Sunday, November 14, 2010

Music crush: Donawhale 도나웨일

I have fallen into the wonderful world of K-Indie.
And I can't get out.
But s'cool, because I like it here.


Don't you think listening to a song in a language you don't fully understand makes you feel somewhat more connected to its emotionality? It's the strangest thing. 


Donawhale
3 piece South Korean band:
You Jin Young (Piano & Vocal)
Youn Sung Hoon (guitar)
Jung Da Young (bass)

(Kim Min Joon, drummer from 2003-2009)

2007        2009


Falls quite neatly into the shoegazing genre I think. Or maybe nu-gaze? 
Light and dreamy vocals.
Layers and layers of instrumentation.
Piano, acoustic guitar, bass, fantastic drumming. Is that a xylophone I hear?
And claps, ohlordy, there are claps.
And lalala-s.
And all this without sounding contrived.
(Listen to 'DoReMi' below. LISTENTOIT! You gotta give it a try before you pass me off a FOB who's caught the Hallyu wave *coughthatcamefrommyowndearestsistercough*)




If you don't understand it, it's something about the sand and the sea, waves, refreshing breeze, do re mi... and I think I heard 'elephant' somewhere in there. Haha, my favourite part is the 'dugeun dugeun' bit in Verse 2, which means rhythmic beating but is often used to describe someone's excited heartbeat. (... Wow. Ok, maybe I really am a FOB who's caught the Hallyu wave).

Reminds me somewhat of The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. By that I don't mean Donawhale is the Korean equivalent of TPOBPAH. They just give me the same spaced-out floating-on-cloud not-happy-not-sad feeling. (OHWOW, with my ninja reflexes I just caught my bag of flaked almonds before it fell to the floor. That would have been a beech to clean up!)

Pity there's no MV for 'DoReMi'. If there was, I'd imagine it to be a low-fi grainy one with a pretty girl with straight-cut bangs walking about an asian flea market with the sun in her eyes. Aren't all indie MVs like that?

I like their Dive To Blue album, especially 'DoReMi', 'Snow Drop' and 'Cloud'.
Prescription: Good for a lazy afternoon, when you're lolling around in bed.

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