(This is one of the last late reviews still in my queue, so more relevant and timely reviews are on the menu for the upcoming week!)

I've been undecided on this one since it came out. There's a point at which absurdism moves a concept too far out of touch with reality for my tastes. This is toeing that line. Block B is regaled for their crazy antics, and certainly I'd never want them to rein it in for the sake of social acceptability, but this feels more like they're purposefully pushing their own limits to excite a shock factor, and that's just not my style. Still, the MV is well pulled off, all the colors and shifting visuals are well coordinated and easily excusable due to the circus setting. The tie back to the clowns of the bank robbery in Very Good which lends the release a fantastic sense of continuity to the series of releases.

The song is okay. It matches the visual very well, pairing up thematically with the creepy circus image. It's an impressive show of their abilities, it evolves and is structurally balanced, but I can't quite accept the extent to which the sections feel dichotic... they're just so unrelated that they don't slide smoothely enough for me to enjoy listening to it casually. Unless I'm really listening to the transitions, they sound messy and too-abrupt. When I do sit down with it, the transitions are pulled off quite cleverly, but it's just not quite smoothe enough for it to tall into easy-listening. Having it on in the background is too distracting, but it's not quite enjoyable enough to make me want to set aside time to give it a solid listen. It's a delightful treat that comes up in my playlist when I'm going somewhere, walking down campus or around town or something else rather inane, because it makes the action less boring without distracting me form real work, but it's not really one I think of when looking for a fun song to play. It has pizzazz and a spark of uniqueness, but it's not my flavor.

I wasn't a huge fan of the MV the first time I saw it. I'm really just not into the overly sexualized sort of music video (please note that it's not that I think there should be like a 'clean wholesome kpop' or anything, it's just not what I'm into boys or girls). But in this case the sexiness of it is well-warranted, and it suits the song perfectly. I hate the leotard though, not conceptually, I just think that this particular leo is pretty unattractive (I mean the yellow & white one, the black one with the necklaces is awesome). All the glamour shots really ramp up the sexual tension and I think that it's really well done in this MV. I'm not a huge fan of the choreograpy for the most part. It's sexy and fabulous in some places, but in others it's kind of dull. The knee flick thing especially, it's just not what I feel the song calls for. For example, on the 'touch like that' lines, I'd have loved to see something timed to the lyrics rather than the running the hand down the arm, like hip-touch-left beat hip-touch-right beat shoulder-touch-left beat shoulder-touch-right beat...  I don't know, I just think it would have added more visceral tension. They may have been purposefully diffusing some of the tension because it is quite tense. But at the same time the hands-on-shoulders-leg-twist shown starting at 2:10 is my favorite move in the choreo, and that is way more intense that beat-matching the touches a few lines earlier... Ah, well it's still a great visual to pair with the track. And getting on to the track itself, it's one of my favorite female releases in kpop so far in 2014! It's well balanced, the vocal quality is unique and striking, the lyrics are simple, but certainly scintillating, and I enjoy how easy they are to sing along with. The harmonic underpinnings give the track tremendous energy and the whisper of the vocal melody tamps it down to make the sense of covert tension feel especially acute. I'm not terribly fond of the bridge, the 'get busy with it' bits are blah and don't really drop out from under the song in a way that allows the song to soar, but still. It's good, over all.

(I've still got a few left from the Spring Semester Queue...)

I love the track, it's been in my active playlist for months. The energy of the chords, the melodic underpinings of all the synth piano lines, the drama conveyed by the harmonics, the smoothe sass in the vocals... all of it is absolutely glorious. And the MV, visually fantastic! All the the imagery is sharp and clean and the lines of all the shots, the way the colors interact with the lighting and the scene changes, how fluid the cinematic narrative is, and the drama of the choreography and storytelling... it's all fabulous (the CG was a little odd in places but only a few brief moments, the rest of the time it added wonderfully to the vibe). The only thing I had a problem with was how the track and the MV paired up, or rather, how they simply didn't seem to ever manage the feat... The timings of the visuals were impeccable so shoddy editing is definitely not to blame. Honestly, the editing is fantastic. But even so the sight and the sound just never quite match up conceptually. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I just couldn't reconcile it.

