The second day of The A Festival at the Paris Event Center, on 25 October, gathered a great number of artists again. Japanese pop-rock, Chinese R&B, K-pop and Thailand’s increasingly influential T-pop industry all had their place on the programme. And what is worth discussing is not simply the international line-up, but the differences between…
Category: Music
Jay Park & LNGSHOT in London: A Night for Performance Lovers – Concert Review
Many are the opinions that swirl around Jay Park: none of which deny his talent on stage. The South Korean singer and rapper has been in the music industry since before many of his fans were born, including one of the boys under his own label, More Vision, that he’s been working closely with, amongst…
Determination Is an Understatement: Lee Han Gyul on His Solo Mini-Album “NOISE” and Why He Never Gave Up on Music – Exclusive Interview
Lee Han Gyul‘s music journey hasn’t always being an easy one. From his early days with IM to competing on The Unit and later Produce X 101, where he earned a place in X1, Han Gyul has experienced the excitement of debuting, the disappointment of unexpected endings and the challenge of starting again. His subsequent…
KTAM Unleashed Brings Emerging Korean Artists to London and Brighton This November
K-pop fans in London and Brighton have plenty to look forward to this November as KTAM Unleashed Winter Showcase prepares to bring a selection of Korean performers to the UK. Taking place across a few dates, the event will present several artists who may not yet be familiar names outside South Korea. Organised by KTAM,…
The A Festival: ATLAS on Finding Their Sound, Growing Together and Bringing T-Pop to Paris – Exclusive Interview
Since making their debut in 2021, Thai boy group ATLAS have come a long way, especially musically. Five years of working together have given them plenty of opportunities to discover their strengths, try different sounds and learn what it takes to keep a group moving forward. Their early releases introduced us to seven young performers…
The A Festival – IRONBOY: “The Most Global Thing You Can Do Is Sound Like Where You’re From” – Exclusive Interview
IRONBOY was only eleven when he first heard Eminem, although by then he was already familiar with performing in front of an audience, having spent much of his childhood entering singing and dancing competitions. Growing up in Ratchaburi, a province in western Thailand, he had started singing at seven and was accustomed to the discipline…
The A Festival: JASP.ER Open Up About Friendship, Working Together and Creating a Safe Space for Everyone – Exclusive Interview
Thai entertainers Joong, Aou, Santa and Pond, forming JASP.ER have opened the door to a different kind of artistic expression. All four had already established careers in the entertainment industry before coming together as a boy group, but performing music as a team has presented challenges that even years of acting experience could not entirely…
The A Festival: AM8IC on Music, Identity and Their Dark Fantasy World – Exclusive Interview
Watching K-pop from China and then moving to South Korea to train and eventually debut as K-pop artists turned out to be two very different experiences for AM8IC. Mingkai, Roux, Saho, Chungyi and Chen had all admired K-pop artists before becoming trainees themselves, but once the five members were living and training in Seoul, the…
One Hell of a Voice: Nicotine Dolls Take on London – Concert Review
I knew very little about Nicotine Dolls before walking into Electric Brixton, London, but by the end of the night I wanted to go home and listen to everything they had released. There is a pleasure in discovering a band this way, hearing the songs for the first time with the musicians right in front…
Big Ocean on Their New Single, “Love Sign”, New York Fashion Week and Digital@UNGA – Exclusive Interview
PJ, Chanyeon and Jiseok have spent the past two years doing something no one before them had done in K-pop. As Big Ocean, the industry’s first hard-of-hearing idol group, they have had to find their own ways of singing, dancing, staying in time and performing while experiencing sound differently, but their hearing was never supposed…
The A Festival: ALAMAT on “Sinigang”, Filipino Culture and Their First Performance in France – Exclusive Interview
For ALAMAT, taking their music outside the Philippines has never meant changing who they are to make themselves easier for an international audience to understand, because the Filipino languages, sounds, stories and traditions in their work are not something they add for effect; they are simply part of who the group is. And now, as…
Beyond Genre: K-Music Festival 2026 Opens in London – Concert Review
The 13th edition of the K-Music Festival opened in London on 28 September 2026 with a night that showed just how difficult contemporary Korean music can be to put into one box. Held at EartH Theatre in East London and curated by the Korean Cultural Centre UK (KCCUK), the opening night brought together artists with…
A Sound of His Own: WOW Talks “LOW”, Afrobeats and Going Solo – Exclusive Interview
When A.C.E debuted with CACTUS in 2017, WOW began a journey that would see him spend the next several years performing, making music and growing alongside the other four members. Since then, the group have moved through different sounds and concepts, never really staying in one place for too long, while WOW has built much…
BIGBANG at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium: Twenty Years In, They Still Know Exactly How to Own a Stage – Concert Review
Twenty years is a long time in pop music and it is surely an eternity in K-pop. When BIGBANG debuted in 2006, the industry they entered looked very different from the one that now fills stadiums thousands of miles away from Seoul. Social media had not yet become the engine through which Korean music travels…
