You say “hnnnngh”, I say “haeeeein”

by kpopalypse

I don’t mind admitting it – I liked Gangkiz. The “Lovey Dovey” rip off “Honey Honey” was great, and the spaghetti western-influenced “Mama” was even better – it actually captured underrated pop/soundtrack producer Ennio Morricone‘s melodic and harmonic choices instead of just lifting his most well-known sound effects and square-pegging them into the round hole of k-pop melody and harmony (most recent example of the latter: BEG’s “Kill Bill”). Sure, they were just a bunch of models, they sunk like a stone commercially, their CEO is nuts, but like I give a fuck about any of that stuff if the songs are this good. All that other shit is their problem, not mine. Maybe no-one else bought that “Mama” mini-album but I SURE DID (ask me to show you on the stream next weekend, you know you want to), and I was sad when most of the members then (understandably) flew the coop.

Oh look, I just typed out a whole paragraph about Gang Kiz without mentioning Haein’s boobs. What was I thinking.

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27Jul2013

Does your bias use Autotune: or – does a bear shit in the woods?

by kpopalypse

There’s a lot on the Internet written about Autotune* and its effects on pop music. Pity almost none of it is factual or even makes any sense. I thought it would be interesting as both a kpop fan and a qualified audio engineer to weigh in on the topic of Autotune for the benefit of you folks reading, because if there’s any group of people out there who don’t understand jack shit about Autotune, it’s k-pop fans. I’m sorry for all of you who come here for the pictures of boobs but this is going to be one of those boring educational posts where you probably don’t need your screen cleaner and wet wipes for a change but you actually might learn some shit.

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16Jul2013

SUPPORT FREEDOM – SUPPORT SULLI

by kpopalypse

I live in Australia, which is a country where we don’t have many of those fancy “rights” things, like what some of you other swanky posh countries get. Freedom of speech enshrined in the law? Not fucking likely, cunt. Right to bear arms? You can’t even carry around a gun that fires fucking vegetables. And if they arrest you for carrying that super-deadly shit, you don’t even have the right to remain silent, you filthy fucking criminal scum. I’m jealous of you folks who live elsewhere and can just whip out the old “you’re infringing on my legal rights” line when the shit goes down, that’d be some cool shit to be able to do around where I live. Australians are pretty much lucky if we’re not in jail 24/7. Oh wait.

All of this harsh oppression that I experience daily (exacerbated by my heritage which is German and Chinese, two countries well versed at various periods in history with “shut up and lie in that ditch over there” so you can imagine what my upbringing was like) means that I sympathise heavily with anybody anywhere who flaunts their legal (or imagined) right to act like a complete cuntfaced bitch in public. Latest exhibit: Sulli of f(x).

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13Jul2013

Confirmation bias 101 for oxygen-wasting k-pop fandoms

by kpopalypse

There are three categories of post that I make on the Kpopalypse blog. The most common category these days are the posts I make here as drafts for Anti Kpop-Fangirl (an excellent blog that you should all read, if you don’t already, and I’m not just saying that because I write for them, as I was an avid reader before that was the case). The second category are posts which are just for my radio listeners because they relate to what’s happening on my radio show. The third category is “I just want to put this here so I can refer people to it later”, and this is one of those “third category” posts. I’m sick of explaining how confirmation bias works to people over and over again on forums, blog comments etc – it’s boring to have to type the same shit out all the time for morons who don’t get it, and that seems to be most of you given how much confirmation bias completely plagues the k-pop fandom. It’s much less time-consuming if I can just throw these people a link to a blog post. The also-excellent blog Asian Junkie also had quite a good article about confirmation bias in k-pop but I like to explain things my own way, so here we go. I realise that for those of you with a brain this is actually a really boring topic, so I’ll try not to make it too fucking dull for the people who would rather be reading about tits and ass by inserting some eye candy here and there. Try not to get too distracted.

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4Jul2013

T-ara’s “Target” is your boyfriend’s jizz

by kpopalypse

Picture this. Imagine that you’re a young girl living in Korea, not necessarily a huge k-pop fan although you probably do listen to some of it, and you’ve been going out with your first boyfriend for a few months now. You don’t have a lot of time in this busy world, but you make the effort to meet occasionally with him when you’re not studying or working 18 hours a day, he walks with you sometimes and you hold hands together and think pure thoughts. He’s a little socially awkward but he’s basically a nice guy plus he really seems to like you. Birds chirp, flowers bloom and all is well in the world.

Then one day, in a rare moment of synchronous study downtime, he invites you to his place for the first time. He seems like such a great guy, really. Nothing could go wrong, right?