My Heart ...

There is a mixtape called The Psychedelic Soul of South Korea Vol. 1 available over at our Anywhere Else But Here Today project. It is very much a beginner's guide to some of the extraordinary music made in South Korea at the end of the 1960s and into the 1970s. That is, as in put together by a beginner. I would make no claims about knowing much about the music scene there, so this is simply a collection of the remarkable tracks that have made me fall in love with the power and beauty of pop music all over again. I have to thank our good friend PC (who put together our fantastic Bollywood mix) for starting this off by including a few South Korean tracks on an East Asian compilation he had made. I thought these songs were absolutely amazing, with weird illogical echoes of things I knew and loved like Francoise Hardy and the Blue Orchids. One track in particular, by Shin Jung Hyun & the Donkeys, PC described as the best thing he'd ever heard. He has a point. A 16-minute beauty that you suspect was invented in the fervent pastures of Julian Cope's imagination. It's incredible, leaving you hungry for more. And as you search around you realise there are plenty of people who know much more about these things. So if you are looking for a bit of context, this article on Shin Jung Hyun is a good place to start. You will find most roads lead back to him. Ordinarily I would shy away from using the term psychedelic as it's ridiculously overused, but the artists themselves do seem to have adopted it. So, immerse yourselves in some music of astonishing beauty. Volume two will be with you soon ...