South Korean alternative pop band Leenalchi performs live at The Andy Warhol Museum as part of the Sound Series.
Leenalchi play The Andy Warhol Museum on Monday, November 2, as part of the Sound Series. They're a South Korean alternative pop band formed in 2019, and they've built their sound on a pretty specific collision: traditional pansori—Korea's narrative singing style—set to pop melodies and rhythms. It's the kind of thing that's hard to pin down until you hear it, but the pansori provides the vocal character and the pop side keeps it moving.
They're signed to Luaka Bop, the label David Byrne started, and the comparison to Talking Heads comes up a lot. Brian Eno summed them up in a few words: "Leenalchi has changed the way I think about music, dancing and Korea. I have never heard anything quite like this." A good part of that sound comes from bassist Young Gyu Jang, a horror film composer and former member of the art band SsingSsing, who's shaped much of the group's aesthetic.
The show is co-presented with Telegraph Tree as part of The Warhol Sound Series, presented by Citizens. The series goes back to 2004 and draws on Andy Warhol's own history as an album cover designer, manager of the Velvet Underground, and record producer, booking artists who blur contemporary independent genres. Leenalchi fits that mold—they're pulling from a traditional Korean form and putting it into a modern pop context, which is exactly the kind of cross-genre territory the series is built around.
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It's on Monday, November 2, at 8 PM, with doors opening at 7:30 PM. The venue is The Warhol entrance space, 117 Sandusky Street in downtown Pittsburgh. Tickets are $30, or $25 for members and students.
