Jon Dunbar is a copy editor at The Korea Times, as well as editor of the Foreign Community page and curator of the Korea Times Archive. If you have suggestions for possible articles, or wish to contribute articles yourself, contact jdunbar@koreatimes.co.kr.
Seoul punk band …Whatever That Means releases 'Revolving Doors' vinyl record
The members of Seoul punk band ...Whatever That Means / Courtesy of ...Whatever That Means
By Jon Dunbar
By Jon Dunbar
It's been a frustrating year for music, as we've seen countless concerts and music festivals canceled. COVID-19 forced the Seoul punk band
to delay their latest album release show and cross-country tour, but they've been selling their new album, “Revolving Doors,” as
and on vinyl.
“I'm not an audiophile,” WTM front man Jeff Moses told The Korea Times. “I just like the look of records. I like flipping through my collection and choosing what I'm going to listen to next. I like when people come to our apartment and look through my collection and share their memories about certain albums. You don't get that with digital playlists.”
Marking their third full-length, the new album offers eight new WTM songs plus a couple interesting re-recordings of their older songs.
It starts with the title track, with Trash, WTM's bassist and Jeff's wife, singing, “Another year wasting all our time, another six months of playing nothing new.”
On the meaning behind the song name and its lyrics, Jeff explained: “It's not a secret that WTM has cycled through way too many members and short-term session players over the years. One night, I made the joke that WTM is just a constant revolving door of musicians, and our drummer at that time said that would be a great album title.”
In keeping with the theme, that drummer is no longer with them. They have a new drummer, who Jeff calls “the 18th person to play a show with WTM.”
He added, “So that revolving door just keeps spinning.”
Trash, left, Jeff, right, of the Seoul punk band ...Whatever That Means perform at Club SHARP with a former drummer at their 10-year anniversary on Feb. 23, 2019. / Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar
The album offers a lot to the band's longtime listeners, although it isn't the most representative of their melodic punk style. It includes probably their hardest song, “
” featuring guest vocals by Jae-hyeon, lead singer of hardcore band the Kitsches, and their most political material, “
” about Park Geun-hye's impeachment. The song opens and closes with clips from her speeches, and Jeff is working on a music video he describes as “a 2.5-minute documentary.”
Jeff doesn't see the songs as political, but about being “reasonable.”
“When the whole Park scandal happened, despite being a deeply politically divided country, over 80 percent of Koreans agreed that what Park did was wrong and that she needed to be removed from office. That's what Prisoner 503 is about. The idea that we may not agree on much, but when something is so obviously wrong, we need to put our other differences aside and work together to correct it.”
He wrote the song “
” during the 2016 U.S. election, “about how ridiculous it is that people can't have a healthy discussion anymore because let's be honest, neither side of the political spectrum holds 100% of the answers at this point.”
Jeff himself considers himself to straddle the fence between the two, as both a punk and a Christian.
“Trash and I are both Christians, and because of that, we have always been in a weird spot,” he said. “In the punk scene, we are known as conservatives. We're probably the most conservative people that a lot of punks associate with. But then at church, people consider us to be very liberal, and we're definitely the most liberal people that a lot of our church friends associate with.
“If people ever want to know what we believe, we are open to sharing it, but we don't push it on anyone. Politically, my general stance is that the less the government is involved in my daily life, the better, but I also know there are times when that isn't reasonable. I just make sure that whether it's in my own faith, my own politics, or the way I deal with people around me, I always respond with love and respect and never become a mindless ideologue.”
The album also has a couple of acoustic versions of songs from their earlier albums.
An
of “
” features a chorus of more than 20 musicians, including members of A'Z Bus, Ego Function Error, Billy Carter, Skasucks, Smoking Goose, Apollo 18 and the Bruce Lee Band, with cello by foreign resident Hiram Piskitel.
“That's the beauty of owning your own recording studio,” Jeff said. “You don't have to worry about spending too much time and money. There are too many guests on this album to name them all.”
They recorded it as the last project at Thunderhorse Studios, which they co-owned with Kirk Kwon before he returned to Canada. They pressed the vinyl with Pirates Press, a U.S. company that had the records pressed in the Czech Republic.
It is released on their own label,
and distributed in North America through
, run by the drummer of U.S. punk band Less Than Jake.
As a band and as an indie record label, Jeff says they've been busy this year, despite canceling the album release and the second annual
punk festival at
, scheduled for late June.
Jeff and Trash of the Seoul punk band ...Whatever That Means welcome everyone to IT'S A Fest!, a punk festival they organized at Hanagae Beach on Incheon's Muui Island last June 16. / Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar
“We had so many plans coming into 2020,” he said. “A lot of it is up in the air now because of COVID-19, but one thing I'm excited about is all the new music we're gonna be releasing.”
The album is available in North America on
and in Korea at
. Visit
whateverthatmeans.bandcamp.com
to sample the album or
for more information.
“The record will come with a digital download card as well,” Jeff added, “but we won't be releasing it for digital-only sale right away, and there won't be any other physical formats, like CD or tape, because honestly, I have 500 records sitting in my spare bedroom and need to sell them.”