I’ve forgotten about blogging this until now, but it’s better late than never (sometimes, at least).

Anyway, this past summer in Hong Kong a random piece of relatively unique graffiti caught my eyes. It was a treble clef on some wall in Causeway Bay. And it wasn’t just a treble clef either, it had a sharp accidental along the tail of the clef. Well, whether or not that little accidental is special is really up to you. But in any case, it was a simple but interesting work of art, an especially fresh breath of air—a couple of ubiquitous musical symbols not typically present on urban streets. Usually you don’t see cool graffiti like this, even in a place with a lot more graffiti, like Rome.

Delving In

Sophomore year in high school or so, I really delved into trance music and acquired not only specific knowledge about the trance scene, but also the electronic dance music scene. Last year, I began exploring Korean lounge and Korean hip-hop, and, although I can’t consider myself a true connoisseur of those two genres, I have learned quite a bit and now listen to a variety of artists, most of whom are not in the mainstream (the hip-hop side of this musical exploration is partially thanks to the recommendations of my friend Won here).

This picture is on my MacBook’s desktop. Now, where did they come from? Well, lately, I’ve begun my latest foray into interesting musical realms—this time, Korean indie rock. How did I embark upon that remarkable journey? I don’t really remember exactly why I was doing this, but for some reason I came across this guy’s blog post about a Korean indie mini-album released by a certain Earip (이아립), the lead singer of a Korean indie rock band called Sweater. I proceeded to listen to one of her songs titled “we are the universe.” It was good. Simple, quiet, and tranquil, it inspired me to find similar music.

Unfortunately, after extensive digging, very few people had the album, and it seemed difficult and expensive to order the album online (although I did run across many pages in Korean with brief reviews of Earip’s album). A place called Post Poetics has seems to have it available for ordering, but they don’t really seem to communicate in English, and an online store called Mr. Kwang also sells it—but for $32.99. [feb28 2008 edit: Post Poetics has actually contacted me (in English) for ordering the CD, so don’t be afraid to try contacting them either. My apologies!] YesAsia, probably the easiest method for buying Asian media online in the US, unfortunately, does not have either of her two solo albums.

Sweater and Misty Blue

Now we return to the subject in the picture above—Sweater, the group Earip’s the lead singer for. (I would provide a URL, but the group didn’t renew their domain registration because they were apparently too “lazy”—at least, as Earip said.) I found a review of Sweater’s first album, Staccato Green, rating it an A+… in Korean. There I listened to the second track, 별똥별, many times, and I was definitely hooked. I looked around more to find out about them.

Actually for Sweater I did find some blogs that had written about them in English… well, more like two or three. But in any case, see The Turning Gate’s “The Korean soundWave, Part II” for a particularly decent entry which includes them and other groups, like Misty Blue. So then I also tried some Misty Blue, and the words in that article describe pretty well my own sentiments, “I love Misty Blue. They remind me every so slightly of the Sundays, and they’re delightful to listen to – calming, but upbeat; upbeat, but low-key; beautiful, wonderful and catchy too!”

As of this writing, I’ve bought Sweater’s first album, Staccato Green, off Amazon in mp3 (LAME V0 VBR, I think, with no DRM!) as well as their second album, Humming Street, off YesAsia.com. I probably would’ve bought the first album in CD as well, but I wanted to buy something from Amazon (Amazon gift cards are awesome!), and unfortunately they don’t sell the actual CD… Either way, I’m very happy to have supported this Korean indie artist. I haven’t bought any Misty Blue music yet, but they too deserve me at least buying one of their CDs. I still might even buy an Earip CD. All of this music is just so refreshing.

Why Korean Indie Rock

You might ask why I don’t just settle for American music, maybe American indie music. It turns out that I did used to listen to a lot of popular American music. I still listen to and enjoy some songs here and there of that genre. I’ve somewhat tested out some indie music in English, but I didn’t find it very exciting. I have nothing against Western music, seriously; to this day, trance music is still something I love, and some of its songs are among my favorites. One way or another, for some reason, Korean indie rock has this appeal to it that I simply highly enjoy. I accidentally run into some of it and am instantly hooked. It can be really calming or just really delightful in all sorts of ways—not that other music can’t do this because other music definitely can—but why not learn about some music you find enjoyable?

