10: DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD ARTICLE

Album Review's

Beast

Midnight Sun

(Cube Entertainment)

4.5 Stars

With Cube famous for their incredible intro tracks they definitely did not disappoint with the most recent creation for Beast’s ‘Midnight Sun’ Album, this time giving us a full 3 minutes and 54 seconds of pure Beast voice. This song shows off the boys and their spectacular voices, with Gikwang showing us exactly what he is capable of. However it’s not only the Intro that will have you speechless the title track ‘Beautiful Night’ will have your jaw dropping to the floor. The song brings an element of dance to the album showing that the 6 can not only be serious with the more mellow tracks such as ‘Dream Girl’ and ‘When I Miss You’ but that they can also be laid back and show their talent in many different ways. After winning 6 music awards, 1 being for Album of the year, I think it speaks for itself. This album is definitely one to buy.

Tasty

Spectrum

(Woollim Entertainment)

4 Stars

After waiting nearly 7 years to debut the Tasty2wins are finally doing it their way. This is a debut album to look out for. With the title track ‘You Know Me’ the boys give a whole new sound to the K-Pop genre with a mixture of Dub step and Dance music. Without a doubt this song will stick in your head for days and before you know it you’ll be fluent in Korean.

The album, while only containing 4 songs fully represents the twins and how hard they have worked to achieve this spectacular debut. With a song such as ‘Solo’ that completely does justice for their voices shows the potential that they hold and the very bright future that is ahead of them.

HyunA

Melting

(Cube Entertainment)

4.5 Stars

Despite what has been said about her since her ‘Bubble Pop’ era HyunA is back and shrugging off all the haters. Oozing with a new confidence her new album ‘Melting’ is twice as cute, twice as sexy and extremely fierce. From upbeat songs like ‘Ice-Cream’ and ‘Unripe Apple’ that’ll have you dancing around your bedroom singing to your hearts content to a slower more mellow song such as ‘To My Boyfriend’ that shows a side to her that we’re not used to. Her title track ‘Ice-Cream’ has certainly gained a lot of attention since it’s release on October 21^st. The Bubble Pop star has often been slated for being “too sexy” but that hasn’t stopped her from coming back full force with a video that’ll have everyone’s eyes glued to the screen. This album is an exceptional representation of how all female artists should act towards the media and all those who try to change their style. To sum up HyunA kicks ass and so does this album.

TVXQ

Catch Me

(SM Entertainment)

3.5 Stars

This is the second album from TVXQ as a duo and compared to their previous album ‘Keep Your Head Down’ I was a little disappointed with ‘Catch Me’. I think they made an excellent choice having ‘Catch Me’ as their title track, the song that incorporates the use of Dub step really works and is a fun, energetic piece that you can really let your hair down to. However the rest of the album did not have the same effect on me. Sure it has its elements like the more mellow songs ‘How Are You?’ and ‘I Swear’ which was written by Changmin himself, with those songs I really got a feel of old TVXQ back in the ‘Mirotic’ days when they were a 5 piece group. But other than that I felt the songs lacked some basic TVXQ material and the style didn’t really fit with Yunho’s and Changmin’s voices. So overall the album was okay but more was expected from the “Kings of K-pop”.

Album Of The Year

Block B

Blockbuster

(Stardom Entertainment)

5 Stars

After being gone for almost 9 months due to a few problems Zico and the rest of Block B have blown BBC’s worldwide away with their first full length album since debut. Blockbuster is a spectacular comeback album from the boys and they have worked incredibly hard to produce such quality. Zico definitely went all out on producing this album, which had us all surprised on hearing the content. Let’s start with the title track ‘Nillili Mambo’. This song was exactly what we needed to prove that Block B were still indeed Block B even after everything that happened. It’s fun, upbeat and not to mention crazy but in the best way. With a pirate themed music video they certainly kicked ass on this comeback showing the world that they are more determined than ever to prove they are worthy.  Now ‘Mental Breaker’ is a song that definitely represents the side of Block B we all know, the silly, charismatic, ‘no image’ side. The song that featured on Kyung’s teaser with his strange ‘cooking dance’ sure will stick in your mind and make you dance. The most unexpected aspects of this album came from the songs ‘Movie’s Over’ and Taeil’s solo ‘Where Are You?’. Zico, who usually raps all his parts, shocked us all by using his singing voice in the chorus of ‘Movie’s Over’. His voice fit perfectly with the part and gave the song a unique touch to not only make it different from any other songs recently released by other artists but also different to anything to have been created by Block B themselves. Taeil showed of his exceptional vocals on his solo showing a completely different side to the shy eldest of the group. He really stepped up and blew all the other vocalist out of the water on this one. Throughout the album there are many contrasts on sound for instance the song ‘No Joke’ gives off a hip hop vibe which is expected from the 7 piece group whereas the song ’11:30’ has elements of jazz which is a full 360 turn around from the usual Block B material but nevertheless they made it work. Now we come to the last of the brand new songs, which is entitled ‘Romantically’ (The last 2 on the album being ‘Did You Or Did You not?’ and ‘Halo’ which are both re-releases from previous albums) the song is a revamped cover of Cho PD’s ‘Dreams Come True’. The boys changed a few lyrics and upped the music to make it sound more modern. Their take on the song was done incredibly well and for me it is one of the highlights of the album. Block B fans will definitely approve this album even if the style of it isn’t fixated on one a specific area. For me I think it’s great that the boys have experimented with many different genres and styles and although for the most of 2012 their future was unclear I think Blockbuster is a solid comeback that will see Block B past the New Year and into the following with great expectations.