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Hyukoh

By Lionina - 7:44 PM

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Kpop Countdown 2015 - Favorites

By Lionina - 9:59 AM

Hyukoh - 22
Kicking off the 2015 list with Hyukoh's album, 22. "Big Bird" is still my favorite song, but other uptempo tracks, like "Comes and Goes" and "Wing Wing" (on previous album 20) are also in heavy rotation.

Life and Time - Land
I was a little terrified that the quirky side project of Sunbin (The Koxx), Jinsil (Loro), and their delicately math-y drummer, Im Sang Wook, was going to be a one off. However, the appearance of a second album settled some fears.

Seemingly organically, the musicians' personal watermarks weave the new album into a improvisational, but not really loose, impressionistic, but tempered, whole. On gentler songs, like "Light", vocals reverberate with sweet contentment. Then in contrast, Sunbin pulls whiny punk attitude in "My Loving City" over a fearsome crescendo of riffs. Light-handed and inventive, drummer Im Sang Wook features layers delicate soca beats in groovy "Forest", but then wends drum n' bass seamlessly through the krautrock density of "Life" in counterpoint to the band's signature grungy bass tone and chunky chord structure.

Land doesn't have the same sense of effortless purpose as first album The Great Deep. Instead, tracks jump genres - here is a glimpse of a Hendrix lick, there is a fragment of a funk bassline juxtaposed with trip hop moodiness. But Life and Time avoids the gloss of po-mo reverence by pulling technically from source material while arranging without a hint of slavishness.

SINGLES

Exo - "Call Me Baby"

"Time’s a-wasting girl, so don’t wait... don’t wait too long."
Uber-luxurious new jack swing grounded in the conviction of punchy beats. Intertwining harmonic threads attack from every angle until a sinuous breakdown belies the real intent, hypnosis and compliance.

Exo - "Beautiful"

Remember PM Dawn with fondness? I do too.

Beast - "#tbm"

"My Throwback Memories"

Hyunsung's "escape" verse pretty much clinches the stuttering, glitchy flashback concept of sun drenched nostalgia at the end of summer with this (surprisingly) superb Japanese original single.

See Also: I prefer easy listening Ordinary, with "Sweet Room" and "See You There", to Beast's last Korean album 12:30.

DΞΔN x Anderson .Paak - "Put My Hands On You" (Prod. by Mr. Carmack & esta.)
"A yai yai yai yai... I just wanna..."
To be honest, this song caught my attention less for Dean - a not entirely distinguished R&B singer who is currently making waves - but rather for the insistently throbby lounge house broken up with subtle moments of funk by Mr. Carmack and esta.

f(x) - "4 Walls"
"4 Walls" is probably the most high profile of dance influenced tracks coming out of Korea recently (some pretty good as evidenced above) and f(x) is doing what they do best - exemplifying the delicate symbiosis of mainstream kpop and dance music sensibilities without losing any dance floor logic.

See also: Girl's Generation's, simple and repetitive (as it should be) dance track "Catch Me If You Can".

Big Bang - "If You"

Ballads are fresh for Big Band and this one does it for me for some reason. (I don't have to have a reason for everything.)

Big Bang - "Bae Bae"
Make them rice cakes baby!
Smashing Pumpkins-esque hazy grunge chords accent opium addled instruments (and visuals) over echo-y slo-jam beat complete with swoony Taeyang chorus. Yes, Big Bang is on here twice. They had a big year with MADE and for good reason.

Girl's Generation - "Lionheart"
Girl Power...?
There is something chilling about this straightforward girl group track about heartbreak. Topically bubbly and frothy in all the right ways, maybe it's the intense build of saucy complaints into a imperturbable wall of sound, or the robotic precision of that production, or the way the final chords are left hauntingly incomplete. In any case, the lack of soul styling, the missing emotive glue for this type of song, doesn't suggest a woman in pain as much as someone who is no longer quite capable of feeling any.

Zico - "Yes or No"
Stole (or reclaimed) from the lips of Unpretty Rapstars but so much better, yes or no?

See also: Crush ft. Zico - "Oasis"

Oh My Girl - "Closer"
Usually, this kind of girly/strawberry sentimentality is not my type of cake, but the producers for album, Closer, have really built a pleasant castle for their princesses - protecting their lightweight vocal sound, while bringing twists to the virgin-pop formula. "Closer" co-opts Madonna's "Like a Prayer" choral section, but it's the trance beat reverberating in the gothic cathedral of echoes that shows real distance from one end of the cute spectrum to the other.

See also: "Cupid" - a step track with a lot of sassy brassy weight removed, improving girl power power with actual girlish joie de vivre. Actually, the whole album is worth listening to except for maybe the most obviously trend-chasing last track. This group is probably my pick for girl group of the year, with JYP's Twice - Ooh Ahh and Red Velvet trailing by more than several measures.

iKon - "My Type"
This one is comfort food. I admit it.

Continuing the perfect-as-you-are-girl trend, see also Got7 - "Just Right"

Topp Dogg - "The Beat
In terms of hot-mess style Korean arrangements, this single manages to melt all the disparate elements into a compelling overture of orientalism begging for multiple listens and actual attentiveness.