Thank You - Ra.D

Ra.D's latest mini album, Small Story that was released sometime last March, with "Thank you" as its promotional single (you can listen below). Get the full album here. I hope to hear new songs from Ra.D sometime this year!

Ra.D

With my growing interest in K-Indie, I found Ra.D! Such simple name but this guy can do so much. Even with that statement, it still lacks the praise that Ra.D needs. I was taken aback from looking for who is Ra.D because of the name. You know how KPop mix capital letters and punctuation marks, anyway, I skipped the entire article in seoulbeats because of the name. And now that I would like to know more about Ra.D and he doesn't even have a wiki page. BOOOOO! A fangirl got to know his birthday, height and blood type more that his discography. hehe! 

How did I learn about Ra.D? Who is Lee Doo Hyun by the way, born in 1980, and debuted in 2002. My friend asked me if I know the background music on episode 5 of Dating Agency: Cyrano, kdrama that features SHINee's Taemin :). Yes I have to put a smiley face there! His voice is not new to my ears and got a few guesses thinking that its an old song. I googled it and found nothing. I told my friend to give it 2 days and soon, everybody will be asking what that song, and a kpop geek will say what it is and who sang the song. Well I was not mistaken! First, everybody is asking for the same song too! Well not everybody, I mean at least to those who is watching the show. Second, yes after a couple of days, somebody gave an answer, and the name Ra.D appeared! I was about to rip the video file to an audio file and take only the part when the song is being played!

The song by the way is "A Certain Heart Fluttering" (어떤 설레임), part 3 of Dating Agency: Cyrano OST. I like the song a lot, and I love Ra.D's voice! Apparently he collaborated with a lot of artist already and was surprised that my growing list of Kpop songs on my hard disk already got a couple of Ra.Ds there for I have IU, and Lee Seung Gi albums. He even got rendition of "Jesus Loves Me", a popular Christian song for kids and I remember growing up learning that song too! Its cute for it features a kid also, singing with him. 

I'm sure I'll not forget to buy his albums when I get back to Korea next year! I wonder who will be my next indie artist and I actually don't know if he is still considered indie since he is with Loen.

Big Baby Driver - A K-Indie Gem

I have a great find today and its Big Baby Driver! Okay, first the name is catchy, I mean these words "big", "baby" and "driver", if use them all together produces a curiosity to the readers. You'll get several  ASLs if you use that inside a chatroom. Its not your usual KPop name, you know the mixture of  capital and small letters and sometimes punctuation marks like SHINee, f(x) to name a few, not to mention that you have to know if you are pronouncing it right. Second, I was surprised that she is female, and third superb music!

image credit: koreanindie.com

So Big Baby Driver is an indie band and can't find a wiki article about her. ugh! Anyway this guy/gal wrote something about her (thanks!).

When you fall in love with KPop and you are a bit mature, the tendency is to dig more to the scene, thus finding greater talents than those on the mainstream. Well that statement could be entirely wrong for you, but for me it is so true. Although I am just a rookie on the KPop scene, I thirst for moaaarrrr Korean music.

I am a fan Sarah Mclachlan, Jewel and Fiona Apple, so maybe that is why I am attracted to Big Baby Driver's music. 

The first song that I heard from her is the "Tuesday Song", OST of King of Dramas, which I did not know that it was sung by her. Now Cyrano Dating Agency have several songs from her too and this is how I learned about her music. At first I was trying to find the background music on episode 5 (its by Ra.D, another artist that I like now) and find out about the drama's OST, and most of them is saying that they like the song of Big Baby Driver. I googled and found her other works which includes the song that I like in Joowon's drama, Level 7 Civil Servant, "A Stranger". I was surprised that I can understand her English. I hate to admit that most English on mainstream Kpop makes me cringe. I like "You Gonna Quit me Blues".

Tracklist:

1. You Gonna Quit me Blues
2. Big Baby Over 38,000 km Away
3. Your Sun is Stupid
4. I'm Leaving Here Now
5. I Am a River Dolphin
6. Constantly Vanishing Me
7. Everyday Blues
8. Marca's Wedding
9. You're a Jumping Zebra
10. Let's Breaking Down
11. Tomorrow
12. Singing for the One Less Lonely Mind

You can get it here. Thanks to this user on kiwi6.com. I'll buy her album once I get to Korea next year in autumn. I've got one K-Indie album that I bought when I was in Korea, its the second album of Urban Zakapa!