Virtuacore

Knock (노크) 못참겠네 (Moschamgess-ne; I Can't Stand It) (1997) periodical old kpop power hour of power (POKPHOP) 1집

what better way to start off this series than with my favorite song from this era ever. the obscurant one-and-done group Knock's "못참겠네" (Moschamgess-ne; I Can't Stand It) is a profoundly strange, groovy banger that's like... you ever hear something and then never stop thinking about it for like, two-plus years? yeah, this is that. it's riding a crazy, pointillistic disco-house flow somewhere between Deavid Soul and Akufen, Cassius trading their vinyl for ROMplers, maximalist microhouse: as skeletal as it is stuffed with little details, spangles and accents, filter sweeps and microsamples. it's things like the molecular reduction of "That's the Way (I Like It)" in the intro, the track snapping into a nocturnal, jazzy hustle, the thumping kick and its accompanying squirrely bassline bending itself into a möbius strip, multiple hard-panned samples jumping out of the mix at the same time, or the digi-horns, space drums, pulses, beeps, whirls, pagers and phones all going off in parallel, and god knows what else (there's a lot more!). and the trio dovetail with and riff on all this racket perfectly, ooh-la-la harmonies colliding with angular co-ed rap geometry, sweetened sing-song into a perfect hook as sassy as it is yearning. and the breakdown after the first chorus is pure madness, a couple bars at a jagged clip and then "it's about that time I put you back on track!" in the center channel and "it's disco time, baby!" out of the left before devolving into gang chants and scream-raps. then it gets itself together and locks back on to that hellacious groove. totally devious.

it's a small thing, too, but I greatly appreciate this song knowing how good its hook is and beating the hell out of it as such. so many hits (and not-hits) of the time just sorta end, you know? here they drop the drums a second, bring them back and then hammer the hook into your brain over and over, layering the intro rap and a bunch more of those laser pulses on top. anyway... this song fuckin' rules so hard. what also fuckin' rules? this song's video!

the MV is so, so, sooooo good. a low-budget urban daydream of 90s street scenes (shout out to Freetel!), passing trains, underpass dance rituals and rain-slicked parking lots, all lit by colorful strobes and fogged-out flood lights, absolutely killer fashion (and at least two killer wigs), crazy fresh dance moves, just a bunch of grooving and messing about with friends on the street corner with a tinge of X-Files and Jet Set Radio, all linked together by an unimpeachable sense of cool. the image of the group just vibing on top of those cars while shrouded in fog and light? simply iconic. the video's mysterious nocturnal energy and heady, kinetic rhythm is the perfect match for the music, and the combination is a revelation.

the rest of Knock's sole album also rules, even if none of the other songs quite rise to the level of revelation that the title track does. every song is a keeper, whether the off-axis G-funk of "YAMMA" and "Bad Girl", the cartoonish lilt of "오리", or the infectious duo of "Miss Miss" and "너 친구맞니?!", which both utilize the structure of a four-on-the-floor hook juxtaposed with a funky syncopated rhythm for the verses. "연습게임" is mystical and subterranean, and even the requisite album-closing ballad "I feel in your eyes" is a jammer: slow-and-low, spare yet lush, unpretentious and memorable. the whole record's united by the same off-kilter soundworld that animates the title track—the same ROMpler full of samples bouncing every which way, instruments all over the place, bits and pieces of voice and sound accenting everything, almost like a fourth vocalist. it's full of hooks, microhooks and grooves, all anchored to a mad sense of rhythm and space. all these joints have been stuck in my head for ages, basically! it's always it's the weirdest, galaxy-brain tunes that go nowhere and are doomed to obscurity, ain't it.

download in FLAC or V0 (ripped from my CD... scanned, too!)

bonus fun fact #1: the female rapper with the buzz-cut is named Z-E (지이)—after Knock fizzled out, she linked up with a rapper by the name of Turtleman to form the trio Turtles (거북이), who scored hit after hit until Turtleman's tragic passing in 2008. Turtles were a universally beloved trio, and deservedly so—they also absolutely rule.

bonus fun fact #2 and #3: "못참겠네" (plus "YAMMA" and "Bad Girl") was arranged by one Jegal Min (제갈민), one of the unsung heroes (see also: Shin Young-sub (신영섭)) of the original 1992-1994 "rap dance" craze that was dominated by Seo Taiji, Hyun Jin-young, DEUX and others. like many a failed pop star, he then found far more success in production and management. one of his backup dancers, Kim Jung-nam, later found stardom as half of the legendary Turbo (터보).

bonus fun fact #4: future entries in this series will absolutely not go on this long. i just really love this song, yeah?

tumblr exclusive bonus fun fact #5: periodical old kpop power hour of power (POKPHOP) is a series i've started on my cohost page but to a certain extent this tumblr has been on a POKPHOP for seven whole years now

wow i don’t know how long this has been in my inbox for orz

nightcored and visualized the homie DV-i’s track Media Prototype from her new Maltine EP implementation. the track is amazing and beautiful, 00s azn breakbeat funneled through PSB’s Very and tricked out with DV’s usual Asakura/Komuro worship, sound module madness and freestyle fantasy (plus the vocals, via Reinabe, are amazing*)

the visuals are via an MV for the long-dead Korean MMORPG Yogurting, the visuals of which got a lot of play on the 00s nerd internet. in particular i wanted to shout-out this video of Dj Babyboi’s Lies and the flash loop yogurtingeyes.swf. it’s a love letter to flash loops (which i’ve been enchanted by since like... 2007? and will always be, long after Flash has officially died), digital audio and visual compression (ditto, natch), and also the universal power of anime dance gifs. shout out to z0r.de, thebest404pageever, and many sites long dead. maybe i have more to say about it but i’m not good at saying things, haha.

also i made this in iMovie on a 2004 iBook. legitimately fun, and definitely an experience!

