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4 Minute - Crazy (MV Review)

2/10/2015

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WEll, Crazy's definitely the right word for it.

        I like the stab at a sort of mainstream hip hop for these girls. They've always been on the lovely border between the synth-y bright melodic pop that got kpop kickstarted and the hard and fast hip hop that really got the ball rolling for it in the modern era (I've said before that they're halfway between 2NE1 and WonderGirls, though 4Min has always been my favorite of the three). 
        This isn't what I was expecting from them, and the first time I heard it was was a bit disappointed with how mainstream it felt, totally lacking their usual melodic push or their colorful quirkiness. It's still not my favorite, but the elegant matahari flair of it makes up for a lot. The subtle introduction of color could have continued until the whole MV was in full color, which I would have appreciated because the BTS footage makes the styling look to die for. I think there could also have been a more powerful chorus, because the vamp is fantastically energetic and it just kind of falls flat into the chorus. Fortunately, that chorus is pretty catchy, even if it doesn't zing with the vibrancy of a masterwork, I'm certain that I'll be stuck in my head for a long while yet to come. 
        The choreography is fun and fluid and it really goes well with the vibe of the video, and it moves perfectly to the beat and evolution of the music. But what really captures me is the hat-thing. We use eyes and hairstyles to identify our Kpop superstars, because the rest of their styling changes so often (teaser pics to show us what hair color / length / shape we're looking for in connection to a name). The hats in this video are interesting because they way they're used takes away our access to the girls' eyes, but in giving us specific labels, the hats also help us ID the very girls we can't ID on our own. It's a really interesting look at Identity, particular when taken into account along with the fact that the lyrics discuss finding a 'hidden self'. Also, one of the main causes thought to be responsible for what we call insanity is, at its most simplified, an identity crisis.
Still, since it is just a dance-on-a-set MV, it can't score terribly high marks from me, but even so it grabs a lot of points.



And seriously, just LOOK at how awesome the BTS footage makes the styling seem...

I Give it a 7/10: Me Gusta!

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4 Minute - Cold Rain (MV Review)

2/9/2015

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Pretty As A Picture, with just as much movement...

        I was honestly going to skip Cold Rain, electing to go straight to Crazy, but I decided a short review wouldn't kill me. I adore 4 Minute and this is a gorgeous MV, visually at least. The track is lovely, well-done though it's not my favorite. It's fairly well-rounded and it moves fluidly though its paces in patterns that the human brain recognizes even if you've never heard the song. It's nice, but nothing special.
        The MV is gorgeous, filled with beautiful shots of the girls all glammed up. Almost every frame makes for a fabulous screen cap. I've got a lot of problems with it though, because despite how pretty it is, nothing really happens. At all. If you've read any of my other reviews, you'll know that one thing I can't stand is an MV where nothing happens. So this one, pretty as it is, can't earn many points from me.

I give it a 3/10: I've Seen Worse.

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Trouble Maker - Chemistry (Music Review)

11/22/2013

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Picture
NOTES: So the MV's being criticized as having copied Rihana's and I can completely see where it's coming from, but at the same time, We Found Love is a terrible song, so I don't mind at all that Trouble Maker took the idea and made it a million times better. It's sweet and sexy and daringly sensual in all the ways that Trouble Maker is meant to be. The draws on the Dark Knight are also quite fabulous. My only comment on the whole of it is that HyunSeung looks way too skinny, like dangerously, scarily, skinny. Hyuna looks skinny too, but not quite to the extent that HyunSeung does... They've both looked better in Lives than in the MVs so, I'm hoping that it was a diet to get into character as half-dead-druggies, because that's what they looked like . . .

Top Track: I Like

Final Score: 7.5/10


Overall, this EP isn't quite what I'd hoped for, but it proves the rule that one great track can make up for several lack-luster ones. The title track is lovely and the final track is absolutely fabulous, and Attention fun. It's not what I expected from Trouble Maker, but I'm not disappointed.



Also, the choreography is fabulous: Sexy, Smoothe, and Straight-up Scandalous in all the right ways.
(not to mention the fact that these two sexy idiots, and really the whole of their ridiculous crew, are just down-right adorable...)

