Round-up on Rolling K-pop

[koganbot]

Did a brief 2011 round-up over on Rolling K-pop, with more than a score of links:

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=2714591&boardid=41&threadid=80662

Comments

[koganbot]

Checking credits on the SNSD album, that is. My favorite new song by far is "Bad Girl," which I don't think has anything particularly Korean, or Asian, in its sound, except for the way it combines pop and r&b seamlessly - but then, I'm hardly the one who can identify what's Asian and what isn't. Maybe there's a particularly Asian push to the bass synths? But if I'd heard this was produced by a Swede rather than just written by a couple, I'd probably say the identical sound was Swedish. It's produced by Hiro, who's Japanese and has a track record, but I don't know anything much about him. He produced "Beautiful Stranger" and "Let It Rain," which I also like. Anyhow, the writers on "Bad Girl" are Hiro, Jorgen Elofsson, Jesper Jakobson, and Lauren Dyson. I know nothing about Jakobson. Dyson may or may not have been the person who sang vocals on the English version of Basshunter's hits. Elofsson is a Swede with more than a decade's worth of writing credits, few of which had an impact on me, at least on my memory, except that he's one of the people to blame for "A Moment Like This," and one who gets the credit for Britney's "(You Drive Me) Crazy" and Marie Serneholt's "That's The Way My Heart Goes" - none of which feel like "Bad Girl"; "Bad Girl" has a soft, sexy sadness that Vanessa Hudgens would occasionally pull off, but sounds less sketchy than Vanessa in its soft sexy sadness. Think I'd credit the arranger and the performers more than the songwriters for that, though the writers might have written the arrangements in, for all I know. Song works for me with all those exhaled "oh oh ohs" that start the song, then seem to transfer their sad energy to the deep synths.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

These two guys are credited on most new tracks alongside the myriad of European names, and talk about their inspiration in this sometimes subtitled clip

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Sm Ent hold songwriting workshops and seminars with European teams, so they're clearly trying for a two-way collab where they won't just get, say, "That's The Wy My Heart Goes" (clearly). We've seen familiar names before without really hearing their familiar sounds... with obvious exceptions like SNSD's "Chocolate Love", clearly Bloodshy & Avant in Sweet Dreams my LA Ex mode.

[(Anonymous)]

Digz,inc website (they are a bunch of songwriters, producers, lyricists, etc. mainly focused on the Japanese market (from AKB girls solo singles to EXILE related things)

http://www.digzinc.com/work/2011.html

Favourite HIRO production (2009):



Don’t know if favourite SYT production, but remember hearing that on its day (2007):

[askbask.livejournal.com]

Your favorite album track got a video

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[koganbot]

[askbask.livejournal.com]

The choreography is a lot more messy than The Great Escape. The video isn't much, but apparently it was just a 'gift' to the fans for the album selling a lot of copies. In other words a rush job. But your live clip has better subtitles.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

I like some degree of messiness in the choreography. The Great Escape had difficult moves and synced formation work, but also more free-form parts where they could show off some swagger. They've done lots of great choreographies but they're more of the military parade style - with TGE they could improvise and play around more, a different kind of cool. We've had some of that before, but mostly on solo numbers, dance specials, concert performances.

[askbask.livejournal.com]

For example Taeyeon took out her theatrical side on their recent tour

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