Interview with Asian Chairshot

Asian Chairshot is touring in the UK until May 12th and KoME had the opportunity to interview the drummer Kyewan Park. He kindly save some time in their busy schedule to answer some questions about the shows, their impressions about UK and the new album, Horizon.


Could you please introduce yourselves to our readers and tell us how Asian Chairshot was formed?

Hi, my name is Kyewan Park. I’m the drummer in Asian Chairshot. We’re a rock band from Seoul. Youngwon Hwang is the bassist and vocalist in our band. And Heenam Son plays guitar. Earlier this year, we were nominated for Best Rock Album and Best Rock Song at the 2014 Korean Music Awards. And right now we’re in the middle of our first UK tour! After we finish our UK tour, we’ll play at the Music Matters festival in Singapore on May 23rd. And we're hoping to tour in Japan this fall as well.

We formed Asian Chairshot in 2011. I was 33 years old at the time. I’d played in bands before and decided I wanted to make a new band one last time. So I reached out to Youngwon and Heenam and asked them if they wanted to jam together. Things went well and we had fun, so we decided to keep playing together.


How did you come up with the band’s name?

We wanted to make a name that included the word “Asian”. So we were just trying to think of other words that fit well with it. The wrestling term “chair shot” was suggested and we thought “Asian Chairshot” sounded cool so we adopted it as our moniker. I think it’s got a powerful sound to it.


How do you write new songs? Has your music been influenced by any UK rock bands or other music styles?

Different members will come in with different ideas for songs and then we’ll jam together to flesh the idea out. It’s fun making music that way because songs naturally go in different directions than we may have originally envisioned. We’re into UK bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Radiohead and Kula Shaker. But we've been most influenced by Korean classic rock bands like Sanullim and Deulgukhwa.


Asian Chairshot debuted in 2011 and so far you have showcased your music overseas several times. How do you feel about touring in the UK?

Touring in the UK is a dream come true for us. We had a blast at Liverpool Sound City and at The Compass in Chester last weekend and are excited about being able to play two shows in London and one gig in Bristol over the next few days. We’re already thinking about how we can get back to the UK for another tour next year, and the year after that, and the year after that!


You will be releasing a new album, Horizon, on May 28th. Could you tell us more about it?

Horizon is our first full-length effort. We've been previewing songs from the album at our UK gigs and the reactions have been great so far! We recorded Horizon in Seoul last December. The album was produced by Smashing Pumpkins' guitarist Jeff Schroeder and engineered by Ryan Grostefon. Ryan was the engineer on Smashing Pumpkins’ 2012 album Oceania. Both of those guys were amazing to work with in the studio and we learned a lot from them. Jeff also played some guitar on Horizon too. We’re really excited for people to hear the album when it comes out on May 28th. It’ll be distributed digitally around the world and we hope lots of people get the chance to listen to it.


How did you end up working with Jeff Schroeder?

Jeff stayed in Korea for a few months last year. He checked out a lot of bands while he was there and landed up at one of our gigs by chance. We went drinking together after the show and became friends. We asked him about producing our full-length debut and he agreed to do. We feel so fortunate that we had the chance to work with him.


Please give a message to our readers.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read about Asian Chairshot. If you’re in the UK, please come see up play at AAA in London on May 9th, at The Hatchet Inn in Bristol on May 11th and at Pipeline in London on May 12th. If you’re not in the UK, I hope we can all hang out together somewhere else in the world and that we can share our music with you there.


KoME would like to thank Asian Chairshot and Shawn Despres for making this interview possible.