Strategies of incoherence

[koganbot]

On the latest 4minute EP, four* different sets of producers/writers make the same decision (or follow the same instructions), which is to create songs that have lots of empty space, highlighting each singer and song segment without worrying too much about tying sections together musically or emotionally. These tracks belong to a strange and interesting trend: strategies of incoherence, also being employed to a lesser or greater extent by G-Dragon ("Crayon"), SNSD ("I Got A Boy"), GLAM ("I Like That"), 4minute subunit 2Yoon ("24/7"), plus some others I can't think of this second.

Watch on YouTube

Works pretty well. None of 4minute are bravura-type vocalists, but they're each distinct and can handle the spotlight. HyunA dominates, with bits of incantation and scraps of rap. She really enjoys being a star. The two Yoons twirl their melodies like lassos. Lots of fun. Mat complains regarding "What's Your Name" that "lalalas" are no good for this group, but I disagree. The lalalas fit 4minute's general demeanor of cheerfully contentious salaciousness, are just more seduction. I do find Brave Brothers' beats a bit weak and chintzy. If you're gonna go spare you need strong and dramatic architecture, not just mild percolation.** But the hook has stuck more than I expected. I do prefer "Whatever" (credited to the unknown-to-me Seo Jae Woo, D3O, and Aileen De La Cruz, the latter two being Canadian if my Internet search is steering me right):

Watch on YouTube

*The fifth track, "Domino," is more standard and rather dull.

**I still don't know what I think of Brave Brothers. He's got four MAJOR tracks that I know of, which is a lot: Sistar's "Alone," Sistar19's "Gone Not Around Any Longer," Big Bang's "Last Farewell," and Son Dam-bi's & After School's "Amoled." On those two Sistar tracks, the chintz kind of counterbalances Hyorin's precisely aching and gorgeous vocals, prevents the singing from being too exquisite and respectable, as does all the dumb bending over with ass out in the videos. My defense of "Amoled" is that it's a phone commercial, and you know on mobiles the sound is tinny, ditto the song, which incorporates the old tin of science fiction past.

Comments

Brave Brothers

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Son Dam Bi - Saturday Night
Electroboyz - Incoming Call
UKiss - Talk to Me
Teen Top - Be My Girl
One Two - Starry Night

And on a non-major but still quite good level:
Big Bang - Wonderful
One Two - Very Good
ZE:A - Aftermath
UKiss - Man Man Ha Ni (http://www.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DKIl8PVqKSuY&ei=A1qRUaeLMJC30QHowoGQDw)
Sistar - So Cool, How Dare You, etc
Electroboyz - Ma Boy 2
HyunA - Ice Cream
Brave Girls - Nowadays You

He worked on Lies and an early version of Day by Day by Big Bang, too.

Re: Brave Brothers

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Back here to say that I'm on a Sistar kick right now, am really enjoying all these old singles and album tracks. "Ma Boy" is just as good as "Gone Not Around", though it's a very different song.

Re: Brave Brothers

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Right?? I remember thinking the group was kind of sub-2NE1 at the time, but now I really like their debut album a lot... I've been using this mix (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ1hvB_L30o&list=PLCF210B3CDC4506B7) for exercise.

Re: Brave Brothers

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I don't have the urge to compare Sistar to 2NE1 -- they're actually quite singular, which I hadn't realized before! Taking their album tracks into account, there's a strong R&B element running through their music (of the sort that you get on Jukebox these days, i.e. 00s producers harking back to what they loved about 90s R&B). Then you have Hyorin the vocal booster rocket. Then you have the studied vulgarity, which plays out in their image and the butt-centric dancing and the music itself (the super-deliberate chintzy piano/sax in "Gone Not Around Any Longer"). I'm not sure I've ever seen a pop group stake out this specific position: knowing where the line of grown-up tastefulness is, then intentionally straying just beyond it. Normally when pop groups are vulgar, it's a teen brat/chav thing (eg. early Spice Girls), or a winking thing (Eurovision), or an outright different set of aesthetics (most Eastern European pop stars).

Re: Brave Brothers

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Sistar are kind of funny because they get called classy - like they are supposedly "sexy in a classy way" - but that image developed thanks to a video ("Alone") that's set in Las Vegas, of all places. And the Las Vegas idea of classy is like the Las Vegas idea of anything, kind of gaudy and vulgar, low-class or criminal underneath, but with luxury and a veneer of civility on top. Sort of a poor kid's idea of what old money must look like. To me, Sistar always seemed to have a bit of a gangster aesthetic to them.

