A version of this interview was published in May 2010's issue of the Groove magazine. All photos in the printed article are Aaron Brown's; all photos below are my own.




With little warning, the synth keyboard, guitar, and drum trio halted their sound check and listened. "Can you check that feedback? It might be a bad cord." The venue staff went silent as the noise played on. The curious part was this feedback had a melody - not like the tune they were playing, but something strangely similar. A off-kilter foreshadowing of the performance, or just a weird glitch? Turns out it was the latter, but still an unusual moment with an unusual band.

I had a chance to chow down on some pre-concert samgyeopsal with the Sacramento-conceived, Portland-transported trio What's Up. Making their debut in Korea with SuperColorSuper (a promotional company), they didn't seem too fazed by the unusual elements of Korean culture - "we really dig the kimchi" was heard repeatedly from all members of the band to this writer's surprise. With shows in Busan, Daegu, Seoul, and Daejeon, they've had a great chance to experience some of Korea's, er, distinctive, culture. "This one drunken businessman, he was shaking my hand and he just wouldn't let go - he was asking me, like, how old are you and where are you from" - just the sort of culture shock every foreigner gets at least once during their time here.

Korea isn't exactly known for bringing in indie acts that weren't formed here. "Sean [Maylone from SuperColorSuper] lives out here and got us a chance to perform across Korea." While this isn't the promoter's first concert - they were responsible for Do Make Say Think's February performance in Seoul, among others - the nascent company has already gained a sizable following, as evidenced by the crowd at Seoul's concert.

Teddy Briggs goes between the drums and keyboards; Brian Pasos keeps the bass alive, and Robby Moncrieff claims the title "polymorphic instrumentalist". Their current record - a seven-song, thirty-minute EP entitled "Content Imagination" - is for sale at obstructivevibe.com, along with some of Robby's other projects. "We've been working on a new album for about a year and a half now", although Robby couldn't say when it would be released. Robby also mentioned he'd be DJ'ing for the after-party, although "I don't really know what I'm doing..." was his summary of his skills. If Robby is genuinely worried about his DJ skills, just wait for them to build as his musical skills clearly have.

As for the music, it's less about understanding the nuances and more about admiring the work that goes into making said music. There's a lot of technical prowess that goes into the production of each and every song. To some it might sound like noise; to others, it's a series of complex and progressive compositions. It pulses, swaggers, staggers, randomizes, and syncopates - yet stays tightly together. Robby's background mastering tunes from old-school NES games (look up The Advantage from circa 2004 to hear some more of those chops) makes him the perfect guy to mix up those sounds he surely spent hours originally learning. There are no lyrics to get in the way of the almost robotic instrumental sound, and they're not really needed.

While What's Up has returned back to the States (and "a burrito from the Mission in San Francisco", added Teddy), look for more concerts from SuperColorSuper coming to Busan, Daegu, Seoul, and Daejeon in the future. This month welcomes the California duo Xiu Xiu, complete with synth-pop, gothic chiptunes, and an atonal guitar. Look for more information about future performances at http://supercolorsuper.com/all-shows/.

© Chris Backe - 2010
This post was originally published on my blog, Chris in South Korea. If you are reading this on another website and there is no linkback or credit given, you are reading an UNAUTHORIZED FEED.

It's been clear to me for some time that the Korean maternity experience differs radically from the British one. One important respect in which this difference manifests itself is postnatal care - it isn't uncommon for a new mother to spend two to four weeks at the hospital's 'sanhujoriwon' (산후조리원') postnatal/postpartum clinic recuperating in Korea. By comparison, the National Health Service hospital in one British city states the average length of stay in their postnatal beds in 2009 was 1.2 days.

I went to the Maternity Hospital with my wife for a scheduled ultrasound, and after the scan we went up several floors to look at the postnatal suite. British hospitals tend to comprise of one or more sprawling low-rise buildings in their own grounds, whereas the smaller more specialised Korean hospitals often tend to occupy office buildings, and are easy to miss amidst all the other explosive activity of a typical Korean street. So stepping out of the elevator on the 8th floor, I expected the usual reception area and office-style rows of corridors leading off to various rooms. Instead there was nothing except a separate glass door, through which one could see an image which very much conveyed the message that you were now leaving the clinically sanitised hospital environment for something less dehumanising - beyond was a lounge with a TV on the wall, some couches with refreshments, and a colourful timetable on the wall with cartoon headlines promising treatments, massages, exercises and other activities. A narrow staircase led upwards to some uncertain destination. It was uncomfortably hot - apparently because of the recommended postnatal recovery temperature, otherwise known as 'slow cook'. It's a traditional Korean belief that new mothers should cover themselves with blankets and keep warm in order to protect them from 'loose bones' - failure to do so results in arthritis and rheumatism in older age.

