0121 to Seoul, Kingstanding to Korea 🇰🇷 

I’d heard about Korea and more specifically Seoul but all I can say is you have to go.

The community, the energy, the atmosphere and the spontaneous nature of anything happening at any time rang true for the whole time I was there.

“There’s not been a day in Seoul where I’ve slept before 3AM. Hopping from studio to studio, event to event, saying yes to everything and meeting as many people as possible.

Work don’t change, only the timezone 🫡 “

This was on like day 6 or something and then the pattern continued for the remainder of the trip 😂 

Why Korea?

Came to make music. I knew about Damndef and Moldy for years and subsequently discovered people like Hangzoo, Yoon and more.

The importation of UK music in this country is insane. The one sound omitted was drill and after asking people, it just doesn’t connect here.

Everything else from Grime to Jungle to Techno to Garage to Dubstep & more is played here.

The best part?

You can get all those sounds in the same venue, at the same event, from the same DJ.

Korea don’t care about genre or artist. Just energy and mood.

Music being the one universal language we all speak rings true so strongly here.

Hearing this is all great, you reading what I’m saying now is great but you have to visit.

What happened in Seoul?

Everything.

Studio. Radio sets. Networking. Local events. Football tournaments. I even accepted an invitation to go rock climbing and put Spiderman on notice ygm.

Anyway,

I came to complete the mission and after the DJs, producers, singers, rappers, photographers, videograpers and other creatives I met, I’m happy with what I left Korea with.

In short, there’s a lot of Mayday x Korean Artist music and I’m gassed to share it. Some of the sounds on this I’ve ran through the wav 100+ times and its just demos, I love it.

*(I’ll come back and update this piece when the songs are out)*

Studio:

Me and BLASÉ had a session that saw day turn to night. We made some cool stuff. We both just said ‘Let’s do some sounds we both don’t normally do’ and what came out of it is crazy.

We also nearly set the place on literal fire (but 🤫 ).

For the first 2 hours I was with Yoon, we spoke about everything, Korea’s future musically, things outside of K-Pop, he played me his unreleased stuff and then we got to work.

I did a song for him.

He did a song for me.

Then 1 by 1 his entire crew just start landing in the studio.

Yt Sosa came and we got something in, then J, Touch the Sky and Rojae landed. They also filmed something for some project they have in the works so that was cool.

Must have been like 8 hours and then I made my way back to my airbnb.

So much more was created but you’re going to have to wait till it lands!

Radio Sets:

The same but different. My friend MileZ was on his Asia tour and he was in Seoul when I was due to be so I linked up with him for his show at Bolero and for 90mins+ it was Jungle and Garage and me just rallying over them.

This was just the warmup because 2 days later we went to Visla FM and he was running the same and video game sounds - The whole set is here.

2 days after that Mordecai told me it was me and Korean’s Grime Godfather Damndef on mic with the OG producer Lobotome and Coziest on the decks for a b2b2b. This was fun, really fun, we were saying a lot. You can check it out here.

That was all I had planned, then Saturday night at 11:30pm I’m in Gangnam and Damndef texts me ‘Come to Seoul Community Radio, Big Zuu is here, we’re going to do a set’.

The metro system was working against me so I didn’t land till like 1am but 1hr later we got it cracking.

I often say you can’t recreate magic and this was one of them.

The DJs, Lil Lilly and D.Yana were eating tacos and 2 hours later were DJing for us. It literally all came together just cus right place, right time. Zuu also DJ’d for a bit.

Okay cool, 3 sets in a week.

NOPE.

D.Yana and I, along with Robin and P went to SCR (after a previous event) and they hit me with the ‘Can you rap on D&B?’.

I’m a Grime artist, any bpm, IT’S WHAT WE DO.

So then the 4th and final set of the week was me solo with D.Yana over 30mins of Dubstep and D&B.

When in Seoul innit 🇰🇷 

Seoul Community Radio (SCR)

Send out Rich and the whole crew. SCR was the start of my Korea adventure as the day after I landed I performed at their Umbro x SCR football event.

This was mad. Bare creative collectives and cohorts, under one roof, to kick ball. I’d been here what 7hours atp and already was inspired of what can be done in Brum.

This was such a great trip.

The whole time I’m in Korea, the Canva clip goes viral AGAIN and the Adobe partnership content went live.

So I was juggling all this while being 9 HOURS AHEAD of the UK, PLUS I had my new song drop with Snowy aswell.

It was so much work but it’s what I signed up for. Every second of it has been fun.

The journey back home is like 26hours all in so I can finally sleep then innit. Not bad really.

Super excited about the music that was made while I was here and even more excited to release it.

If I met you here, big up you innit, love for being a part of the trip.

Special send out to ❣️ Haney & KONA❣️ , they helped me sort logistics even though we were unable to connect ourselves.

Once the tape is finished, I’m tryna come back to Seoul and do a huge launch party for it. If you’re reading this, you’re invited, just stay tapped in innit.

The 0121Korea Tape (Coming Soon)

🇰🇷