Girls Gen has put out some absolutely fabulous tacks in the past, there's a ton of songs on their track record that are powerful and catchy and their MVs are visual spectacles often with a story or comment of great interest, or at least great drama. Mr Mr seems to be up to their usual level of excellence, but I have some reservations.

For starters, who directed this thing? It's like someone let JJ Abrams into Kpop... I'm a sucker for lens flare, but there is such a things as excess, at a certain point, it just become distracting. The timings were all beautiful but it was still an awful lot of visual shifting to sort though. And the sheer number of filters made some spots look like they'd been filmed with unintentionally low quality and it was just being covered up. And some of the shots were so beautiful the number of LQ filters layered on seemed almost criminal. It was just too much, and it really doesn't accomplish anything. The styling underneath it all is lovely but there's no where near enough clarity to give it the full appreciation it deserves. Especially the black and white dance sequences. They're jarringly out of place and I would have LOVED to see all of those outfits in full and beautifully bright color. The visible choreography, in the tiny blips of choreography showcased, is largely devoted to camera pandering which is only disappointing because SNSD can do so much better. The track itself has gotten catchier the more I've listened to it, but it took a long while. The opening and the verse and the pre-chorus are all fantastic, but the sudden short slide into the chorus took a while for me to get used to. Now that I have, I do think it sounds pretty good, even abrupt as it is, but the fact that it took me a month of listening before I stopped sighing heavily at the transition is a bit indicative of a problem. Overall the track doesn't really go anywhere the vocals are smoothed together and compressed to the point of being more or less homogeneous, and there's no drop to match the build of the beginning. It's just not terribly interesting. It's a good song and a good MV, but with SNSD, I demand greatness. 

Yes, I'm still going through my old queue. What can I say? February was a rough month for me and it just didn't get any easier as the semester rolled onwards... It's especially tragic because there was a lot of good stuff in February. AlphaBAT's release here is yet another example. AlphaBAT is another one of those bands that faced major obstacles with being taken seriously long before they actually debuted. Their debut didn't improve their odds of making a solid stake from themselves in the industry. They had talent, they just had one of the worst initial concepts I have ever seen. Tantara isn't anything revolutionary, but it's catchy as hell and a visual treat. The warehouse thing and all of the styling have become Kpop's grunge cliche, but at the same time it got popular for a reason: it looks good. And AlphaBAT add a particular spice to it all, the sort of attitude that many bands going for the grunged-up-gangster thing can only dream of. The riot batons do contribute to that, it's easy to feel safe behind a weapon, but at the same time, it's also easy to drop a weapon so the fact that these guys pull off the prop is all them. And they do it very well. The choreography works the prop into the fabric of the dance to fabulous effect. The choreography itself is tight and clean and while nothing innately remarkable, the prop adds interest to the rather generic moves, especially when the lights go out and the flashlights turn on. The choreography is still pretty unspectacular, but it's visually pleasing and very cleanly executed. Now the song itself is also nothing unbelievable. But there's elements of dance and trance that give it an underscore of energy and a nice droningly clam overtone. I've had it on in the background while I've written more than a dozen essays this semester and I've definitely felt that it's helped. It's nothing special per se, but there's still something about it that I find particularly enjoyable.

Yup, here's another back-dated one! It's another that I just couldn't pass up because it's another that's changed how I think about a band. When these guys started out with Co-Ed School, I was initially quite hopeful. The whole boys & girls on a level playing field thing just never happens at the current time (which is something I would like to change). Their debut was meh, their follow-ups was even more meh, and the transition to Speed through Lovey Dovey and such was enough to make me let them go entirely.

