The 8th Gwangju Indie Music Festival, 2011

A small venue with a maximum capacity of just a couple of hundred people, the atmosphere throughout the two days was welcoming and supportive, with many small, unheard-of acts receiving due praise. Everyone performing had highly polished routines, exuding passion, joy and talent going across many genres from simple rock ’n’ roll through electronics and out into shoegaze.

Beginning at about 6:30pm on the Friday, and having to do that pesky thing called work, sadly, I missed Gwangju’s SPthe#. Having missed the opportunity to see them play a few times now, I can only imagine that their blend of piano and guitar rock and pleasant tunes would have been a gentle way to begin the festivities.

However, I did arrive for the second band, Soul Train, a supergroup comprised of members from a surprising variety of genres, including folk. Having nailed their colors firmly to the mast, they lived up to their name by playing a mixture of soul and traces of funk, getting an early crowd whipped into shape with the odd cover to get people singing and clapping along.

Their music, comprised mostly of guitars and brass instruments, doesn’t deviate too much from the norm, when you consider how much music knowledge must bounce around their collective minds. But they were a pleasant enough way to introduce myself, at least, into proceedings.

The Finnn are a Britpop-inspired, atmospheric rock band. Visually, it’s easy to compare the lead singer to 1990s Oasis (or the Charlatans, or any Britpop band from Lancashire), as their singer, who looks so young, resembles a Korean Liam Gallagher in his raincoat. But their songs take them away from the Gallaghers and into territory that is explored mostly through melodies dipped in reverb that lead the songs. And while their songs are competent, they are a young band, one that feels a bit like the rabbit caught in the headlights. And sadly, the singer relies a bit too much on what is less of a wail and more of a caterwaul to build atmosphere into the songs.

Gwangju’s Pang Pang Band Nandanse make it clear from the beginning that they are aiming for the stadiums. Disappointingly, they have dropped their opening song since I saw them six months ago, which reinterpreted Kraftwerk as a metal band, which was memorable because it was more theatre than a music performance. But they don’t let that hold them back. These songs essentially consist of straight-up power-pop-punk shaped into anthems.

The singer wearing sunglasses  – what is to become the big accessory of the weekend  – throws himself energetically around the stage. Through jarring power chords, comedy yells abound from the singer, and guitar flourishes and licks hook in the crowd. The guitarist is good at providing the energy that so many of these songs need, although the momentum of this band is definitely in the singer who wants to scream his way through much of each song. They have ambition, but tonight, no venue is too small for them.

Sansigi Band are another Gwangju band who found prominence earlier in the year, having been chosen as the best performers during the Gwangin festival with their funk rock. There was no drop in performance tonight, as once again they got people dancing around. A jaunty rock band, they take on 1980s rock music and reshape it into something contemporary. They riff hard and fast, stutter their way through bridges with confidence and their choruses explode into full energy. The singer, in turn, sings, raps quickly, or descends into yells and screams. If you want something new from these guys, you are in the wrong decade. But nobody’s worried about that tonight.

3rd Line Butterfly are a strange, at times infuriating band, incorporating many styles. Each song goes somewhere different, and at first they come across as a simple rock band with quiet hushed vocals and the odd moment of intensity, as a pleasant rhythm from the guitar plays in the background; at other times noodling away. Then, when you think you’ve got what they’re about, they’ll take the next song down a different route, often into dreamlike spaces.

Consistency is in the female singer who does tend more towards straining, but the most interesting moments were later into the set when their clear influence of Sonic Youth blasted through: all detuned guitars and unexpected shifts in structure, making sense of who they are and what they were attempting to do. But the fact is that they still come offstage an entirely different band to how they came on.

Huckleberry Finn were the biggest and most popular act of the night. Stalwarts of the Korean rock scene, they have been around a few years and built up quite a following. They play no-nonsense rock, and their female lead singer provides gruff, impassioned vocals. Their songs are full of drama, the guitar not just charting its way through the song, but the storyline as well.

