BEST SONGS EVER
Sometimes, you come across a true musical oddity; tunes where you just have to sit, dumbfounded and slackjawed, and marvel at the world that could contain such marvels of solid-gold WTF.
First off:
This is the title it was received under, BTW. 5 minutes, 10 seconds of constant, hyperactive, high-pitched jabbering in Korean, punctuated by occasional shrieks and desperate gulps of breath, over a toy synthesiser backing. Apparently it came via Irwin Chusid’s show on WFMU; he was similarly stumped.
It took weeks, but we eventually figured out who it was — “Korea’s Disco Emperor”, E Pak Sa:
Many have contacted us here at FANCY asking about the insane twenty-minute vocal track included on the CD-R mix that accompanied 100 copies of our premier issue (if you didn’t get one, check www.fancymag.com for downloadable MP3’s). Here’s the story. A few months back, a West Coast acquaintance asked if we had heard the rappin’ Korean bus driver. Well, we had not and a few weeks later the tape was in our P.O. Box. It sounded like a spastic auctioneer on methamphetamine chanting furiously over cheesy Casio keyboard riffs. The tape had two tracks. Each was a 25-minute non-stop party comprised of nonsensical scat yodels backed by a hypnotizing aerobicized beat. Our friend could only tell us that he got the tape in 1991 while in Japan visiting friends. His friends discovered it while on holiday in Korea. The tape was playing in a record store and they just had to have it.
In fact, FANCY MAG, the source for that article, is a fine source for such gems; here’s another in a similar vein from FANCY MIX 3:
(Again, under its given name.) This is clearly Cambodian, with sung vocals in Khmer, and the interesting hook is that the entire song — vocals, guitar, drums, the lot — is slightly out of phase, and echoed. In fact I think the drums are more than just out of phase — they’re totally off-rhythm.
Genius.
Leave a Reply