Aside from reasons like that, Korean indie music is interesting in its own right. I once read that it’s somewhat of a Korean musical subculture countering highly commercialized Korean pop music culture. When you think about it, Korean music most people generally encounter is really commercialized—think BoA or Lee Soo Young, both of whom I think are enjoyable, competent singers, yet are still nonetheless parts of a commercialized culture. My friend Won even noted that all of Lee Soo Young’s songs sound the same, and I do find some truth in this. So, in principle, I also find Korean indie music intriguing. Besides, exploring various music means exploring various cultures and acquiring new understanding, and I certainly have felt wiser every time I’ve listened to some new brand of music—whether it’s been MC Solaar and French hip-hop, The Quiett and Korean hip-hop, or even the awesome Jeremy Soule and video game soundtrack music.

To the Future

Unfortunately the indie albums I’ve been listening to are relatively old (Staccato Green and Humming Street were released in 2002 and 2003, respectively), but if it’s fresh and exciting for me, then it could very well be the same for you, too. I’ll be on the lookout for newer interesting Korean indie rock albums, but information for this kind of thing is hard to come by in English. If at any point someone wants to help me out with these endeavors, feel free to let me know! Until then, I hope you, “dear reader,” enjoy some of these artists I’ve talked about.

In my previous article here, I discussed how The Pirate Bay (TFP) was given IFPI.com (for their own purposes), which was formerly under the control of the actual IFPI. Last Tuesday, October 23, OiNK (formerly OiNK.me.uk) was shut down by the IFPI and the BPI, in association with the Dutch police who seized the servers in the Netherlands.

OiNK.cd was a private invite-only torrent tracker with strict torrent uploading rules, especially for music. For example, music was generally compressed as MP3 or FLAC, albums needed to include tracklists, had to have a minimum of 192kbps as bitrate (with the exception of V2/APS LAME encodes), and could not be transcodes. The V0 LAME encode was encouraged. The result was an extensive very organized, easily searchable library of music torrents. Granted, this was not the best source of music for every type of music. For Japanese and other East Asian music, there are sources that filled in the gaps that OiNK left, but the torrents of those categories that were on OiNK (more than other similarly broad trackers) were well-seeded. Likewise, for trance, OiNK was certainly not the best place for the latest releases. However, it still offered something close to a musical paradise.

The owner of the site (who also goes by OiNK) was arrested, although now he is out on bail. OiNK.cd, for most of the past week, was “replaced with a ‘93-webdesignish advertisement” (quoted from enjoys.it). The domain’s nameservers have since been changed to point to those of TPB. Here’s what it looks like as of this writing:

OiNK himself has been arguing that OiNK.cd only provided a way of accessing what people were sharing on their personal computers, in the same way that Google indexes a vast collection of arguably objectionable material. The online Daily Telegraph quotes OiNK regarding the issue,

“As far as I am aware no-one in Britain has ever been taken to court for running a website like mine. My site is no different to something like Google.

“If Google directed someone to a site they can illegally download music they are doing the same as what I have been accused of. I am not making any Oink users break the law. People don’t pay to use the site.”

The replacement of the prior notice on the website by the waffles and relevant link correspond with OiNK’s philosophy. “These are the waffles that taste really good according to google.” This link goes to a search engine results page, which, as the top result (at least right now) links to a blog post by one of the most prominent people involved with TPB that links to a lot of torrent trackers. OiNK shows that, even though his tracker is down, the page can still link to a Google page linking to dozens of trackers, making a lot of downloadable content more easily accessible.

As reported by TorrentFreak, people, including The Pirate Parties of the UK and the Netherlands, have condemned the IFPI’s actions in taking down OiNK as retaliatory since TPB is currently holding IFPI.com:

The British and Dutch Pirate Parties have issued a joint statement condemning the actions as retaliatory, and questioning the ethics of choreographing it, and letting representatives of the victims participate in the investigation. How many times do they let the father of a murder victim work on the investigation of the Murder?

They also condemn the police forces for allowing the presumption of innocence to be discarded, in that the domain of the website, has been effectively hijacked, and replaced by a page insinuating guilt on the part of the site owner. The ‘Presumption of Innocence’, better known as “innocent until proven guilty” is a cornerstone of law both in the Netherlands and UK. Surely, if anyone should have put a temporary website under the Oink domain, then it should have been the Cleveland police, or the Dutch police, not the record label owners union. I think this condemnation and allegation is not without logic and reason.

It’s a shame that such a thing could happen. I do not mean to say this in blatant support of “piracy” as defined by the oligarchical music corporations, but the need for the industry and politicians to come to their senses about culture and their broken distribution model remains increasingly apparent. An interesting rant that I haven’t even completed reading at this point discusses this issue extensively.

Mainstream news about this, including the IFPI’s very own press release, include a bunch of factually incorrect information about OiNK and its shutdown (although there are some truths and half-truths), so be careful.

There are a lot of interesting things going on regarding this pretty major event. Its effects are actually extremely broad, and most have yet to be seen. Stay tuned.