(Well, Brave Brothers is famously an ex-gangster, so without reading too much into it, there's that, as well XD.)

Re: Brave Brothers

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yes -- I didn't want to go out on this limb, but I have this feeling that there's "something off" about the Sistar Girl, you know? (The platonic Girl who represents the "image" of the group rather than any IRL member of the group herself.) She's Vegas-classy rather than classy-classy, a sexy big-hearted moll, wants to be taken home to meet the family but fears she won't be. A lot of their songs seem to be about insecurity, trying very hard to hold onto a guy that they fear will leave them for x reason, being cheated on, being dumped.

Re: Brave Brothers

[koganbot]

But aren't you also saying that they're being knowingly "off"? Would it be right to say that da Sistars are knowingly at a distance from Sistar Girl, and not just in that they* know that other people would consider her off, but also in that they consider her off as well, and are assuming that at least some of us also consider her off and can perceive the difference between them and her? —Not that they're necessarily trying to think this through and to deliberately insert complications and convolutions, but that such complications/convolutions are there to be had on the cultural stage.

But I don't know Korean culture (though I'm certain that a phrase like "Korean culture" refers to competing cultural elements). If someone (e.g., you) here or on ilX or Freaky Trigger, etc., were to use the phrase "grown-up tastefulness" in the context of her own milieu online,** the words "grown-up" and "tastefulness" would simultaneously have positive and pejorative connotations, and what counts as grown-up would be understood to be contested, without there being a definite match between being grown up and being labeled a grown-up. I assume that K-pop Idol World is fairly distant from our online klatch, though with a lot of variation in attitudes within Idol World (e.g., I wouldn't be surprised if Kim Eana and Hwang Soo-ah, who work with Brown Eyed Girls, would fit right in here***). So I wouldn't know if the contests in Idol World around "grown-up" and "tastefulness" are like our contests, though I'll bet that there as here there's clear knowledge of a lack of consensus.

I would guess that there's an understanding that Vegas class is contingent class, if even classy at all, and that there's a wink that attaches to the bending over. But I don't know if I'm right in these guesses. Maybe Sistar really buy into Vegas, and maybe they consider the bending over scintillating. I'm biased by the fact that, though I consider the Sistars naturally warm and sexy, I find the bending over very unsexy: it's just blatant and irritating, even with the warm pathos of their trying too hard and the distance of the wink. And this unsexiness isn't intentional. And the chintz of the beats isn't intentional at all, is just owing to Brave Brothers' weaknesses. Which doesn't mean his rhythms aren't ever effective in moving the music. They're just not as powerful — as force, as setting — as they could be.

*And/or whoever on staff are contributing to conceptualization.

**Which may differ in this regard from some of her other milieus.

***To the extent that anybody fits in here.

Re: Brave Brothers

[koganbot]

Because we can never embed this too often:

Sistar's "Alone"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0ZHXVp_wUE

An interesting thing about Hyorin's booster rocket is that she rarely uses it. It's kinda there, has an impact by implication, in that we know that she can launch us over the sky at whim, even though she then doesn't. I'd say her technique leans towards laser precision, the force of her voice directed at a very tiny location. Speaking of tastefulness, I hate the assumption that goes "restraint = taste," but Hyorin's restraint is genuinely good, genuinely effective, splits the emotional nail at 100 paces without having to take a big wind-up to show off that she's doing it.

(Though I think that super light stuff like "Loving U" is a waste of her voice; however, the song dominated all the streams last summer left over from "Gangnam Style," so what do I know?)

I listened to Hyorin's Immortal Song performances only once. I have the impression, maybe incorrect, that they played a big role in pushing Sistar's visibility and sales to the top level. She ran through the vocal calisthenics as you'd expect, and didn't seem ridiculous but did seem forced, and I was left unmoved. This may have been owing to the songs being the wrong ones to bring out what I like most in her. But the delicate beginning of "A Cup Of Coffee" should have been perfect for her. Maybe she needs the studio more than one realizes.

Re: Brave Brothers

[koganbot]

But I forgot that she did a creditable Mariah on Chocolate (h/t Mat).