The Turning Gate

The Korean soundWave XI

Alex, Adult Child, Belle Epoque, Nam Sang Ah, Yozoh & Eric

In predicting the imminent close of The Korean soundWave as a series in Episode X, I've seemingly jumped the gun. A bevy of new releases has recently hit the shelves, and there's more writing to be done. Keeping this one kind of short, though.

Alex Vs. Horan; Horan wins

Long have Alex and Horan waged war to determine who is the greatest of Clazziquai's singers. Concerts have ever been bloody affairs in which the forces of Alex have launched themselves into the fray against Horan's devout followers. The entire nation has become embroiled in this heated conflict since Clazziquai first launched itself into the Korean consciousness. And yet, never before have either of these adversaries risen above the other in any indisputable way.

Never, that is, until now.

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Browsers on my mind

Being that IE6 is for dinosaurs, Koreans and losers

With the release of Firefox 3 last week, I've been reminded of something I've been meaning to write on since redesigning this site.

Web savvy visitors may not have noticed, but The Turning Gate looks like poo in Internet Explorer 6 (IE6). This was an intentional and, I dare say, responsible design decision.

As viewed in IE6, page elements are positioned as they should be, but PNG transparency is unsupported and there may or may not be other issues elsewhere on the site. The place is fully functional; just ugly.

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The Korean soundWave X

Jaurim, Sweater, Ibadi

Today marks the start of Korea's rainy season. There's little I like to do more on a rainy day than kick back with some good tunes, and, as luck would have it, good tunes have not been in short supply. Sigur Ros, Portishead and The Submarines have new albums out, Nine Inch Nails has released their latest album, The Slip, and a live tour EP, Lights In The Sky, as free downloads from www.nin.com, and I discovered the incredible Emilie Simon and Under Byen just a few months ago. As if that weren't enough, we also have fantastic new releases from Korean bands Jaurim, Sweater and Ibadi! At this point, my problem isn't finding great music, but finding the time to enjoy all the great music I've found. Much as I hate to push my problems off on other people, I'm going to do just that. Welcome to The Korean soundWave X.

Jaurim's 7th is a gem

Jaurim's latest, Ruby Sapphire Diamond, comes as a welcome return to form following their 2006 foray into jejune electronica, Ashes to Ashes. Rather than that, this is the album they should have released following All You Need Is Love. Once more taking pages from latter day Beatles, Jaurim plunges back into the flamboyant, psychedelic rock of that album, expanding upon it and taking it further. Whatever fears I had for the band's future have now been put to rest. This is Jaurim at their finest. I may be declaring an early album of the year!

The album cover offers clear indication of what's in store for the listener. It's bright, surreal and strange. The artwork embodies the music, which vocalist Kim Yoon Ah has cited as being influenced by musical films such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Memories of Matsuko. On listening, there's no doubting the album's theatrical qualities. Every song brims with presence and charm.

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Nanbanjin plays Seoul, June 20 / 21

by Eric Davis, guest contributor

It’s common knowledge that the Internet has opened new doors for smaller bands. Vampire Weekend, Tapes'nTapes and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah have gone from blog favorites to talk-show guests within a calendar year. A textbook example of this shift in the music industry, Oita, Japan’s Nanbanjin are taking full advantage of our global society. Not only did they book their upcoming Seoul performances entirely through myspace.com, search for a birthday gift while using g-mail chat to field questions for this very story, they also joined the growing number of bands that give their music away for free online.

That’s not to say Nanbanjin (Japanese; a derogatory term for foreigners that literally means Southern savages) couldn’t make money from their recordings if they chose to. Their new ep, “Hi-Fi Ro-Fi” smartly marries prog-rock arrangements with punk spirit. They say the limitations of their three-piece lineup discourages them from falling into the conventional song structures and allows each person more freedom to explore their parts. Guitarist/vocalist Dai Evans and bassist Eoin Jordan have a knack for writing angular yet catchy melodies that intertwine seamlessly with drummer Manabu Mouri’s jazz-inflected rhythms. Together, they create a spacious but highly rhythmic sound that falls somewhere between the Mars Volta and Field Music.

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Lightroom-News.com Interview

Sean McCormack interviewed me today for Lightroom-News.com, regarding my work creating Lightroom web photo gallery templates. The interview is online here.

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IGN's Todd Gilchrist on Indiana Jones IV

Todd Gilchrist's review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for IGN is excellent. He echoes many of my own feelings on the film, but obviously spent more time on it than I put into my rant. It's what he does for a living, after all. My only point of contention is in his remarks regarding Temple of Doom. It was dark, it was different, but I loved it, and it surely beats the pants off this latest installment. His review, reproduced below, is spoiler free and well-worth reading.

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Some things best left alone

On the disappointing return of Indiana Jones

Opening day for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in Korea.

It's my considered opinion that Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade comprise one of the greatest action/adventure trilogies of all time.

Going into Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I had my doubts. Shia LaBeouf irritates the piss out of me, Ford hasn't done much to rave about in recent years, and consider the horrors Lucas wrought by revisiting Star Wars.

Spoilers ahead.

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The State of the Turning Gate

I've spent literally the entire day banging this new site design into shape. It's not quite finished yet, but nearly, and I'm feeling pretty good about it. I've tested the site in various browsers with satisfactory results. It's imperfect in Internet Explorer 6, but as good as it's going to get there. People should know better than to use IE6 by now, and all IE users will be treated to bonus site content whether they know better or not.

I've paid a lot of attention to the Lightroom area of the site, knowing that a great deal of my traffic these days is due to my work on web photo gallery templates and resources. The URLs in that area have all changed. If you've come here following a link from another site, you might have found that link broken. The content is all still here, and I trust the broken links will work themselves out eventually. In the long run, I think the setup is much better organized now, and I've posted a new introduction to the content that, I hope, will serve as an orientation to new users. Comments, questions and suggestions are all welcome on this.

I've finally written up a proper Colophon for the site, something I never got around to doing in the last rendition of the site.

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Out with the frogs, in with the dark

Redesigning. Pardon the mess.

Spontaneous redesign today. I was getting tired of the clutter of the old design, which I had never actually finished, and decided to do away with it. Minimalism is the order of the day. Still a work in progress, but it’s mostly together now and I’ll likely have it wrapped up by next week.

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The Korean soundWave IX

3rd Line Butterfly, Earip, The The, Nell and more

Spring is coming! Spring is coming! Spring is coming! Weather’s gettin’ nice! Bust out the iPod, take it for a walk! Whatcha gonna listen to?! Whatcha … Gonna … Listen … To?! I’ve got a few good ideas, and a few bad ones too. Read on!

3rd Line Butterfly

3rd Line Butterfly is a Korean indie rock band having released three albums from 2000-2003. Singer Nam Sang Ah seems to have had the hot-indie-chick thing down cold. The band’s name allegedly came about due to the fact that all of the members happened to live on the 3rd line of the Seoul subway system. The “butterfly” portion of the name, was supposedly taken from Iron Butterfly.

But forget Iron Butterfly. The band has much more in common with The Breeders, early Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth and other flanneled, ripped jeans wearing luminaries from north-western parts of the U.S. circa 1994.

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