Tag: Moonbin & Sanha (ASTRO)

Moonbin & Sanha are nominated for Best Subunit in the 2022 KPOPREVIEWED Awards. Support Moonbin & Sanha, along with your other favourite artists, songs and performances by clicking here to vote today. Be quick, as voting closes tomorrow night!

This week also sees the return of MOOBIN & SANHA, one of the two currently active subunits from ASTRO. If you can’t tell by the name of the subunit, the group consist of Moobin and Sanha, and they debuted with in 2020 with Bad Idea. Last year, the pair returned with the title track WHO and their second mini-album REFUGE. Yesterday, the pair dropped their third mini-album, Incense, and the title track Madness.

Madness features a funky and groovy energy to its dance pop profile. But before you assume, the track isn’t necessarily colourful like most funky and groovy songs. Madness also features a serious and a subtle powerful tone to it throughout its run that prevents a colourful or vivid tone to form, which actually allows the sound to fit neatly into the unit’s discography. I found this to be create a decent listen and a definite improvement from their last comeback. Madness features a solid set of vocals from both members, though I wished there was more of a zing to their delivery to make the song a bit more interesting. They were not competing with the instrumental in anyway, but I think a bit of volume (and even some definition) would have worked really well in Moobin and Sanha’s favour to allow them to stand out in Madness. A more interesting melody or delivery some sort would have great as well. There were some moments in which Madness could have built itself on, such as the pop start to the pre-chorus and rapping from Sanha (and briefly from Moobin). But ultimately, Madness joins the long list of songs that lack something memorable. The final aspect of Madness that disappointed me was the repetitiveness. I did like the repetitiveness at first, but with multiple listens, the song is drying up quite quickly. The final chorus doesn’t offer anything new to the song that the first two runs of the chorus had already offered. Overall, Madness is an appreciated step in the right direction for the duo, in my opinion. It just needs more to it.

The song likens the spread of one’s charm to the addictiveness of a scent, resulting in another person to be driven to a point of madness or insanity. And the two charms that we need to be wary of, based on the music video, belongs to both Moonbin and Sanha. In the video, we see them developing scents and breaking into a piece of ice that containing a bouquet of flowers, which might be the ultimate scent they are trying to achieve. I really liked the darkness of the sets, especially the choreography and solo sets we see at the end of the video. I also enjoyed how well timed the video is. When the song launches into the second chorus, we see the pair desperately breaking their way through the block of ice. It plays into the idea of madness slightly, which I thought was clever.

I liked the choreography, but there isn’t much that stands out in a memorable sense. Instead, I appreciated the smoothness that the choreography had, which worked well with certain moments of the song and gave a nice contrast during the song’s more jagged moments (i.e. the chorus).

Song – 7.5/10
Music Video – 8.5/10
Performance – 8/10
Overall Rating – 7.9/10

Also making their comeback this week was ASTRO’s subunit consisting of Moonbin & Sanha. The pair returned with the single, WHO, and mini-album, Refuge, on Tuesday. It follows their unit debut back in 2020 with Bad Idea and is the second subunit from ASTRO to release music this year (the first being JinJin & Rocky’s Just Breath). Moonbin and Sanha were also quite lucky in making their comeback as schedule, as both were diagnosed with COVID-19 a week prior to their comeback. Many groups are delaying their comebacks or postpone the start of promotions due to COVID, whereas Moonbin & Sanha managed to just dodge this potential impact and recovered just in time for their scheduled comeback. However, ASTRO’s fan meet event, which was scheduled for 13 March, had to be pushed back to April.

It is clear from this comeback that Moonbin & Sanha (the subunit) was formed to showcase a very intense and more mature side of the group. Bad Idea definitely had mature vibes, while WHO has adopted a darker profile. And at the helm of this ‘darker profile’ is a powerful dance track. It is also quite minimalistic throughout – to the point where WHO felt very bare. But the powerful and intense nature of WHO helps offset the bareness of the song. Part of me likes that. Unique and innovative in a way. But another part me of felt like it wasn’t enough. And sadly, I am leaning more to that latter side. While the powerful rock influenced flair we get in the chorus definitely gets WHO into the memorable category, I fear its stay would be short-lived. In other words, the intense beat is enough to get it there, but WHO didn’t have anything to keep it there. The chorus could have been backed up by a hook, through a two part chorus, and this (provided it was executed properly and fitted in with the rest of the track) could potentially have ‘sealed the deal’ for WHO to stay in the ‘memorable category’. It also could have potentially helped offset that bareness that I had mentioned in a more satisfying and fulfilling manner. When I turn to the verses and bridge, there are some good vocals in there and there was a really bone chilling ‘Who you looking for’ line. But nothing captivating or strong enough.

The dark side of the pair is definitely shown throughout the video. The video takes on a religious concept, which I think is a bit of a unique concept in KPOP. Some scenes of the video seems to depict the idea of hell and possession, which is a pretty cool topic to portray. It also fits in with the lyrics of the song, which is about express the confusing emotions between evil that cannot be escaped and the desire for healing (taken from Soompi). Both Moonbin and Sanha’s visuals were definitely top notch in this video, with the mature look really shown off in this video.

