Tisykhowang [디스코왕]

Clearly their most varied album. This is now also the first Koyote album to have received two 10's. Which of course doesn't yet say much about an album's overall quality. Just look at the Bangles collection for example... But then again, it's true that while there's a lot more good music in Korea nowadays than in the Western countries, the absolute biggest hits still are mostly Western. Like the fact that all of the Steps albums have some totally tedious tracks on them - their first one that contains their best song is even rated 8. But still there are very few Korean songs that could hope making it to my all-time top 50. At the moment I can think of four: LJH's Pakkwo, KHJ's Kkythiramjôn and Tankhal and Koyote's Pharan. Of course it's also true that the competition is very tough on that list and it seems a tendency that the more time passes, the more the top spots are occupied by "kaiheat" midtempoes in majors (type To diko sou asteri and Yesterday Once More). We'll see.

#1 Line 10

Very good beginning for the album, much better than those of some of their albums. If there weren't several even better tracks here, this would've made a good FT. I should try to find out how the title relates to the lyrics. On this album they also have exceptionally many English titles.

#2 Pulkkozh 9½

Totally Slavic (~ Finnish), and VJ Soy of Pops in Seoul even said this is based on Russian traditional music. No wonder. The second FT, though not the choice I'd have made, but apparently it was quite successful. I would've picked Together and then Jôngung. But let's hope this album'll be successful enough to spawn three FTs.

#3 Tisykhowang 9½

Can't get over it, this is an especially good album. The first FT, the video of which "demonstrates their good sense of humour" as VJ Soy put it.

#4 Drive 7

Not a totally hopeless ballad if not very hopeful either. I really can't see where the "drive" is.

#5 Time 8½

Disco time continues. The beginning reminds me a lot of a song whose name I hardly can remember... wow, now I do: "Shackles (Praise You)" by Mary Mary. The overall feeling is a lot like KHJ on Wild Beauty.

#6 Never 8½

Very basic.

#7 Unforgettable 8

Oo, dangerous title, this means counter-attack alert ;] To do it plainly this time, well, I had totally forgotten the whole track.

#8 Jôngung 10

This rocks! The instrumental is so powerful that it's second only to Pharan, if even to that. Only if the chorus was a little better... But fortunately it's possible to pretend the chorus isn't the chorus at all but the part after it. The title word is very interesting because it means a ton of big and positive things, according to the Yahoo dictionary, a comprehensive list of which I can't give right now since I've been unable to install Korean language support on my lovely CNX-TERO. Speaking of dictionaries, our order finally arrived today, wooh! It wasn't like more than a year, was it... [UPDATE 040814] Here's the list of translations: 'hero, brave man, model, conqueror, victorious general, god, champion, protagonist, male lead, leading man'. Some meanings, huh? Remind me to pick "Jôngung" as the name of my next Korean RPG character...

#9 Ôttônnamza 7

Funny title, meaning "Some Guy". I could've translated it also as "What Kind of a Man", I guess that would've also been correct? But the ballad itself isn't as funny.

#10 Together 10

This is one of those songs where you can tell from the very first sounds that it's going to be a blast. I think I must already say that this is not only the best track on the album but also Koyote's best happy song to date. Feature this, please!

#11 Tamzang 9

Oh, I forgot to write anything about this. It was nice.

#12 Zillu 8½

Good traditional thing. The instrumental is a bit differing from the norm.

#13 Kynal Ihu 6½

Generic ballad about being really sorry.

#14 Moon Night 7½

Midtempo once again. Refreshing but not good enough. Maybe they should've stuck to their usual album length of 11-14 tracks because 17 is a bit much and towards the end the quality is going down.

#15 Aktang 8

More midtempo? Well, didn't I already call this their most varied album? Yes, I did.

#16 Huê 6

And one more ballad. According to Soompi.com, this doesn't even translate into English at all. A bit like Ari Ari, then? Otherwise not like Ari Ari at all. End already, will you? Thanks.

#17 Non-Stop Mix (Zhôngpaziakassi, Storm, Izenyn) 9½

All three songs featured in this mix are good, especially the second and third ones. But where on Earth are these from? To my knowledge, I own every single Koyote album but none of these is on any of them. Are they some kind of b-sides? Impossible, Koyote haven't had any singles. Covers? Possibly. Wonder where I could find an explanation... I really want full versions of all these three! Storm even has a modulation, which is something Koyote (and Korea in general) rarely has. Izenyn has great spacey sound effects. Oh my, now I've got Toy-Box's E.T.: "E.T. is an alien, and he is kinda spacy"... This seems to have become one of my longest reviews. At least after I've added all the translations for Jôngung...