18 Questions for Apollo 18

Before their very hectic US tour this month, rock band Apollo 18 took some time out of their busy schedule to answer 18 questions from KoME!

Can you please introduce yourselves to our readers?

Daeinn Kim: Hi! We’re Apollo 18 from South Korea. It’s nice to meet you. We have three members. Hyunseok Choi plays guitar, I play bass, and Sangyun Lee plays drums.

Can you please tell us something about the other members?

Daeinn Kim: Hyunseok is sometimes smart, sometimes a jerk, and sometimes very funny. He’s a good musician and a great guy. He loves to meet new people, but sometimes he talks too much.

Sangyun is a quiet and strong man. He’s very kind, trustworthy and loyal. He’s also a really good driver. He does most of the driving when we tour, which lets me and Hyunseok relax.

Hyunseok Choi: Daeinn smokes too much and is a lazy guy! However, he’s very good at design and does the artwork for our albums and merchandise. He’s a very talented musician and used to make music under the name Jellyboy.

How would you describe your music to someone who hasn’t heard it before?

Daeinn Kim: We’re a rock band. Our music mixes psychedelic music, post-rock, post-grunge, and hardcore. Our music has no lyrics. Some songs are instrumental, and some have vocals, but we’re just shouting. Sometimes we like to play very quietly and sometimes we like to play really, really, really loudly.

If you could recommend one of your songs to our readers, which would it be and why?

Daeinn Kim: I would recommend Warm from our Red album. Warm came about very naturally. One afternoon Hyunseok was playing guitar on my bed. It sounded really good, so I said “keep playing.” I picked up my bass, plugged it in, and started making the bass lines for the song. Sangyun was playing on the computer. He thought the song sounded really cool, so he turned off the computer and started playing drums. The whole song was made really quickly.

At the Hello Rookie final in 2009, an event to select the best new Korean indie band of the year, the bands were all allowed to play two songs. We decided to only play Warm because it is nine minutes long. After playing it, we were chosen as the Hello Rookie winner.

What is your opinion of the Korean music scene as a whole?

Hyunseok Choi: Many Koreans love K-pop and easy listening music. The mainstream and independent rock scenes in Korea are really small. There’s a lot of good music being made in Korea, but many people aren’t exposed to anything other than pop music. It’s difficult to be a musician only in Korea, so many Korean bands want to tour in other countries. That is very hard to do though.

Your music is not like what many people would associate with the Korean rock scene. How did you create your unique sound? Which artists (if any) influence you the most in the writing process?

Daeinn Kim: We all have very different tastes in music. When we started to play together, Hyunseok said we should try to make music that mixed together all the different sounds we love.

Hyunseok Choi: Daeinn loves Sepultura and I love James Brown. Sangyun loves other artists. We tried to find a middle ground that everyone could be happy with. This became our Apollo 18 sound. It’s kind of like an explosion of all the music we enjoy.

How would you describe the modern Korean rock scene? How well received do you think your music is?

Hyunseok Choi: Many people say our music is very loud. Some people really like our music. Some people think it’s a little strange. We were the winners of Hello Rookie in 2009 and we won “Rookie of the Year” at the 2010 Korean Music Awards. We’ve played at major rock festivals in Korea. We aren’t a famous band, but I think some people are very open to what we’re trying to do.

Japanese rock music has become popular in Europe and America, yet Korean rock does not seem to have had quite the same impact in these markets. Why do you think that is? Do you think that this will change in the future?

Daeinn Kim: Korea’s rock scene is much, much smaller than Japan’s rock scene. There are music scenes all over Japan, but Korea’s independent rock scene is only in the Hongdae area of Seoul.

Hyunseok Choi: We don’t know what will happen in the future. We hope that Korea’s music scene will change. I think more Korean bands will try to tour internationally. We are doing a two-week American tour in March. We also want to play in China and Japan in the coming months. We hope to do gigs in North America again in October or November. It’s going to be really hard and expensive to do this. We hope our actions will have an impact on other local bands and they’ll try to do the same things.

Your album titles (Red, Blue and Violet) are all named after colours. What is the reason behind this and is this something you intend to continue?

Daeinn Kim: We recorded Red in the winter. Winter is cold and red is a warm colour. So that’s why we chose the name Red. We recorded the Blue album in the summer. The summer is very hot, and blue reminded us of the sea and the cool breeze. We chose Violet as a title because the colour is a mix of red and blue. Also, violet is Hyunseok’s favourite colour.

Hyunseok Choi: We won’t continue with the colour titles in the future. Our colour series is finished.

