Glen Check (band)

Glen Check is a South Korean indie band, consisting of singer and guitar player June-One Kim and bass and synthesizer player Hyuk-Jun Kang. They debuted in 2011 with the release of Disco Elevator EP and were joined by drummer Jeon-Yeol Ryu for their first full album, Haute Couture, which was released in early 2012. Later that year, Ryu left the group. Once again a duo, Glen Check released the five-track EP Cliché later that year. In November 2013, a sophomore album was released, called Youth! The band has also released several remix EPs.

Contents

• Early lives
• EPs
• Studio albums
• Compilation albums
• Songs
• References

Kim and Kang first met while attending high school together and after graduating, they formed a band called The Closure. Soon after though, they decided to take a different approach to their music, which Kim has described as having been "quiet and boring". They changed the band's name to Glen Check, after reading the term in a fashion book. Both Kim and Kang grew up outside of Korea. The lyrics to their songs are in English. While the duo have cited Western music as being an influence on them, they were also inspired by African music and traditional Korean music on their album Haute Couture. For Cliché, they looked to funk and disco music from the 1970s and 1980s for their inspiration. Many different genres have been used to describe their music, including electropop, electro-rock, synthrock and indie-dance-pop. The duo has said that they do not want their sound to be limited though, and that they plan to experiment in many different styles. The band places an emphasis on the visual aspects of their live shows and have been noted for their stage design. Glen Check and its crew of collaborators are collectively known as The Basement Resistance.

Glen Check is one of the fastest growing indie bands in South Korea and has been praised for its musical and visual experimentation, being called "boundary-pushing" by MTV K. Billboard named Glen Check's "Young Generation" the eighteenth best South Korean song of 2013, and in 2014, Melissa Locker of Time singled out Glen Check as a favorite band from South Korea. Locker praised the duo's "edgy '80s energy" and wrote that they "infuse their tracks with the recklessness of youth", creating "a style that's nearly impossible not to dance to."

Both of Glen Check's albums have won the Korean Music Award for Best Dance & Electronic Album. In 2013, the band was nominated for Rookie of the Year, and in 2014, "Pacific" (from the album Youth!) was nominated for Best Dance & Electronic Song. Glen Check performed at South by Southwest in 2014.