why don’t you take me out? (skit) : Commentary with Kim Doeon

So!YoON! Hello, I am Hwang Soyoon. We’re already halfway through the commentary album. This time, let’s invite Kim Doeon, who participated in a total of 3 tracks from ‘IN (Void)’, ‘OUT (to be continued… :)’, and ‘why don’t you take me out? (skit)’ that we’re going to talk about right now, as a producer, and talk in-depth about music. Hello, Doeon. Kim Doeon Hello, I am Kim Doeon. I released my first album [Damage] last year, and I am glad to be able to participate in this commentary album again after So!YoON!’s 2nd album. Thank you for inviting me. The weather is nice. So!YoON! It is. Today’s weather is very nice. Kim Doeon 17 degrees So!YoON! If I recall correctly, actually I don’t have to recall because you wrote it down in a notepad file. Kim Doeon That’s right, that’s right. So!YoON! I first met you in June of 2021. What did you write down on your notepad file back then? Kim Doeon June 2021, the day I first met So!YoON!. I think that’s what I wrote. So!YoON! We didn’t just meet for the first time back then. I mean, we saw each other here and there but Kim Doeon We tried to make a plan to meet up, just the two of us, and I asked you if you wanted to come over. I remember it being June because there was a picture you took with my cat in my gallery, so I knew that was the first time we met. So!YoON! I was planning to go over for a bit during the day that day but I remember staying there until we had dinner, going up to the rooftop, and going back home really late. I also remember both of us trying to play each other’s music we were working on. Even then, I was actually still planning my solo album. Thinking back on it. So, I remember you playing a track for me and I ridiculously kept saying that I wanted to use it as the intro for my album all of the sudden. Do you remember? Kim Doeon I do and it was actually sort of a historic moment for me So!YoON! No. Kim Doeon I mean, I played the demos and sketches that I’ve made until then to tell you that this was the kind of music I make, but I was surprised when you showed interest in that track. It made me wonder what kind of solo album you were planning to think that this track will go along with it. So!YoON! That’s right. I remember saying that without even explaining it, but if I can give you an explanation now, the first moment of hearing a track is very important for me. Because listening to a song is like feeling it. The first feeling when feeling the track out is very important for me, and when I heard it then, You just played it on a tiny speaker, but for some reason, I had this instinctive feeling that it could be a great inspiration for my solo album that I was envisioning which wasn’t all that great yet and I think a lot of images popped up in my head from the track that didn’t have any vocals. So, this is one of the traits and pros of your music in my opinion. I think the idea of presenting something as an image and then having it to be something that’s not based on any reality, but some kind of a fantastical feeling really reached out to me, and that’s why I told you that. After that, that became the intro and the track called ‘IN (Void)’, and I also featured in ‘Fort’ from your album [Damage]. Kim Doeon That’s right. Actually, I was grateful that you gladly agreed to feature in ‘Fort’, and I kind of got the feeling that I was going to be seeing you for a long time. So!YoON! Since it was the intro track that started from your sketch, I was wondering what your thoughts were or if there was anything you wanted to express when you first made the intro track, without my interpretation. Kim Doeon First, the big theme of your album is the keyword ‘Love’, and after hearing the story about some kind of image like a mirage, I kept thinking of an image that was like a dream that passed by really quickly. I mean, out of the stories you told me back then, you told me a story like the Wizard of Oz, and in a way, it’s kind of an adventure where you have this one destination and you have this one roadmap to get there, and the adventure-like feeling. And I thought it would be great to be able to show a compressed preview of the album’s entire story in the track, so I first started with a marimba sound and tried to overlap the sounds that didn’t sound like they were going to go along with each other. I mean, some things just don’t make sense in your dreams. So!YoON! It’s disconnected. Kim Doeon So, I wanted to make some kind of soundscape with a strange collage of those images and scenes, and there is a special part of the intro track in my opinion. and since you are an artist whose music is based on rock, I wanted to draw it out in a fun way. I didn’t want it to sound like the typical rock track but I thought that element was also a part of you. So, this album’s keyword is love and I also heard that many parts of you were also the keywords, so the sounds of synth guitars and the metal sounds that aren’t heard much these days, especially since you can’t find them in popular music, I thought I could make it into a tribute or some sort so I thought that I wanted to rake up all the sounds of the past. So!YoON! I also think that part was the device that made this track a bit more special, and your outrageousness or sense that made those kinds of bold choices made me realize that as we continue to work together and I learned and felt a lot, I had an inkling that maybe this guy could do something, not just an intro track, but maybe he could open or close something, or maybe he could act as some device that would add a lot of color to this album. That’s why after that you were responsible for ‘why don’t you take me out? (skit)’ and the outro which we will officially talk more about. So, a thought came to me while we were talking but the intro, the middle ‘why don’t you take me out? (skit)’, and the outro was, the intro was made on the first stage of working on the album, and while making the album there was ‘why don’t you