Promotional Track:

Now definitely doesn't have the same sort of aggressively catchy hook as Trouble Maker, but it doesn't fall too short of the mark. It has a beautifully smoothe melody, though I wouldn't be able to recognize it on shuffle quite as quickly as I can their first title. It moves really well, and over all, I actually like it better than their first. The melodic lines suit their voices fabulously and mix them beautifully; I particularly love how Hyuna holds the lower line for a lot of it, the exact reversal of most co-ed duos. It finishes off with a nice echo as well.

I Give it an 8/10: Fabulous!

Additional Tracks:

Turn Up the Volume, like a lot of the tracks on Chemistry, surprised me. It's very chill, laid back in a way that I was not expecting Trouble Maker to promote. I like the track's sound, it moves nicely over the beat, and the spatialization is interesting (being that only HyunSeung's line had a choral effect layered in and Hyuna's was made to sound incredibly sharp and clear). No real build though, or energy or power; it's still lovely, but it not amazing.
The Girl Who Wants to Play also came as something of a surprise, less so than Turn Up the Volume, but still. HyunSeung's last Trouble Maker solo is leagues above this one. Amurut was easily one of last year's best songs. In comparison, this one is nothing much to get excited about. On it's own, it's rather lovely, a nice chill track with fabulous rhythms and fantastic spatialization. It's really quite lovely, but it just doesn't have the power of Amurut.
    Also, there's something distinctly awkward about having a song on a duo's special unit album be a 'solo' for one of the duo that features the other... I enjoy that Hyuna wrote the lyrics and helped with the composition, but it still felt really weird having her on the 'solo' track with Hyunseung when it could have just been another track listed as a Trouble Maker duet.
Attention is another interesting track, of the duets, it's the one that feels most organically Trouble Maker to me. There's the unapologetic aggression, the confidence to make a target swoon, and of course the sexy-slick sax. As a track it's tremendous fun. There's no real build and it doesn't feel much like it goes anywhere as it progresses, and the lyrics are pretty empty on their best day, but it's a great party track; sassy and sexy and just plain fun.
I Like is easily the best track on the EP. I was quite surprised to see Flowsik featured: as a Special Unit, it feels to me like Trouble Maker's tracks should essentially be just Trouble Maker. Having an outside come in on a Unit group . . . it just feels strange. At the same time, Flowsik and Hyuna are quite the epic pair (honestly the way their voices mesh and mix and meld through the music almost overshadows the Trouble Maker pair). I can feel a lot of Flow's Aziatix background in the track, the under layers of independent energy and vibrancy (It makes me think of Say Yeah, most distinctly, the unapologetic fun of going crazy). I also feel the sexy-smoothe side of Hyuna's Trouble Maker aura coming through strongly in the delightfully melodic sighs that make gorgeous sliding leaps between pitches. It's panned beautifully and has a steady build and a decent drop, so I am quite pleased with it.

I Give them a 7/10: Me Gusta.
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4 Minute - What's Your Name (MV review)

5/12/2013

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Kick-Ass, Cute, & Hella Hot.

They've combined hip-hop grunge with girly-girl cute and straight-up sexy. The beat plays off their hiphop styling, and the high tones and bright colors give it a cutesy vibe, and of course the Choreography is smoking hot, it IS 4 Minute, after all. Some of the cuts and transitions don't sit well with me, they happen in the middle of words sometimes, but it does lend to the disjointed feel that makes the surprise mesh perfectly into place. And the surprise is fabulous, I mean really, a colorful neon zombie apocalypse? How awesome is that? And their expressions when the zombies invade are absolutely priceless. Personally my favorite bit is when one of them goes after the zombies with a hairdryer, I think it's JiYoon. Also, the girls' neon-zombie styling is absolutely killer, gorgeous hardly covers it.

Anyway, the choreography, aside from being fantastically sexy, ties in very well to the song's structural progression and, though it looks incredibly taxing and intricate, the girls pull it off like it's a walk in a neon-zombie-infested park.

All in all, I give it a 9/10: blissful.
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