“Chemical Love” by From the Airport, Friday, July 8, 2022
FLOCKS OF BUTTERFLIES TRAVEL TO LOOK FOR ANSWERS AND QUESTIONS. Many of the tracks that finally made it onto the band's debut record, You Could Imagine were the singles and the tracks from the band's EP. Today's song, "Chemical Love" is a discussion in metaphysics--what is real and what is perceived and how chemicals play in ideation, or how ideas are formed. It's a pretty deep concept that comes from simple concrete lyrics that sound like, on a cursory listen, they were just a pat edition to an electronic jam session. While the lyrics of From the Airport may not be very strong, they always seem born out of the emotion of the song and that makes their lyrics sincere. On their second record, The Boy Who Jumped, the band experiments with writing in Korean and is able to express their emotions more fluently and poetically in their native language, the pure emotion that comes from somewhat "on the nose" writing actually emphasizes the instrumentals which seems to be what the band is really about.
THE STELLAR ROMANCE OF REACTION CHEMISTRY. Today a professor from a local university came to my school to talk to some students about the field of spreading Korean culture around the world. This sparked an interesting discussion in my office about if culture spreads intentionally or unintentionally. The professor's presentation talked about hallyu (한류) or the Korean wave, which first spread to Asia and later to the West. This is a topic I've discussed before in my blog. I would argue that Korean culture has spread by paying excellent attention to detail of what has been successful with world trends in terms of production. For example, looking a film scenes and plots that were successful around the world, finding hooks and dances that were easily sung and imitated. But the comment in my office after the lecture was, "Did some rapper in New York say, 'I want to start Hip Hop culture and spread it to the world'? or did some surfer dude in California say 'I want to start surfer dude culture around the world'? No, but it spread unintentionally." I don't have any real takeaway from this discussion, and I don't want to assert that one culture is more valuable than another. I find it interesting, though, as Korean culture continues to rise, spreading Korean language and an insight into a modern capitalistic, developed society. This is a country that loved English and spent a large percentage of their GDP to learn English, and now it seems that the country is reducing its focus on English. What I find fascinating is while the mainstream of K-culture explodes, Korean Indie groups are writing in English. How does culture spread? Authentically with a good product. Let's start creating!
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