take me out? (skit)’ in the middle, and the outro was completed during the fianl stage of the album. Back then, I remember working on the intro and I told you that I’ve got this track that I was working on and I often share a bit of the process that I’m going through, and then the next track on ‘Bad’, which is now out, is the track that I made when I was just asking myself how I was going to tie all of these messy tracks together and it’s now called ‘why don’t you take me out? (skit)’. That song was made when I found a classical guitar rolling around in my house after I came out from the shower, and I wanted to try something with it, so I just turned on my recorder and I just messed around with it, and sent it. This is a bit of a digression but I don’t know the chords to the song, and I could never play it again even if you asked me to. Kim Doeon We could never hear it live So!YoON! You could never see it live. So, I put the recorded audio file into the program, raised the pitch, and created space on it, and sent it to you, and I had some kind of feeling that you were the best person to work on this. Kim Doeon The great thing about it was that it didn’t have a stem So!YoON! A single file Kim Doeon It was 2 raw tracks with just a vocal and guitar lumped together, but I kind of detected, and detected an empty space and I think I sprayed something on it like spraying a perfume. The electronic notes. So!YoON! I think there’s something to that, too, because if you took the rights to the intro and I had a bit more rights to the outro now, this skit track was in the perfect form of collaboration. So I remember thinking this is pretty good. Kim Doeon Of course, we can’t divide it into a perfect ratio but our roles were very clear and it felt like telepathically communicating? It felt very comfortable. First of all, my work is usually computer-based, so I’ve been doing a lot of grid and tempo-based stuff, and I think I’ve been relying on it in a way, but just doing it without a set tempo was a new experience for me. Even though the sound was recorded in a different space, the feeling of it combining and the feeling of the space getting tied together was very fun for me, so all of it was very fun. Outro also I thought I would be able to do something to the track that was made by you jamming for a few hours with your friend. Like coloring. So!YoON! I think your character really changed the mood of the outro track a lot. The feeling of the melody line or the repeating chorus completely changed. Kim Doeon Maybe, the outro was like dream pop? I personally wanted to add the 80s sound to it So!YoON! Even with a slow tempo. Kim Doeon Back then and even now, I listen to a lot of dream pop, and the unique spatial effector that I usedback then, the snare sounded like it didn’t have any strength in it. The snare sounded like its sound was being evaporated. But then, the vocoder had a different feeling from like a talk box So!YoON! I thought it had to give you goosebumps. So, the utilization of the vocoder wasn’t just to make it sound more full but I thought it had to be so dense and had a lot of harmonic overtones that it should give you goosebumps. Kim Doeon something very melodic but simliar to a roar So!YoON! That’s right. Something bursting out. Kim Doeon That’s why, it might sound scary to listen to an acapella with a metallic feel to it. So!YoON! As I worked with you, I thought balance was the most important thing, so I worried about how I shouldn’t damage this colorful artist’s radiance and still blend in the process of working and collaborating with me. So, anyway, in conclusion, I personally think that it was very adequate. No matter who listens to it, they would know it was made by Kim Doeun and Hwang Soyoon, and these kinds of things got along very well. Kim Doeon That’s right. I learned a lot musically because I felt that you respected me very much but personally, as I was working on this album, I learned a lot about communicating as well. So!YoON! I learned a lot while working on this as well. I think I still have many flaws but along with the worries about providing a good result in this album when I respect and trust this person so much, even in the human side of things, I don’t think we can leave out humanely communicating even though we met while working on music. Anyway, apart from this track, you’re a musician who just debuted. You let me hear a bit of the sketch that you’re going to be working on, and I’m looking forward to it. I’m not the type to compliment someone to their face, but I talk about you a lot behind your back. So I always hope that this person can really be able to do good work. Thankfully, you participated in my album but I keep thinking that I should keep supporting and respecting you. Now and on. I felt that we have a lot of things to create together, and through this work, if you allow me, if you allow me. Kim Doeon always So!YoON! Also, I am positive that the listeners who like the intro, outro, and skit track, will probably like Kim Doeon’s [Damage] very much and the upcoming album, so I recommend it. My voice is in there too, that’s what I think. Kim Doeon Show a lot of love. So!YoON! Anyway, I recorded our process through the commentary album like this as if we were unwinding, but I want to know if you have any thoughts on it. It’s about time we wrapped up. Kim Doeon I think I’ll be the one who listens the most. Even this. So!YoON! Sort of like self-love? Kim Doeon Not self-love, not self-love but like So!YoON! Being proud? Kim Doeon No, I’m not a person who usually talks to himself a lot or talks a lot, so there are times when I don’t even know what I’m thinking, but I think I’ll be able to realize what I was thinking by listening to this. So!YoON! But it’s great that you talked a lot better than I expected. Kim Doeon I tried hard. Thank you for making this easy. So!YoON! Then, I’ll wrap up the ‘why don’t you take me out? (skit)’ track here. I’ll move on to the next track. Goodbye. Kim Doeon Goodbye.