90-ish minute live recorded set from a recent outdoor rooftop silent disco with Sound Off Experience at the FWD Max Passion Party, for a mostly 20s/30s aged Hong Kong crowd, so spinning a mix of current chart dance, as well as Korean and Chinese chart dance tunes from the past few years.
It was just getting lively but had to pull the mix to let the main event – local live band Supper Moment – get on to strut their very good stuff 🙂
K-pop… Images of cutesy girl groups, outrageously-styled boy bands, and PSY… are what are conjured up in most people’s minds, mostly unfamiliar with the music scene in South Korea, often mixing up Japanese ‘para para’ music culture with k-pop.
While some of those images might be pretty close to home – except for the ‘cutesy’ look, with more and more music videos by girl groups being restricted to showing after the evening watershed – popular music in South Korea, and especially dance music, has been incorporating western rap and techno since the 90s, and in the 21st century has developed a recognizable ‘Korean wave’ urban sound, incorporating hip hop and rap, as well as techno and electro, beats and riffs either blended with pop, or just produced as outright urban dance tracks.
Here’s a 30ish-minute selection of some of the urban sounds of 2015 K-pop.
Hong Kong Beat 