Jimmy Strain is a self-taught guitarist who began to play the guitar as a junior high school student and became a songwriter during high school years. He was first recognized by winning the Korea Entertainment Producers Association Award in the Seoul Art College Music Festival in 2006, with his original composition. Early next year, he made an EP containing six songs in which he experimented with various recording techniques and instruments such as MIDI-guitar by which he could produce and record the sound of piano, saxophone and percussions.
A few months later, he composed a song for the Seoul City sponsored 'Hi! Seoul Festival' and performed on the main stage and sub-stages, leading a group of musicians. During the festival, the group improvised on an extended version of his song, which was almost three times longer than the original, for dancers who danced to the music. After his successful performance at 'Hi! Seoul Festival,' Jimmy didn't perform in public.
Jimmy started making his long awaited rock'n'roll numbers into a heavy metal record entitled 'Emotion Frequency'. As he created some techno music back in 2000, he dreamed of a rock band in which one man composes, performs and records a whole album without employing any session musicians. Just like the EP he had produced before, he composed, played and recorded all the instruments and did the mixing. Not only that, he also sang this time.
He never lived or studied abroad but he wrote verses in English, talking about his personal thoughts about human beings and issues of the world and Korea. His experiment of putting emotional melodies of such famous Korean folk songs as 'Jindo Arirang' and 'Sae Taryong' into his music turned out to be a great success.
After almost a year's hard work, he released prototype of this record for promotional purpose. Even though the audio quality of the prototype was not too satisfactory, it garnered favorable comments and reviews from listeners and critics.
In the autumn of 2008, he started his next project and re-mastering of the prototype record, and in March 2009, the re-mastered version of 'Emotion Frequency' was finally released. He is now working on his next record, something even more progressive.
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