Some have been curious as to our true identities, the coincidental rhyming of Andi and Cindi, and if we actually share the same tea mug. Although not all cannot be answered, we decided to write up a bio for the world to see, a tell-all of sorts minus the links, in case someone wants to randomly throw us up onto wikipedia...Now's your chance to learn something you probably didn't know about The Majestic High...
Pax Majestica~
Seoul-based pop/shoegaze duo The Majestic High are made up of Andi (born Andreas Roselund, November 21, 1972 in San Gabriel, California) and Cindi (born Nakyung Kim, March 21, 1975 in Jeju-do, Korea). Andi and Cindi are married to each other.
Andi is of Swedish/Armenian ancestry and Cindi is Korean. They first met in Seoul in April 2000, and started making musical plans later that summer that eventually turned into The Majestic High.
Multi instrumentalist Andi was born and raised in San Gabriel, California, and came to Seoul in 1992 to study Korean, later entering and graduating from Yonsei University's School of Music Composition. In 2000 while a grad student studying Korean traditional music theory at Seoul National University, Andi came into a travel agency in the Mapo district of Seoul where former Jeju Island native Cindi was working as a travel agent. On a whim, Cindi gave Andi a card and a box of orange juice upon purchasing a round-trip ticket to Japan. They met two weeks later for tea and casually and discussed music, life and friendship in general.
Andi grew up listening almost exclusively to The Smiths, Echo and the Bunnymen, and The Cure during the 1980s, first learning guitar on his mother's 1935 Gibson L-00 while trying to imitate the playing style of Johnny Marr. He soon received a Yamaha FG420-12 for his 16th birthday, soon becoming enthralled by the guitar layering and harmonic density of dreampop/shoegazing bands such as Lush, Chapterhouse, and Pale Saints, and later shared these bands and others with Cindi, who had grown up in Korea listening to mostly Top-40 pop music. Early on in the first year of their friendship, Andi and Cindi talked about making "beautifully loud music to heighten senses and turn one's attention towards heavenly things", and in Spring 2000, a demo of the song Silverkiss was recorded on to four tracks of a Roland VS-880 in Andi's studio apartment. It wasn't until he moved into a larger studio later that year that new ideas and a general band sound started to be discussed, which included an underlying strong jangle-pop influence mixed with loud guitars, in addition to elements of traditional Korean and Celtic music topped off by layered male/female voices in the style of Slowdive.
In 2008, The Majestic High submitted See Her Fall to Japanese label Quince Records for the Asian Shoegazing compilation Half Dreaming, and are presently working on a EP of songs.