Your music is a mix of instrumental works as well as songs with lyrics. How do you decide whether to incorporate vocals into the track?

Hyunseok Choi: All our music is made by jamming together. We just do what comes naturally. If Daeinn or I feel like singing during the jam sessions, we do. If we don’t feel like singing, then the song just stays instrumental. We never plan which songs should have vocals or no vocals.

What are you most looking forward to about playing in the States? Is there anything that you are nervous about?

Sangyun Lee: This is our first time to play in the United States. I’m very excited. I was so excited to play our first show together in Korea in 2008. This almost feels the same way. Everything will be new to us. There will be new people, new places, new experiences, and lots of new music to enjoy. We will perform at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas. This is one of the world’s biggest music festivals. There will be musicians and music fans from all around the world there. We are so happy to have the chance to meet many different people. I’m still learning English, so I’m a little nervous about speaking and listening to only English.

Daeinn Kim: I’m looking forward to eating a lot of American food. We have heard that the food sizes in America are much bigger than Korean food. We love eating.

What can people expect from your performance?

Daeinn Kim: We love to play really loud and with a lot of energy. We want to make people’s ears ring from the volume. We’re happy that they are coming to our concerts, but we want to try and break their ears. At our American concerts we’ll be selling brand new Apollo 18 t-shirts and we’ve made a special tour CD with songs from our Red, Blue and Violet albums. At SXSW, we’ll give out 500 free Apollo 18 iPhone cases. So, people who come to our SXSW concert will have the chance to get a special present from us.

What’s the strangest or most embarrassing thing that’s happened to you on stage?

Hyunseok Choi: We played at the Daejeon Rock Festival in October 2010. The stage was really big, but the amplifiers were really small and the drumhead was broken. Our set was in the middle of the festival. We started to play, but there was no sound coming out of the speakers. We found out that the police had shut down the concert early. I think that was the strangest experience we’ve had during a concert.

Hyun-Seok, you once badly injured the ligaments in your leg after falling off the stage during a performance. Do you think this has affected your attitude towards performing or calmed you down in some way?

Hyunseok Choi: Yes, because that really, really hurt. I’m a little calmer when playing now. My performance style is still energetic, but if I start to get too wild I can see Daeinn and Sangyun giving me looks to calm down. I’m more careful now. Apollo 18 concerts are still pretty crazy though.

Do you have any plans to play in other countries in the future?

Sangyun Lee: We’ll do a two-week American tour in March. We’ll play 16 shows in 13 days. It’s a pretty hard schedule, but we think it’s going to be fun. We’ll learn a lot, too. We’re scheduled to play in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. This tour includes shows at SXSW and The Valley of the Vapors Independent Music Festival. We plan to tour China and Japan this spring and summer. We hope to tour in Canada and to visit America again in the fall. In 2012 we want to try and do a European tour.

The band only formed in 2008 and you're already playing concerts abroad and at notable festivals in Korea. What would you say was your greatest achievement so far?

Hyunseok Choi: Our greatest achievement is that we’re still playing music and we're still very good friends. We’ve done some very good things so far as Apollo 18. Continuing to make music that we love is the most important thing though.

Where do you see Apollo18 in the future?

Hyunseok Choi: We want to be an international band. We want to tour around the world and share our music with people in many different countries. We’re working hard now to try and make that happen.

Do you have a message for our readers?

Daeinn Kim: Thank you for reading this. Please come see us play sometime. We’ll be so happy to meet you! For any readers living in the U.S., here are our March tour dates:

March 15 Dallas, Texas – Double Wide
March 16 Austin, Texas (6 pm) – DMI House @ 219 West
March 16 Austin, Texas (10:40 pm) – Headhunters (Official SXSW Showcase)
March 17 Austin, Texas (6 pm) – Zhi Tea Gallery
March 18 Austin, Texas (4 pm) – Hoeks Death Metal Pizza
March 18 San Marcos, Texas – Triple Crown
March 19 Austin, Texas (1 pm) – Aussie’s Bar & Grill
March 20 Austin, Texas (1 pm) – Cheer Up Charlie’s
March 20, San Antonio, Texas – Night Rocker Live
March 21 New Orleans, Louisiana – Dragon’s Den
March 22 Houston, Texas – Super Happy Fun Land
March 23 Denton, Texas – Andy’s Bar
March 24 Hot Springs, Arkansas – Low Key Arts (The Valley of the Vapors Independent Music Festival)
March 25 Memphis, Tennessee – Stash House
March 26 Tulsa, Oklahoma – The Eclipse
March 27 Fort Worth, Texas – 1919 Hemphill

KoME would like to thank Apollo 18 for making this interview possible.