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DJ DOC, Sorrow Of Superman
Jun. 6th, 2022 04:35 am1994 is coming up in August in Tom's Twitter Polls and I'm researching Korea. DJ DOC's "Murphy's Law" (1995) is one of my favorites of early K-pop, fast-on-its-feet, so I'm exploring the group's first album from a year earlier.
"Repentance": what I'd call "dub background," which normally would be an oxymoron: the defining feature of dub is you take out the supposed center – wiping away the vocal melody or the instrumental solo – and then instead of establishing some other central element, you keep the center blank while playing around, moving bits of echo or accompaniment forward and back. So the dub isn't a background, it's the lack of a foreground. But in this song the center, the r&b'ish singing, is only half assertive anyway – will stride forth, then get all recessive and wispy, going from one to the other – so the echo and bass share the stage with it just by being there.
"Sorrow of Superman": The excitement of early K-pop, which grabbed from hip-hop the adventure of splicing together anything you want. This works the template that Seo Taiji had set with "I Know": you start with the splicing and dicing, then seem to settle on a central melody but – instead – trade the melody and the splice back-and-forth as you ride into the sunset.
"DungDari Series": The rapper who starts this makes lots of fast twists and turns – he's distinctly Korean in this, as opposed to trying for the cadences of American rap, though I can't specify why I think so. The picking and simple strums leave a lot of room for the voices. Is something of a technique for this group: use lots of stuff but keep your space clear for all of it anyway; result is a quick lightness rather than a sense of struggle. When the three DOCs sing together esp. in forced falsetto they seem to be enjoying their playfulness and mockery, though Google Translate isn't giving me a great idea of what the fun is about. (Old tale about bartering with hoteliers and innkeepers?)
"Repentance": what I'd call "dub background," which normally would be an oxymoron: the defining feature of dub is you take out the supposed center – wiping away the vocal melody or the instrumental solo – and then instead of establishing some other central element, you keep the center blank while playing around, moving bits of echo or accompaniment forward and back. So the dub isn't a background, it's the lack of a foreground. But in this song the center, the r&b'ish singing, is only half assertive anyway – will stride forth, then get all recessive and wispy, going from one to the other – so the echo and bass share the stage with it just by being there.
"Sorrow of Superman": The excitement of early K-pop, which grabbed from hip-hop the adventure of splicing together anything you want. This works the template that Seo Taiji had set with "I Know": you start with the splicing and dicing, then seem to settle on a central melody but – instead – trade the melody and the splice back-and-forth as you ride into the sunset.
"DungDari Series": The rapper who starts this makes lots of fast twists and turns – he's distinctly Korean in this, as opposed to trying for the cadences of American rap, though I can't specify why I think so. The picking and simple strums leave a lot of room for the voices. Is something of a technique for this group: use lots of stuff but keep your space clear for all of it anyway; result is a quick lightness rather than a sense of struggle. When the three DOCs sing together esp. in forced falsetto they seem to be enjoying their playfulness and mockery, though Google Translate isn't giving me a great idea of what the fun is about. (Old tale about bartering with hoteliers and innkeepers?)
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