Wednesday, July 17, 2013

A-JAX Insane


 How's the song? 

Upon first listen I fell completely in love with this song. It kind of starts out with something that I can only describe as "Michael Jackson-esque". I'm not even sure what that means, but at 15 seconds when the music starts and the guy is breathing, it made me think of the beginning of a MJ song. Maybe that just proves to everyone that I don't listen to Michael Jackson, but that's what I think, dang it!

This song is also pretty cohesive sounding, there isn't any part of the song that suddenly changes pace or genre and gives me musical whiplash. The chorus does bring in that dubstep sound that is so prominent in the music this year, but it isn't out of place. These people are going crazy and all those clashing sounds work really well with the lyrics of the song. 

Speaking of the chorus, since that is the only part that I know since it is pretty simple, sometimes I will just randomly say "micheyoga" and shake my head a little. I'm not sure why I need to shake my head when I say that, but I do. I really like the lead up into the chorus that starts with "I can't stop" too. I just really like the smoothness of that part that leads into the wildness of the chorus. 

How's the video? 

If SHINee's "Dream Girl", B1A4's "What Happening", and the Boy's Republic's "Party Rock" had a strange three way love child, you would get this video, and it's awesome. 

I am a little ashamed to admit this, but I'm totally suffering from They-all-look-the-same Syndrome. Normally I am pretty good at picking out the members of a group, even if I am not familiar with them like with these guys, but I am struggling with this video. There are just so many flashing lights and grey scale shots and guys wearing the same outfit, it makes my brain hurt. I can see some of the members, but the others are just all becoming one. Will I take the time to actually figure out who is who? Probably not, unless I watch them on a variety show and then maybe, but probably not. 

Two people that I do recognize though are Jaekyung and Hyunyoung from Rainbow. I didn't think much about these cameos until I actually watched the video and a beautiful idea came to mind, this video is the continuation of the story I wrote for the Rainbow "Sunshine" post. We know that Rainbow took the guy from their video to demand more boys, but what happens to the boys when the girls are done with them? According to this video, they are put into a mental hospital where they are pumped up with hallucinatory drugs to pay for their crimes.


The presence of Rainbow also make for one of the creepier shots in the video


Apparently Rainbow doesn't just leave the hallucinogenics have all the fun with their patients, they also want to screw with them so they hide in the curtains like a B slasher film. Something else that really creeps me out in this video was that sketchy antelope head with the moving eyes.


Creepy aspects of the video aside, there is this weird trend that I have been noticing in K-pop videos this year and it is variations on this room




There are a lot of these pastel colored rooms with some sort of artsy box design on the wall. It's not even limited to K-pop, Zion. T uses this type of set for his "Babay" video. I don't think that this set is as timeless as the brick room though because it's hard to stand in a pastel room when you're sad. Also, are A-JAX crazy cat boys because there are a lot of cats in that room.

How's the styling?

Something that definitely did not help me with member recognition was the fact that they would use multiple people and put them in the same room with almost the same outfit. It was a cool concept, but for someone who doesn't know the members and is trying to get shots of them all, it is very frustrating.

There were two very busy suits in one very busy room, I am partial to the blue polka dots.






While these next suits didn't have a pattern like the two above, I loved that they were the only color on that black and white background. Even the members were grey which caused the color to pop even more.



Side note, I was happily, okay maybe not happily, slowly becoming more and more frustrated while taking screen shots, when I noticed that there were three people wearing blue suits, I figured that also meant that there were three people wearing yellow suits. I also figured out that the main character in this video wasn't in any other shots other than the hospital room (I think). The members aren't confined to one room either, they are all over the place so I have decided to rage quit, minus all the swearing. Here are some extra pictures that I took but can't be bothered to put together in a nice manner. Stupid confusing video.......

This is the music video making fun of me
I agree cat, screw this crap and knock things over
The video is mocking me
Was the dance super amazing? 

In the music video itself, there was only about two seconds of dancing, when all the boys are together in their hospital clothes, and all their really doing is posing. More impressive than the dance though is the camera work and the color contrasting that you are getting.


I had never watched an A-JAX video before and this video didn't give me any clue as to how good they were at dancing on a skill level of Block B to SHINee. I then went on a Youtube search and I found their M Countdown performance and to be honest, I wasn't blown away by the performance. I thought that it was pretty cool for the first minute, but then it got kind of repetitive and boring.

I also found this dance practice video for their song "2MYX" which is worth a watch because they do the dance while holding dumbbells. Everything goes pretty smoothly until about the one minute mark and that is when people begin to get tired and chaos starts to break loose. 


Who owned it?  

Like I said before, and it was the cause of the rage quit, I am not very familiar with A-JAX. I've heard their name before, but I didn't know anything that they had done, so this was totally a dry run for me. After watching the video though, the member that I have decided that I like the looks of is *goes to Google* Hyeongkon.


I think that I picked pretty well, he's older and taller than me and he has been to the military already. I also found that he has already suffered the wrath of Rainbow when he was in their video "Tell Me" so it would make a lot of sense that he would be in their crazy sauce hospital. That also means that he's been there for over two years, hopefully he was able to make it out with the other member that left at the end.

Did the English make your ears bleed?  

There is not a lot of English in this song and what is used are just little phrases like 'baby' and 'night and day' rather than full sentences. These few words are said well and they are pronounced correctly too.

What else is happening? 

Stellar "Study" - This song kind of had a funky 80s sound especially during the chorus which was really fun. I also like that there are some girl groups that are going for a cute look rather than sexy. I am not really fond of either, but I'll take the lesser of two evils.

Sunny Side "First Love" - I kind of wish that this song had some adorable story to go with it instead of BTS footage, but that's okay because the song gives me warm fuzzies anyways. 

Ailee "U&I" - If anybody ever puts another power house group of ladies together to do a remake of "Lady Marmalade" like they did in Moulin Rouge, Ailee needs to be part of that crew.

BESTie "Pitapat" - debut song, It was okay, nothing spectacular, I was actually more interested in Jokwon's cameo at the end. I think that they put Yoo Se Yoon in the video and Jokwon at the end because Jokwon would have out done the girls. You go Jokwon.

Untouchable "Call Me" - Not really my thing, but that was a wonderfully smooth song.

TURAN "Bang Bang Bang" - debut song, The song was a lot better than the video itself. It has an interesting Middle Eastern sound which is different so they have that going for them. There is so much Engrish though, oh my gosh.

EXO "Wolf" (Drama version) - What?

Xia "Incredible" - This song  has a different sound than Junsu's other solo work, but I am loving it. The only   way I can think to describe it is very...........American? It doesn't sound like K-pop, but Junsu rocks it.

Infinite "Destiny" - K-pop in the real world, kind of, all of these movie sets were really cool looking. The song was also pretty good. It was cohesive sounding and the dubstep was a cool background noise instead of the main focus of the song.

BTS "We Are Bulletproof Pt.2" - I like this song a lot more than their debut song and I think the video is better too. It focuses more on their skills as singer/dancer/rappers rather than the sets that they are on.

BAP "Hurricane" - Is it wrong the first thing that I thought was "What is hurricane in English?" Anyways, holy moly I love this song, even if it did give me musical whiplash at the 2:35 mark. Last thing, Zelo's curly hair is so not okay. The loofa's on fire.

~ Alora

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