I’d been meaning to post about this guy for a while — he’s a Korean “folk” musician that’s been around for a while. I think he’s well outside the mainstream, and the few Koreans I’ve asked about him hadn’t heard of him. But I came across his music on a download site a while ago and nabbed it because it was described as “acid folk.” I listened to it quite a bit last year on my iPod, deleted the original files, and then couldn’t listen to it once I bought a new iPod.

Then yesterday I came across this post on Ask a Korean!, which is about a musician that goes under the name of Lucid Fall. The song is in a similar vein as Kim Doo-soo… a little folky, but with a slightly jazzy edge that reminds me of one of my all time favorite singer/songwriters, Nick Drake (downloads in the comments).

Anyway, when I post about Korean music it’s usually about K-pop, which I do enjoy from time to time, but my enjoyment of the music (like most) is often fueled by my enjoyment of the women singing it. But Kim Doo-soo is an exception and it’s nice to find some Korean music that I enjoy as I would any other music. I generally like Korean folk, but often don’t like the politics associated with it. Korean classical isn’t bad in small doses, but as with most “classical” music, I have trouble relating to it.

Kim has a number of albums, three of which can be found at the bottom of this category via download. This is my favorite song by Kim, called Deja-entendu. You can find a live performance of the song (and many others) on YouTube here.

Here’s another good one called Free Heart.