The singer, too, is plunged right into the heart of the action. As good as the rest of the band are, you feel they are just spectators on the edge of this spectacle, charting it, recording it, but not 100 percent part of it. But as earnest as that makes them sound, they are not. These guys know how to rock, and they get everyone moshing and singing along. Huckleberry Finn may create no-nonsense rock, but their first priority on stage is to give everyone a good time.

The schedule overrunning, and the night having already reached 10:30 – the advertised end time – the venue cleared out, leaving headlining act Moonshiners to play to a sadly small crowd. Moonshiners appear at first glance to be a 1960s beat combo – certainly they had the most outrageous costumes of the night, tartan suits with the trouser legs cut off at the knee. (Sadly, tonight, the drummer has lost his beret which added so much last year.) But they update the 1960s beat combo sound with rockier guitars and mixing in more contemporary styles, to their swing, at times moving into White Album psychedelia. They speed up their jaunty, bouncy rhythms, letting the music power through the instruments. The end result is something that those left behind could not help but dance along to.

Day II – Saturday

Wize, who kicked things off on Saturday, are a female hip-hop duo performing to a backing tape that is heavy on the beat. They rap well, bringing in a party vibe and flow well with each other, with a small degree of singing mixed in, but often fast and aggressive without being threatening and moving around the stage in choreographed patterns.

Daltokki are young and still in high school here in Gwangju, and so contain a lot of energy that comes out in their performance, notably with the keyboardist swinging his instrument around. The guitar chunks away; the piano is melodic, defining the “indie” sound in one nice little package. Despite the early time slot, they did a good job at getting the audience moving.

Sun-Ine Dambyeolag are another Gwangju band with notions of moving on to Hongdae in Seoul. Their aspirations are made clear by their desire to make big statements, with their climax-chasing, reverb-drenched guitars supported by piano, providing rhythm and occasionally rippling under the surface. But the emphasis was rather overstated with monologues lasting far too long between songs. The point rather gets lost if you are told how to listen to something. Musically good, they are a bit of a downer after the heat generated from the last band.

Calmer moments came from the plaudit receiving Big Baby Driver, performing solo, armed merely with an acoustic guitar, displaying a range of plucking skills beyond the mere singer-songwriter stuff often trotted out. Her songs were sentimental and sweet, but not understanding Korean, the music was only able to give me some indication of what she was singing about.

Solan provided lots of nice guitar solos around their melodic, poppy rock. However, they restrain themselves through the verses, allowing the vocals to take dominance. The choruses are fuller, but they are a fairly low-key band, and so they remain restrained throughout the songs and the set. Bordering on anthems, but not really allowing themselves the punch their sound wants, their music focuses on digging out the rhythms and melodies, and allowing them to speak for themselves in the frame of each song.

Betty Ass continue their role as the most in-your-face punk rock band in Gwangju, taking people prisoner with their routine. Fast, furious showmanship is the way this band move, who scream and yell their way through each song to pounding drums. They bounce around the stage in their baggy shorts and jaunty baseball caps, and the audience bounce along too.

Summer Never Comes explore shoegaze in a very somber, gloomy fashion with some metal thrown in, sucking the audience into new, dark worlds. They have removed much of the synths that provided such a dense sound the last time I saw them, but their songs retain the drama. The reverb that is extremely present through the grinding distortion is used less to expand the sound but to heighten the drama. The sounds twist around each other, all oozing reverb, seeping into any space that may exist in the sound.

Elongated vocals that are more of a low moan float on top, but are continually dragged back under by the rumble and turbulence of the sound. However, their drama leads to some comic moments, for instance the way that the singer ejected himself from the stage the instant he was no longer of any use to the band. SNC are just one set of drainpipe jeans away from being the Gwangju version of The Horrors.

Yalgaedul continue the shoegaze, but fitting it around pop, trying to push this rigid form into new territories. An intriguing band, they push out their sounds into streams that flirt with space-rock, playing around a groove, but building in a rising riff. They’ll then suddenly burst in with simple rock – a chorus and maybe verses as well, which just serves to undo everything that they have achieved to that point.