The powerful nature of the song lends well to the performance aspect of this comeback. It allowed them to show off their performance skills, coolness and fierceness on stage. Definitely a performance I recommend you watch.

Song – 6.5/10
Music Video – 8/10
Performance – 9/10
Overall Rating – 7.5/10

Last month, we saw the debut of ASTRO’s latest subunit, JinJin & Rocky, who partied it up with their Just Breath single. It was later confirmed following JinJin & Rocky’s unit debut that ASTRO’s first subunit, Moonbin & Sanha, would be make their comeback in March, with a pre-release single dropping in February. Well time flew by as we waited, and Moonbin & Sanha’s pre-release single, Ghost Town, officially dropped yesterday. Now, we will be counting down to the day that Moonbin & Sanha returns as a duo, making it their first release since Bad Idea, their debut single from 2020. In the meanwhile, let’s have a deep dive into Ghost Town.

Ghost Town is another stop along the mature path that Moobin and Sanha has sent us on with Bad Idea. It is not a grand stop of any kind, as there isn’t anything big or groundbreaking within Ghost Town that gets me excited or is a ‘must see’ attraction. It is just more so like a rest stop you stop at before going on with the last leg of your trip to the real destination (that is, their March comeback). After all, that is the purpose of a pre-release single. Ghost Town is pretty straight forward track with a pleasant blend with its acoustic instrumentation and trap/hip-hop beats. There was potential at the start, however. I found the acoustic guitar to be quite striking, but it was soon lost to the heavy hip-hop beats that is heavily present throughout the rest of the song. In the end, it does make Ghost Town repetitive. But not to the unbearable extent where it drains out the energy of the song. This is why I still found it pleasant. As for the duo, I don’t have much else to say other than that Moonbin and Sanha sounded quite satisfying throughout Ghost Town. They fitted in nicely with the instrumentation, and complimented the hip-hop vibes. The melodies were quite pleasant as well, but as mentioned at the start, not memorable. Overall, Ghost Town is basically your typical side track/pre-release single that just isn’t title track material. I sure do hope that whatever Moonbin & Sanha unveils in March, it is ‘title track material’.

The music video is pretty basic and isn’t too fancy. This felt right for the song, which was of a similar nature. All of the video was the pair in front of a screen that was showing static, red tinge cloudy backgrounds or was simply off some portions of the video (these parts were extremely dark and it was hard to see the two of them). The pair interacted with the camera in a way that reminded me of 90s R&B music videos. I personally thought the video was a bit dry and isn’t something that I would find myself revisiting. It is a fitting video for the song, but not my cup of tea.

Song – 7/10
Music Video – 6/10
Overall Rating – 6.6/10

Yesterday, ASTRO launches their first duo unit with Moonbin and Sanha joining forces to bring us Bad Idea, which is featured on the pair’s first mini-album, IN-OUT. This comes after the entire group returned with Knock earlier this year.

It seems that funky is now the norm in KPOP. Bad Idea continues the ongoing trend of reemerging funky and groovy numbers in the industry, a trend that KPOP has definitely experienced in the past. Some of the best and widely known KPOP tracks over the years fall into this category! While Bad Idea does fit in with that particular crowd of songs (based on genre alone), it just needed a bit more to potentially be given that status. And that ‘bit more’ could have easily been a rap sequence. Sure, the addition of a rap sequence would have been cliche move. But I felt that Bad Idea was missing an element to give the song a kick and some additional intense energy. The entire song is vocally centric, which makes complete sense given the vocalist label that both Moonbin and Sanha carry whilst promoting with the rest of the ASTRO members. There isn’t anything wrong with that. I just believe it is missing that oomph to bring it to the next level. But aside from that, what we got was perfectly nailed. Both Moonbin and Sanha did amazing with the vocals, especially when we got to the falsetto pre-chorus. That pre-chorus was super sexy sounding, admittedly. The chorus was quite simple and catchy. The instrumental has a nice bass feel to it and the guitars work very hard to bring the funkiness to life. Maybe that ‘bit more’ could also have been delivered with a bit of a change up in the instrumentation, but it would have been most effective as a rap sequence (in my opinion).

The music video for Bad Idea is super interesting. The pair take on a dark sensual concept with their choreography and solo shots. That itself is something quite exciting, as it takes ASTRO’s previous concepts a step further. But that is embedded throughout a time-loop story line, where Sanha constantly dies after drinking a poisoned drink and wakes up right after. He becomes confused and lost. Moonbin isn’t the centre of this time-loop, so suspicion is on him almost immediately from the start. It is revealed towards the end that Moonbin indeed did poison Sanha, causing him to die. I think Sanha had shot Moonbin in the past, which might give Moonbin a motive. Though I am not sure why. That is just my take on the music video though and I am sure other theories have determined by Moonbin is killing Sanha and how Moonbin better fits into the story line (i.e. I didn’t understand meaning behind the fire and broken glass scenes).

The choreography looks quite good. I liked how they carried that dark sensual concept from the music video into the choreography. I really like the move that did when they repetitively sang ‘Bad’ during the chorus. Their chemistry was also note-worthy during their duo moments!

Song – 9/10
Music Video – 9/10
Performance – 9/10
Overall Rating – 9/10