BLOG: The Fav Album Of…. – Cayin !

In this weekly series of articles you will discover what are the business insider’s favorite albums and tracks. We have contacted a broad selection of industry experts and each Wednesday you can discover one of those guy’s favorite albums and why this is so. Click here in case you missed one!

This week’s honor goes to Andy Kong of Cayin. Those of you who have been reading Headfonia of course know Cayin as we have reviewed several of their units already.

• The Cayin C5 Amp: https://www.headfonia.com/cayin-c5-bubbly-baby/
• The Cayin N5 DAP: http://www.headfonia.com/review-cayin-n5-ribbed-pleasure/

Who am I:

Andy Kong, I’m the Marketing Director for Cayin Audio. Andy also is a big fan of audio in his private time and he can all the time be found on Head-Fi and other social media discussing about gear in general. I had the pleasure to meet Andy in Munich during the High End Messe and he’s a cool, friendly and motivated guy. He’s always trying to please everyone, he simply is a great guy.

The Band :        Woongsan

I don’t know the artist/band myself but Wikipedia says WoongSan (born Kim Eun Young) is an award-winning South Korean musician, actress and TV show host. She has been a leading figure in the jazz music scene in Korea and Japan for over a decade, having performed live over 500 times since her 1998 Japanese debut. She is the first Korean-born musician to perform at New York City’s historic Blue Note Jazz Club and has collaborated with many other well-known jazz musicians.

The Album:      I love  you (2013) 

It’s coming from roots of her musical background that inspired from different style of music such as rock, bossa-nova, and even classical. The Korea no.1 jazz diva, Woonsan is coming back with her brand new album!! As a jazz vocalist in Korea, she’s been highly acclaimed as a promising jazz artist and she won numerous music awards from abroad, such as a gold disc by Japan’s jazz magazine Swing Journal and others from the record industry associations.With her natural musical talents, many of songs listed on the album, such as Bob Dylan’s knocking on heaven’s door, Santana’s smooth, and Ray Charles’ unchained melody, were newly reinterpreted, reflecting various style of genres from traditional rock to opera, and latin music.

The Song:          I love you

Why this choice?

Woongsan is a Korean jazz/smooth jazz singer, she is frequently quoted as a leading figure in the jazz music scene in Korea and Japan. Her music is a distinctive blend of jazz, blues, Latin and funk style. As a songwriter and lyricist, her smooth jazz is original and unconventional, you can feel strong sense of freedom and mindfulness in her music. “I love you” is her 7th album released in Korea (2013 ), and I rate this as the best out of the 5 albums that I listened. The theme song “I love you” is a very soulful song, when expressed in her wonderful, deep, slightly husky voice, you can feel her emotion, very sentimental and erotic at the climate, she can draw me into her music and touch my soul.

I owned the MQS version of this album, at native 24bit/17.4kHz Hi-Res, you can feel her presence, the sense of right there, almost touchable, is sensational.

Listening preference

Home system: mainly ripped CDs stored on NAS.

Bedside system: 80% headphone, 20% speaker

On-the-go: DAP+IEM (Customs or Universal)

If you want to check out Andy’s’ favorite album and song, you can do so here:

Kudosrecords: https://www.kudosrecords.co.uk/release/dmpl00084/woong-san-i-love-you.html

Unfortunately I couldn’t find the full album on Tidal, SPotify and Qobuz, sorry.

Enjoy!

Thank you Andy for being on the series and for giving us a little insight in what you like to listen to. If you have suggestions of who we should feature in this article series, let us know in the comments!

Up to next week…