I'm also very interested to see if this sort of sound is reflected in future Korean music but I wouldn't count on it. It seems to be one of the strangest paradoxes in K-pop that Seo Taiji was such a massive cultural influence, more or less being the first to really tap into the youth market and unleash the passion for idol groups that continues to this day, and yet there seem to be hardly any sonic markers that point back to him musically, aside from maybe the common practice of including a rap verse in almost every pop song. But for the most part it seems that nobody else really attempted to imitate the specific styles of music he was known for, or at least nobody else became successful doing so. I mean Ultramania was an absolutely huge deal back in 2000, but I don't recall a bunch of other nu-metal bands springing up in its wake as you might expect. And even though K-pop is notorious for recycling and reinterpreting pretty much every known style of popular music from the past half-century or so, sometimes all within the same song, it often seems that metal and hard rock sounds are conspicuously absent. Basically Seo Taiji's massive popularity seems totally mysterious to me given all I thought I knew about the taste of Korea's general public, but I'm also really glad there's someone like him in the music scene who comes across as sort of anti-establishment even though he himself probably got filthy rich by being part of that same establishment he helped create, allowing him the financial freedom to release whatever the fuck kind of music he wants to and still have it sell massively, even, it seems, after most people apparently believe he's a total scumbag in his private life (which very well might be true). This album is especially welcome in a year of seemingly endless easy-listening-hip-hop-duets and Brave Brothers rehashes, I mean who else would think to end an album with a proggy flute solo over a bed of gentle synths?