Philippe TestonWith K-pop groups like the Wonder Girls on the ascent — and sitting front row at the Chloé show in Shanghai — it’s clear that Korean pop is having a moment. But is there a Korean underground? According to Sean Patrick Maylone, the answer is yes. His Seoul-based booking and promotion agency, SuperColorSuper, has helped to create a South Korean tour circuit for indie bands like Caribou, Das Racist and CocoRosie, blazing a trail not just to Seoul, but also to Busan and Daegu, places the 30-year-old native Californian knew nothing about when he arrived in Korea to teach English four years ago. Here, Maylone discusses South Korea’s burgeoning underground music scene.
Indie bands have long played Tokyo, Shanghai and Beijing. Why has it taken so long for South Korea to become a tour stop?
That’s basically what I asked myself when I first started doing this. There’s a lot of money here. People spend it on iPhones and entertainment and gadgets. Getting bands here shouldn’t be so hard. I mean, we’re right next to Tokyo, which has what seems like 60,000 shows every night. I don’t know the cause of the oversight, but all of my work is aimed at trying to correct it.
How is the economics of booking bands changing there?
Now that we’re finding the underground community, we can rely on the fact that we can bring in enough fans to cover costs. One limitation for all of Asia has been gear. Some bigger bands need their own gear, and they have to put it on a ship, which can be really expensive. We now have local gear rental and are trying to make all this local source stuff work in order to fix that. That’s one reason we are working on a tour network. Doing shows in some small Korean cities helps generate money to pay off the flights to get into Korea. I also work with D.I.Y. promoters in Hong Kong and the Philippines to make these larger Asian tours more financially feasible for the artists.
How receptive are Korean audiences to your shows?
We have a lot of expats who come to the shows, but it’s getting more Korean lately. Initially, I think the Korean crowd saw our shows as “foreigner” shows, because these bands have a lot of expat fans. By hosting bands that have a larger Korean fan base, we’ve grabbed more Koreans’ eyes.
What do you see happening in Korea’s music world?
I think Korea’s coming into what we in America experienced in the 1950s and ’60s, socially and artistically, and that we’re going to see the rise of more anti-heroes. Something like “Rebel Without a Cause” is going to come out here, or their own hippie movement. Maybe K-pop is going to go through stages like the Beatles did, from straight-up bubblegum to more tripped-out, experimental open-mindedness. It’s related to economics. Korea was having problems in the ’90s. People were having trouble just putting food on their plates. They had a militant government. Now people have all this money to spend. You have the rise of an artist class, and creative explosions are going to follow. People in various industries are sort of betting on it. Vice magazine has gotten involved with music here. Nylon now does a Korean version. I’m hoping we’ll start to feel the development of a Korean signature, a Korean approach to things.
Does SuperColorSuper work with Korean bands?
Yeah, part of what we do is inform local bands about D.I.Y. touring — how to connect with established bands, drive city to city, live cheaply, sleep at people’s houses and build a following. We’ve also sent some Korean bands to China. One of the projects we’re doing now is making these viral art videos to help launch Korean bands so that people outside of Korea can check them out. For Korean underground music to thrive, there has to be circulation: bands going outside of Korea, bands moving between cities in Korea.
What are some Korean bands people should check out?
A noise-pop duo called (((10))), comprised of a girl and a guy that have a sort of early Animal Collective sound. Wagwak, a catchy, Bright Eyes-type indie folk duo. Vidulgi Ooyoo, a shoe-gaze band reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine or Slowdive whose name translates to “Pigeon Milk.” Bamseom Pirates, a funny grind-core band who play 30-second songs. A chill-wave band called Googolplex. Yamagata Tweakster is a tongue-in-cheek solo artist who dresses in slacks and a tie and sings and dances with his laptop. There’s not a lot of Korean irony, but there are a few bands that have just come out that are using irony pretty well. The band Ninano Nanda combines Korean pansori operatic singing with really ’90s techno-beats and Mortal Kombat soundtrack-type sounds.
What are Korean clubs like?
There are these generic halls where you can do your music-award show or whatever. They don’t have much of a flavor, no specific design or genre they focus on, which is good because it means many types of people can use them for different events. We use them for bigger acts. Then there are these dirty little rock clubs like the ones back home. There’s one called DGBD that’s built to look like the inside of CBGB. They bill hard rock and punk. Many of them are in one neighborhood, and that neighborhood’s going through a lot of changes.
Is that Hongdae, the university district?
Yeah, Hongdae. There are a bunch of university neighborhoods, but Hongdae is where all of this stuff is centered. There’s also an area called Gangnam where all the head-banger and electronic bands play, but the clubs there charge like $40 to get in. Gangnam is more the high-money dance scene. Hongdae is the live-music scene.
You’ve played in your own noise pop band, Ssighborgggg, for a number of years. Has being in a touring band made you a better promoter?
SuperColorSuper puts a lot of thought into everything. We’re known for having great art and great posters. I’m all about making a show as artistic and visual an environment as possible. I very carefully control the lighting, sound and decor. I care about the audience’s experience. When a band’s playing, I’ll sometimes go on the lighting mixer and just rock out and fit lights with the song, basically using the principles an artist would use to shape something. To make it stimulating, we’re hands-on, because in the end, that’s what people come to shows for. You want a good band, but overall, you want an experience.
Seoul is a very new city. Is it lacking the dilapidated infrastructure that often gives great underground venues their character?
That sort of character develops organically. When you think of San Francisco, you picture those hilly streets and Victorian houses. When you think of Mexico City, you think of layers of villas. When you think of Tokyo, you think of “Blade Runner” and layers of neon. Right now we’re waiting to see what the archetypical aesthetic of Seoul will be, how it will reveal itself to the world.
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: August 18, 2011
An earlier version of this post misstated the name of a night club in Seoul. It is DGBD, not DGBG.
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