I only kept a tab or two open for them because they were still attempting to power through, I honestly didn't have much hope for them though. But with Speed Circus my opinion has entirely flipped around. They have fantastic potential and it's well showcased by this release. I've seen a ton of flack floating around in regards to this MV, but honestly, it's really quite good. Yes the audio goes out of sync with the mouth movements, but I think it's more of a stylistic thing than a show of bad lipsync (I mean, they are professionals, and it's not like this is their first MV. For them to mess up {and then to not reshoot to fix it} would be a very strange occurrence in the industry). Besides, the lyrics that slide out of sink match up to moments of relative drama in both the lyrics and the action of the MV. And yes, the zoom-thing is a bit odd, but it is a one-take production, and it's done well on a very low budget, so I'm cool.

Anyway, moving on: even without subtitles, the story of the action is made abundantly clear (it's almost over done, but still I'm still fairly appreciative, though I'd rather that Core Contents take the Loen {1theK} approach of automatically subbing everything). The story is quite simple, and common in the industry, but it's still nicely done. There's a lot of Big Bang echoes here (I'm thinking in particular about Lies and Bad Boy, there's a lot of stylistic elements in how the action moves, and the singers don't affect it at all, not to mention how the camera flows between shots within the narrative. There's also correlations between the color tones & the overall style palates {though Speed's MV is fully saturated, sharp with color, which I actually prefer}. Even the musical style has elements Big Bang's unique flavor, the highly melodic backbeat paired with rhythmically intense rap lyrics and the light high-sung and sweet harmonic turn of the chorus present in much of Big Bang's Discography. Being a hardcore VIP means that I enjoy these little stylistic odes). All in all, the song is fantastic. It's energetic, refreshing, and straightforwardly awesome. And the video, while not up the clean-cut standards of some of the industry's other artistic acts, is still quite lovely and offers up a nice compliment to the track.

In keeping with today's theme of "it was in the queue before I fell off the planet" here's another review that I had started before things got crazy at school. I've never been a huge fan of C-Clown, I've enjoyed their releases, but until Justice came out I've never really loved one. This changed things, being that it's hella catchy and visually delightful. The styling is glorious, they all look absolutely fantastic (though, Siwoo's 4-ft-long scarf hanging off the back of his hat was questionable). The stylistic odes and allusions to boxing, from their outfits to the moves worked into the choreography, it's a seamless concept if I've ever seen one. The track itself has a massive undercurrent of energy: the energy ramps up as the bpm increases ever so slightly with each section, the fills (raps and background synths) each speed up more and more, giving more blips and syllables to each new section than the last, and the pitch raises adding perceived tension... It's pretty awesome. And then the way the choreography fits in makes it that more perfect. I love the throw to Topp Dogg's choreography from three months earlier, and the move itself is awesome. The lifting of the bandmate onto the shoulders is another good one. But there's the overall arch of the choreography to consider as well, moving from the tightly ordered and organized moves of the beginning to the utter chaos of the end (while still keeping all of the movements tight and controlled): it mimics the natural state of the universe, moving from order to disorder and creating intrinsic tension as it does so. A viewer connects with it on a visceral level, and even more so considering how perfectly it reflects the auditory inputs they're receiving. It's beautifully connected on every level and I LOVE it. The only downside is the lack of an active story, which as you know is my biggest issue. That said, this release is still delightful and as such, it makes even C-Clown's ridiculous name totally forgivable.

So yeah, I know that this review is ridiculously out of date at this point, but since it's been in the queue for me to write about since it came out, I thought I may as well start with it. This past semester was absolutely brutal, so posting here became a side affair. But now that it's summer time all I have to distract me is a bit of work and Korean self-study!

On to the review then: I was never caught by this song, there's no point in it where I just lean back and think 'awesome', but at the same time, I've had it in my active playlist since it came out and I'm still not bored with it. The beat is pretty generic, but it's lively and fun. The lyrics too are nothing special but they're easy to catch on to so the learning curve is quick so you can sing along. Video wise, the choreography is fabulous. All the moves are sharp and perfectly on point, and the videography surrounding its capture is pretty top notch. The styling looks good, it's very standardized kpop-quirky, but it suits the rest of the MV. Over all, I like it.