Jose tells the Sanulim story:
“
1977 was the year the Sex Pistols released their first and only studio album “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols”, and the same year The Clash released their self-titled debut (just a year after The Ramones had released their own self-titled debut). 1977 was also the year Elvis Presley died, when disco was at its peak, and hip hop was brewing out of the percussive riddim vat of soul, funk, disco, and dub breaks. Meanwhile, across the Pacific in South Korea, three Seoul-based brothers, still heavily under the influence of late 60s psych rock, released their first album as Sanullim (산울림, translated as “Mountain Echo”). Sanullim is something of an anomaly in rock history. At a time when vintage rock was dying and new cultural tropes were diversifying the palette of pop music, Sanullim appeared on the margin in a country whose pop music landscape, heavily censored by the authoritarian bureaus of Park Chung-Hee, mainly consisted of traditional trot ballads and dance-pop music. Sanullim’s heavy bass lines, thunderous drums, chromatic fuzz guitar-work, and psych-image lyrics were a revival shock in a system which had gone dormant since the early 60s scene singlehandedly engendered by Korean rock godfather Shin Jung-Hyeon.
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