ERSM are a duo formed out of two local bands – one a hip-hop group named Suitcase and the other from personal favorite of mine, Windy Cat, a playful, quirky acoustic group. But ERSM are certainly not a messy collision of different styles. Instead, they are for the most part stripped down, creating a simple bed of 4-4 techno/house music, and combining this with a live guitar to expand upon the sound verging on electroclash. From these humble beginnings, they allow themselves the space to go where the music needs to go, rather than finding themselves restrained. What they end up doing is bringing the dance-rock crossover to a more electronic, punky, exciting conclusion and creating beats and rhythms for the audience to obey.

Gunamwayeo Laiding Seuteulla, with soul tinged rock, managed to get people shouting for an encore. However, for me, they failed to ignite the imagination. A competent enough band, the bassist could certainly hold a groove, but they just lacked any real drive or focus, despite the attempts of the guitarist/singer trying to bring more into their soulless rock.

Koxx were astounding, focusing more on punk, but with plenty of synths and rock’n’roll energy. You could not help but be overwhelmed by their sheer power combining furious guitars with stabbing synth lines. They just threw themselves wholeheartedly into every song, with the chaos they created being so carefully managed.

Their songs stutter around, pausing every now and then for a brief keyboard sample before pounding right back into the song. If it weren’t for the impressive Roland synthesizer and other mighty equipment, this would be a futurist 1980s punk band. The guitarist even looks more like he’d be at home in a Southern rock band with his Stars and Stripes denim jacket and headband. Only his hair keeps him one step away, visually, from a poodle-rocker.

  were one of the most well known acts on the roster. Despite the singer stage diving and the guitarist’s flying V guitar, they are essentially an amped up pop band, borrowing from the 1980s to create a crossover between synth-pop and rock. The synth aspect, however, gets tucked away as background decoration. Not that this mattered to the crowd, who were able to sing and dance to just about every hook-laden song.

Seoul Electric Band – casualties to the mass clearout at 10:30 for buses and trains home – are comprised of a group of musicians dedicated to the art of rock. There are just three members, but the music really does revolve around the paint-worn guitar that creates a much bigger sound. The guitarist is the kind of person you can easily imagine spends all of his free time improvising solos, if not sleeping with his guitar. As such, he spends half his time on stage doing just that, improvising wildly into the atmosphere.

But this is not directionless noodling; the improvisations are controlled and focused, expanding upon motifs but still taking you to unexpected places. And he is talented. Heck, if I hadn’t seen him do it, I would not have even noticed when he was picking the strings with his teeth, as the quality of playing did not drop. Extremely solid support comes from the bassist providing a very melodic bed, and a drummer, who given his chance, will display his skills going off into frenetic drum solos.

As with Moonshiners from the previous night, Oh! Brothers also delve into the 1950s and 1960s, but more rigidly sticking to the formula of the beat-combo, making Club Nevermind resemble the Cavern. The references to early Beatles and other such groups are mighty. These are, for lack of a better word, original compositions, but each song is instantly recognizable. And this is their selling point.

You know that you are singing along to Twist and Shout, but it’s not Twist and Shout, and yet you don’t care. You are freed to just enjoy the music, and get down and do the twist. Or dance in the conga line that forms. Their lack of pretension allows them to bring in humor. The vocalist has his mic pitched up, making him squeak like Alvin and the Chipmunks, and their routine is choreographed as they sing around the mic, moving in time with each other and digging out the cliché’s and reference points of a bygone era that are recognizable by all.

And with that, it’s over. A welcome escape from the pop singers that dominate the TV and radio, who break free from headphones on buses, or feature regularly in conversations. Clubs like this are where the other side is: raw, focused, and primed for its moment in the spotlight. Many of these bands are still unsigned – the odd EP or album is out there – but the best way to get to know their music is live. Get your tickets early for next year.

A version of this article also appeared
in the Gwangju News print edition, November 2011.