Listen to "Pushing Through the Fog."

Beautiful Rivers and Mountains: The Psychedelic Rock Sound of South Korea's Shin Joong Hyun 1958–74
(Light in the Attic)
(out of 5)

In the realm of Western "hippie" music, the most underground groups would push for the most obvious, trippiest elements of, like, everything. The point was the desperate NEED to get "out there." Trouble was, the rest of the world was not always ready to go "out there" with these longhairs. The template for psychedelic music outside the West was often a skeleton of Western psychedelic jams mated to the meat of local pop and/or folk traditions, musical and otherwise. Such is the case with prolific Shin Joong Hyun, South Korea's "godfather of rock and roll." He began playing guitar young, inspired by Elvis, and soaked up every drop of ANYTHING musical and got DOWN with it! Seriously, he was constantly working. Beautiful Rivers and Mountains: The Psychedelic Rock Sound of South Korea's Shin Joong Hyun 1958–74 is a solid testimonial of Hyun's '60s and early-'70s acid-laced expansions and stabs at dramatic pop. It's so good, and the production values are perfect; its lo-fi mixing unifies this compilation's LIVENESS and immediacy, so the pop is subtle and the jams are groovy.