Canadian band embarks on Asia tour

Members of the Canadian band Pseudo are, from left, Mikhail Castro, Liam Lyte and Jonathan Lyte. / Courtesy of Ken Robinson

By Jon Dunbar

Canadian pop-punk band Pseudo is coming to Korea this week for their first ever Asian tour. The band will play two shows in Seoul this weekend before hitting Japan for five shows, then returning to Korea at the end of the month for this year’s Zandari Festa.

It’s quite a feat for a band normally, but this Toronto pop-punk trio already finished a 91-day, 52-date U.S. tour in July.

“This year we started touring a lot so we figured, why not give it a shot now?” Jonathan Lyte, guitarist/vocalist, said in an interview with The Korea Times. Lyte created the band in 2010 with high school friend Mikhail Castro, later adding Lyte’s brother Liam on bass.

“We really wanted to do this tour ever since we created the band back in high school,” Lyte said.

The Korean part of their tour came together thanks to some help by Ken Robinson, a former expat resident of Seoul who moved back to Canada in 2015 to study in Ryerson University’s documentary media program. Robinson got to know them photographing some of their shows, and he recorded a music video for Pseudo’s song “Outlaws.” He introduced the Korean scene to Pseudo through the Korean punk documentary “Ash” he completed earlier this year. The documentary has not yet been publicly released.

“All our friends have told us Seoul is the coziest, most welcoming scene and that we will have more fun there than we do in North America,” Lyte said. “I hope that is true!”

Touring Asia will be a new experience for them, as they’re used to being the rare brown faces in an overwhelmingly whitewashed community.

“I definitely feel like we stick out in punk,” Lyte said. “We experienced it over and over at some of the shows we played on our recent tour of the U.S. As for home ― I do not even want to get in to it, haha. We have had our worst experiences as minorities in a punk band here in Canada.”

In their bio, the band says, “Pseudo has become rooted in their message to demonstrate to the punk scene and world at large that anybody, from all walks of life, can be part of something beautiful by creating music that reflects individual experiences, shortcomings, and the issues that we face being a band comprised solely of visible minorities.”

Pseudo’s first show is this Friday in Gyeongnidan, Seoul, at Thunderhorse Tavern, run by fellow Canadian Kirk Kwon. The show starts at 9 p.m. and costs 5,000 won. Other bands include Daejeon ska-punks Smoking Goose, the new band Swan Eater, math rock band Machines and “shoegazy-emo” band Victim Kit.

On Saturday they perform at Club SHARP in Mangwon-dong, western Seoul, for the album release of local punk band Full Garage. Other bands include pop-punks 1Ton, hardcore punks the Kitsches and melodic punk band …Whatever That Means. The show starts at 7 p.m. and costs 15,000 won, which comes with a free vinyl record.

For more about both shows, visit facebook.com/koreanpunkandhardcore and click the “Events” tab.