The Quietus - A new rock music and pop culture website

Baker's Dozen

Cosmic Portals: Gruff Rhys' Favourite Albums
Colm McAuliffe , January 23rd, 2019 11:42

Ahead of his gig at the Camden Roundhouse this week, Gruff Rhys waxes lyrical about 13 favourite records, deep cuts from the Welsh language underground and beyond

Kim_jung-mi_-_now_1548162836_resize_460x400

Kim Jung-Mi - Now
When we were talking earlier about a record accidentally affecting a whole community of musicians in a particular town, this is a record which came out on the same South Korean label that reissued the Erkin Koray album. I don't understand the lyrics so I just enjoy the emotion. I think she's a really popular singer in Korea but I've no idea if the lyrics are mediocre or profound! But anyway, I was playing some records in the market in Cardiff with DJ Esther and Don Leisure - whose album Shaboo came out in 2018 and is really great, instrumental sampled hip-hop - and they were both playing this Kim Jun Mi album! I was like 'I know this one' and we had a chat about the album.

Later that week, I was having a cup of tea outside a café and a fellow musician, Carwyn from Colorama, stopped to tell me he was walking through the market the other day - he was probably buying veg or something - and heard this track and started describing it to me and it was clearly Kim Jung-Mi. I like the idea of four people in a loose musical community just turned on randomly through geographical reasons by a record that might influence them. It's a community generating a unique cultural identity through chance happenings.