Key (키) 딸기와 바닐라 (Strawberry and vanilla) and 천로역정 (A journey to Heaven/Pilgrim’s Progress) 1997-1998

the rabbit hole that is kpop’s 90s wild west era will never end for me and it’s because of songs like these.

strawberry and vanilla just has to be one of the most over-the-top korean title tracks ever. in an environment where most every song was half a dozen ideas at once in varying levels of bricolage, this shit’s a straight up rompler prog theatre production in lieu of, or maybe somehow in service of, what could be called proper pop music.

i kind of need an itemized list to keep track of it— the intro being four genres in 15 seconds, including a straight-up Harthouse banger; the short reverb on everything; the spring-loaded reverberated drums that snap and bounce like Gucci Crew II; how every section has its own rhythmic switch-up, how the proper prechorus bassline sounds like it’s running away from the rest of the track; the seven different basslines each played on a different patch (bent baritone synth sax on the rap sections!); the absurd dramatic structure that just builds and builds before it defenestrates itself at the end; the vocals, the vocals! (female vox has a rhythm to it that almost feels like Barakatak?); or maybe just the rackmount digi-brass, chaotic funk and ice cream/lover’s quarrel that holds everything together.

it’s an ungodly collision of the “put everything in the blender yet still garishly commercial” ethos of post-Taiji korean pop music and the theme song of a dinner theatre musical from hell composed by J. A. Seazer or something. it defies explanation and still somehow ends up really catchy, in an inverted sense that everything but the chorus seems like the point. also, worth noting again that it’s terribly funky—a sort of Detroit-like funk, paranoid and vectorized, especially the instrumental break around the two-minute mark after the first chorus. an instrumental version of this track could go off anywhere.

also the couple of TV performances of it i’ve been able to dig up use rearrangements that sound like futile attempts at streamlining the monster, like they knew they created some wild shit and had no idea what to do with it.

i haven’t even mentioned the video, which is a trip in its own way. babies, hunting lodges, some mysterious dance moves, and the contrasts between the prettyboy and the profoundly striking chrome-dome-and-shades-and-stache dude, the sort of look you’d rarely find in korean pop again. it’s inexplicable and feels a bit like gonzo footage of a cult initiation. a song like this couldn’t possibly have any other accompaniment.

the album it came from is rather boilerplate for the era, with a few good ideas peeking in and out. (although the Coldcut Let Us Play!-style CGI on the cover is a cute touch) boilerplate save for the intro, this (of course), and the seventh song, which is its own monster entirely—more on that in second.

quick aside—they must’ve had a line-up change after the first album because baldy disappeared and was replaced with another prettyboy. speaking of, the not-bald dude in the group just so happens to be the now-famous talent Lee Min-ho, aka Boom (붐). after this shuffle, this go-nowhere group somehow cobbled together another album, which itself included a bunch of songs from the first, either in their original form or re-recorded. i have no idea what the thought process was, but the looks were pretty good (also there’s a third album, but it might be a promo of some sort—it just rearranges the second album’s track listing?).

Strawberry and vanilla didn’t reappear, but the seventh track on the first, 천로역정 (A journey to Heaven, or the Korean title of Pilgrim’s Progress), did, which is great because it’s a doozy on its own.

pure kitchen sink bass music routed through a whole lot of emotional dissonance. obviously dissonance between a song’s music and its lyrics is a trick as old as time, but every part of this whole song is just in such conflict with itself it turns into something indefinable. first the entire intro to Kung-Fu Fighting, then a bit of Miami bass poking its head out, which then gets bulldozed by an out-of-nowhere thrash riff, then what sounds like a mischievous little love song starts playing out like nothing happened...

...and the song’s mix feels queasy: all these little spangles and chimes and lasers in the background that are just the right sort of high frequency to throw you off, everything just this big cloud of discordant treble with the bass frequencies tucked in there like a mere suggestion. it’s a cute little song but it feels totally wrong; even the thrash riff pops up again during the chorus but sounds like it’s coming through a broken headphone jack, something between shortwave static and scrap metal. then that riff kicks in again and it starts all over from the top. and lyrically it’s not lovey-dovey but pure spite. the entire affair feels like JYP’s “Proposal Song” (itself a gigantic banger!) in the midst of a bad trip. it’s nearly masochistic, kind of a headache to listen to for very long, and utterly glorious.

that riff sample was also used on this track—wonder where it came from, like a pantera cut or some stock rompler thing or sound pack something?

anyway, in the meantime, in june of this year and then a couple weeks ago i made two mixtapes of old korean pop joints (because if there’s one thing this tumblr can’t run out of....)

peep ‘em if you so desire

the color future vol. 1 -Deep - Melodic - Ballad - Techno-

tcf vol. 2 -Melodic - Deep - House - Cosmos-

얌야밍 (yam ya ming) 랄랄라 (La la la)

okay quick question: do you like snares?