We had to remove our shoes to proceed, emphasising the notion that we were transcending from a public environment to a domestic one. We were led upstairs, to be shown three types of room in which my wife could stay. The first comprised of a bed, a couch, a large LCD television and a desk with an Internet-connected computer, with a door to a separate private bathroom on one side of the room. The slightly cheaper rooms progressively lost the couch and the desk, so that the most economical option potentially had you surfing the Internet from the heated floor. The difference between the cheapest and most expensive rooms was 150,000 won per week (£87/$130), and the most expensive option was 800,000 won per week (£475/$718). I thought it best to go for the most expensive room, given that they were bigger and carried less risk of going stir crazy, especially considering that the view from most rooms extends approximately three feet out to the side of the next building, hence the prevalence of frosted glass. Also, since husbands are expected to stay overnight with their wives, more space is better, and I'd prefer to sleep on the couch rather than the floor.

I noticed something odd though. We'd looked at three rooms with three rather dazed and disconnected looking occupants, but where were the babies? It transpired they were all three floors below us being cared for. This was not what I had expected - to my mind this was supposed to be an important bonding time between mother and child, yet it seemed that the Korean approach involved separating the two for most of their postnatal stay in the hospital. Yes, when the baby needs feeding the mother is called down immediately to do this, but otherwise mother and baby are not together. As my wife sat discussing room options I was left pondering the Korean method and what they knew that I didn't, given that my initial reaction was that the idea was extraordinarily bad. At least it transpired that our 'sanhujoriwon' was not as strict as the one in Seoul whose head said "Mothers are not allowed to touch or hold other babies, we have strict visiting hours and don't even let the grandparents hold the baby."

We went down to see the newborn baby care facilities. This time on stepping out of the elevator we were confronted by a large artificial tree surrounded by a bench, behind which a glass wall separated this small island of faux-nature with a brightly-lit scene which could easily have been straight from a science-fiction movie. Four rows of perspex baby cots were lined up, ten per row, with three nurses moving around changing and checking the slowly stirring occupants. A separate control-room appeared to be situated off to the right. I felt the brightness was hurting my eyes but perhaps you get used to it. I watched a nurse change a baby. It was quick, functional, and not exactly gentle. The baby started crying, which elicited no reaction whatsoever from its carer - she finished and moved on. This did nothing to convince me that separating mother and baby was a good idea, but I understand that the separation may allow time for the mother to recover from childbirth, and it does provide round-the-clock monitoring and care for the babies.

The whole recovery issue though is an interesting one in Korea. Barring a sudden advancement of science or an unexpected alien abduction I'm never likely to experience childbirth, so I'm not really in a position to comment, but the impression seems to be given here that after giving birth a Korean woman's body is 'shattered', bones are fragile, and generally great care must be taken to bring her back from the brink of existence.

In the UK nobody I knew had stayed in hospital for anything like the extended period that appears to be the norm in Korea, and more than that the impression isn't created that women's bodies are completely broken from the experience to the point at which they should be relieved of any involvement in caring for their babies. It crossed my mind that keeping forty women in hospital at 800,000 won per week is probably a pretty good business, although this isn't to say it's necessarily a bad thing. But assuming there are no complications, my cultural background has clearly conditioned me to expect a much reduced recovery time to the one which my wife was envisaging.

This issue is a potential cultural battle which any sensible Western husband is going to carefully avoid with their Korean wife - so I told my wife it's entirely her decision how long she stays in hospital for. She has to weigh up the advantages of the rest and postnatal care versus the potential loss of immediate bonding, actual quality of care and the formal complaints which have been raised.

Music has always had a power to provide a sense of solace in me when nothing else can - a discovery I made when I was much younger and have been nurturing ever since.  Last night I was introduced to Monk: a small, divey venue in the PNU district and immediately fell in love!  Something tells me I’ll be spending a lot of time in this smokey, underground Brittany-haven.  The only noticable difference between this show and the ones I frequent back home (aside from the obvious that the band members are all Korean instead of tall, skinny white guys) is the lacking presence of sleeve tattoos.  Side note: the only tattoos you will find in Korea are those accidentially slipping out from under a foreigner’s t-shirt sleeve; Koreans just don’t do it.  Other than differences of the skin it was bizarre how everything else felt exactly the same and I could have walked outside after the show to just another street in downtown, USA.  What I find more bizarre though, is the fact that I really find something like this bizarre.  It’s funny how we humans have such difficulty imagining a life outside our own; it’s almost like nothing else really exists outside of our own spheres of existence.  We know it does, of course, but I keep catching myself in suprise at people liking/doing the same things that we do 8,000 miles away.  I find it interesting that as distance grows, empathy seems to dissolve.  I don’t mean to make assumptions about the population as a whole because some people don’t feel this at all, I’m sure, but it is obvious to me that this is a real human condition. 

And there you have my existential babble for the day.

Well I am off to Nompo-dong to chase away the Sunday blues and hopefully watch my friend eat live octopus.