Clazziquai Project, also known as Clazziquai, is a South Korean electronica band formed in 2001 and known for their acid jazznote sound, which also incorporates influences from house and downtempo. They have won an award at the MNET KM Music Video Festival for Best Soundtrack, and have also been the most nominated group at the Korean Popular Music Awards II.
The band consists of three people: Alex Chu (known simply as Alex), Choi Soo-jin (who goes by her stage name Horan), and Kim Sung-hoon (who goes by his stage name DJ Clazzi). Alex and Horan specialize in vocals, more often than not doing duets, while Clazzi leads the band and handles the production.
Their songs range from upbeat techno ("Flea", "Freedom") to plaintive ballads ("Novabossa", "Last Tango") to some form of middle ground, combining both electronica elements with feel-good lovey-dovey lyrics (many of their songs). Despite most of their lyrics being in Korean, there's no language barrier to be found with their music; additionally, they are known to sprinkle lots of Gratuitous English in there.
Their music has been used in many television commercials, shows, and films, with one of the most notable examples being that their songs "Be My Love" and "She Is" were used as the opening and closing theme songs for the Korean TV show My Lovely Sam-soon.
Discography:
- Instant Pig (2004)
- Zbam (remix album, 2004)
- Color Your Soul (2005)
- Pinch Your Soul (remix album, 2006)
- Love Child of the Century (2007)
- Robotica (remix album, 2008)
- Beat in Love (2008)
- Metrotronics EP (2008)
- Mucho Musica (2009)
- Mucho Mix (remix album, 2009)
- Mucho Punk (2009)
- Mucho Beat (remix album, 2009)
- Blessed (2013)
- Blink (2014)
Clazziquai contains examples of the following tropes:
- Amen break: Heard (liberally chopped) near the end of "Cat Bossa".
- And Then John Was a Zombie: At the end of the "Flea" video, Alex takes off the blindfold that he had been wearing for the whole video and stares blankly at the camera. His face then begins to morph into that of the Humanoid Abominations seen throughout the video.
- Animal Motifs: Pigs are seen in practically all of the band's artwork (as well as in the "Sweety" video), besides inspiring the Instant Pig name.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: The white horned demons in the "Flea" video and on the Metrotronics cover have no genitalia, as shown by several shots of their full bodies.
- Blindfolded Vision: Alex in the "Flea" video.
- Body Horror: These lyrics to "Flea"."We squeeze in the skin / And empty your brain / A little thing"
- Broken Record: Both the original and Cloud mixes of "Back in Time" feature a female voice repeatedly uttering the title.
- Design Student's Orgasm: All of their albums' artwork is visually striking and arresting in some way.
- Epic Instrumental Opener: The "Sweety" video repurposes the opening of "You Never Know" as this.
- Genre-Busting:
- Shoehorning/pigeonholing this band under the electronica genre would do a major disservice to its prominent influences and elements of house, jazz, acid, and other genres.
- In an interview, Clazzi bluntly stated that he has no idea what genre his music would fit into, and said that it would be best for him to leave it for the listeners to decide.
- Gentle Giant: Has a song named after it.
- Good Hair, Evil Hair: At the end of the "Flea" video, Horan's hair suddenly turns into snakes.
- Gratuitous English: All over the place. Sometimes it works fluidly with the Korean lyrics, other times it just appears as English just for the sake of English.
- Gratuitous Spanish: The Mucho series.
- Humanoid Abomination: The strange black-eyed horned demons that appear in the "Flea" video and on the cover of Metrotronics.
-
Licensed Game: There was the South Korea-exclusive DJMax Portable Clazziquai Edition in 2008. In fact, it was through this game that Clazziquai collaborated with Pentavision to create Metrotronics. - Lyrical Cold Open: "Sweety", "She Is".
- Major Injury Underreaction: The end of the "Sweety" video has the male protagonist being harassed by a small white pig that eventually causes him to crash through a glass wall. Not only does he not have any visible wounds or injuries, the female protagonist starts laughing for whatever reason, encouraging him to laugh along.
- Meaningful Name: "Cat Bossa" ends with a cat meow.
- Mr. Fanservice: Alex. Just look at
◊ those abs.◊ - Ms. Fanservice: That being said, Horan really knows◊ how◊ to◊ flaunt◊ herself◊ when the time comes.
- Mundane Made Awesome: "Flea" is far more cool-sounding than a song about fleas has any right to be.
- Rearrange the Song:
- See Triumphant Reprise below.
- There are two versions of "Be My Love": the original Korean song, and the English house remix, both of which can be found on Color Your Soul.
- Sampling:
- Color Your Soul opens with the eight-second intro "Beautiful Woman", which solely consists of sampled audio from an old-timey film played in Amélie.
- The "Pinch Your Remix" of "Color Your Soul" contains a sample of dial-up noise towards the start.
- Shout-Out:
- In the "Sweety" video, we see a re-enactment of the famous Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer opening, except with a pig wearing headphones.
- "Romeo N Juliet" speaks for itself.
- Sigil Spam:
- See Animal Motifs above.
- Pink lightbulbs and luchadors are images used throughout the Mucho series.
- Spoken Word in Music: "Sweety" contains a voice saying "I like that" at two points in the song — at the start and after the first chorus.
- Surreal Music Video:
- "Flea" - There are two guys playing the DJ Max Clazziquai game, there are white horned demons throughout the video, Horan becomes Medusa, Alex has his face slowly turn into that of the demons, and the video ends with a crowd of demons briefly flashing in the room with Horan before they disappear.
It's pretty damn creepy. - "Sweety" - There's a guy and a girl. The guy is on a rooftop using a self-made handheld satellite and a radio, and the girl is in a lab creating convoluted equations and science tests to literally create love. The guy ends up being harassed and chased by a small white pig, and he crashes into a glass wall but laughs it off with the girl. What.
- "Flea" - There are two guys playing the DJ Max Clazziquai game, there are white horned demons throughout the video, Horan becomes Medusa, Alex has his face slowly turn into that of the demons, and the video ends with a crowd of demons briefly flashing in the room with Horan before they disappear.
- Theme Naming / Idiosyncratic Album Naming: Their Mucho series of studio and remix albums in 2009.
- Triumphant Reprise: Instant Pig's slow and sad "Novabossa" is reworked into a much happier and bubblier song in the album's final track, "Cat Bossa".
- Two Guys and a Girl
- A Wild Rapper Appears!: "Romeo N Juliet", "Love Mode"
