio live music videos for The Freaks and Mongoose.

Via Omona They Didn’t! I came across a 10Asia interview with jazz pop band Winterplay:
- [INTERVIEW] Fusion jazz band Winterplay – Part 1
- [INTERVIEW] Fusion jazz band Winterplay – Part 2
The same interview has also been translated to Portuguese over at sarangingayo: [ENTREVISTA] Winterplay fala sobre carreira e como faz seu jazz

wassereis has translated a really nice Daum interview with highly recommended pop punk/rock act Yellow Monsters, where we get to learn how this super band formed and where those heavy riffs come from: [Interview] Yellow Monsters (Daum Music)

Chris Park found a variety of genres on the latest album from trash metal band Crash 크래쉬 (Crash) – The Paragon of Animals Review

A couple of weeks old already, but I didn’t notice till today: K.O.A. Zine has published yet another great interview! This time Joseph Kim has been talking to Jong-Seok Lee of shoegazer act Vidulgi OoyoO: Vidulgi Ooyoo: Pigeon Milk & the Fountain of Youth

Electronica duo will make a return with fifth full lenght album Tender on October 20, but already one track from the album is sold online. The 14 track strong tracklist includes a hidden track and a Fanny Fink remix of Your Song, the main track off last year’s Your Songs EP. Of further interest is a song called 나의 하루 나의 밤 featuring My Aunt Mary vocalist Thomas Cook and 놓아줘, where former Roller Coaster vocalist Joe Won Sun participates.

Following a digital single, 연가시, last year and first EP 33060 released end of April this year, modern rock band Hlin returned with a second EP called Remanent on October 7. Highly recommended music for any Nell fan!

In April this year, back when I couldn’t really update as much as I should, sweet indie pop/modern folk band Standing Egg released a self-titled EP that seemed relatively successful. The three songs all got their own music videos (사랑한다는 말 : Lalala : Kiss) and one of them was also the target for an Indie To Go session ([Indie2Go#046] Standing Egg “Kiss”). Luminosity has a profile if you want to learn more about the trio: [Profile] Standing Egg.

August 18, Standing Egg’s vocalist Clover released a two track digital single called 어느 파도, and a week ago – on October 7 – it was released on CD. Both lovely songs can be streamed from Standing Egg’s MySpace, and there’s a music video for the title track. The other song on the single is called 붉은 달 and features bossa nova girl Sorri.

You can read IndiefulROK’s original posts here, here, and here.

Assorted links from the last few days:

Thanks to Hannah Bae I got to read this really good article on music festivals in Korea, written by Niels Footman for Yonhap News: (Yonhap Feature) Five years after the first, Korea succumbs to rock festival fever.

Via Korea Gig Gudie I learned of a recently started podcast where there’s a good chance to hear some fine Korean music: Korean Homesick Blues.

Today London Korean Links shared some impressions from jazz pop group Winterplay’s recent appearances in London: Winterplay launches UK album with civilised gigs.

You can read the original post at Indieful ROK.

A number of jazz/bossa/light electronica-style releases were brought to my attention this weekend.

Over at Luminosity, Mardi shared some info on “acid pop band” Be My Guest, that debuted with single The First Temptation on August 6: [Profile] Be My Guest

She also reported that a project group from students at Hanseo University, Tonight, released a mini album called Nice To Meet You on September 10. More information on the project group and what can be expected from the members in the future: Project group Tonight releases first single~

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