IN (Void) : Commentary with kixxikim

So!YoON! Hello, I'm Hwang Soyoon. You're listening to So!YoON!'s second full-length album ‘Episode 1: Love’. It's been 4 years since my second full-length album was released. Just like last time, I was able to show you a commentary album. The biggest difference between the last album and this commentary album is that I wanted a more multi-layered conversation beyond music to be recorded. So, people who are not just singers or musicians have participated in any production. For example, I wanted to talk about this album with people who worked with me in the process, as well as music video directors, A&R, choreographers, and musicians. I think that was the right thing to do. Let’s begin with it. I'd like to talk about ‘IN (Void)’ which is an introduction to the album and a track that covers the entire album. I wanted to talk to someone who understands So!YoON!'s music as well as I do. I'd like to invite kixxikim, who is participating in the overall planning of this commentary album, to talk about it. Hello. Please introduce yourself. kixxikim I’m kixxikim from Poclanos and I do various things related to music. So!YoON! Nice to meet you. kixxikim Nice to meet you, too. So!YoON! Actually, I'm the host, but I'm introducing you as the host today. I thought it would be nice if you could you introduce this track. kixxikim If you work in the music industry, you can’t help but know So!YoON! and thank you so much for choosing me and inviting me here. So!YoON! The honor is all mine, really. kixxikim I think you said something important in the beginning. In fact, just like the last commentary album, I think the main purpose of this album is the same. Now, there are many colleagues who collaborate in expanding and evolving So!YoON!'s discography, and the stories and decisions that they share are not just floating in the air, but the purpose of recording and releasing them and sharing them with listeners is the same. But I think the biggest difference from the last album is the range. I think an album goes beyond just music. I don’t think I can say there’s a limit to it. So!YoON! I agree with you, and that's why I started thinking that I should deal with the story in a more three-dimensional way with a more extended concept. kixxikim In that respect, So!YoON! is now moving toward a kind of comprehensive art. So!YoON! I don't know if it's a little sudden, but sometimes it's very tacky to explain the inside story of all the works. It's much more sophisticated to hide information at all, but I don't know why I revealed all of this work by commentary. Other projects that I'm working on may have a different nuance, but I think the process of making So!YoON! would be more equal. I think I understand how many teams are involved in creating this piece and how their efforts and their ideas make it more complete, this won’t do them all the justice, but I think the most sophisticated way to do so is to describe this album. kixxikim There will be a project that stretches out like a pruning around the character Hwang Soyoon, but to limit it to two things, ‘SE SO NEON’ and ‘So!YoON!’, it is a way to reveal and introduce them. There will be a difference in that, and you said it was fair earlier, but in the end, fairness is also the fairness of acquiring information. So, it can be said to be a kinder form of SE SO NEON. So!YoON! And as for SE SO NEON, if I say it's a process of immersing myself, So!YoON! is focusing on how to interact with so many different people and create synergy, so I think this commentary album will be a very meaningful album for the So!YoON! project. It's like showing the development. We hope that by releasing the blue print, you can get a sense of how this building was built. kixxikim You can understand and enjoy the building more when you have the development diagram and blue print. So!YoON! And you can understand what intentions this architect had in making this building. kixxikim I agree. I mentioned four years earlier but a lot has happened in Seoul and around the world in the four years. So!YoON! Time is a scary thing. kixxikim Time flies, literally. So many things have happened to So!YoON! individually and to the team SE SO NEON, but today, this is a place where we talk about human ‘Hwang Soyoon’ and her persona ‘So!YoON!’. To sum up, the characters Hwang Soyoon and Soyoon have all made progress and cause, so how did that affect this album? So!YoON! So!YoON! is a project that exists because there is Hwang Soyoon, so I think this existence continues to change depending on how Soyoon changes and thinks. What kind of time and life has Hwang Soyoon lived for four years? As soon as I became an adult, I started my career as a musician, and nearly five years have passed, and I got to know myself through performances, albums, receiving support from people, agonizing and more. kixxikim Is that a good thing, or a bad thing? So!YoON! Neither. But I think I started to think about becoming an adult by learning about the characteristics, customs, habits, inertia, and aspects of this character that others see and feel through Hwang Soyoon looking at others. I'm at that age, and I might think that I'm an adult now. But then I suddenly thought that I was getting sick of the emotions that I had since then. kixxikim You mean, looking at yourself? So!YoON! It wears on you. It’s not fun after some time. kixxikim It's a bit embarrassing for me to talk right in front of you, for example, but you’ve been successful, and what happens in the process is, let’s say inertia? So!YoON! Yes, I think it's time for me to know that I'm going to do this without even realizing it. I think it's time for me to know how much I move on stage and how well I can sing and what I'm good at and what I'm bad at I. Of course, I still have a long way to go, but I’m just putting it out there flatly. It's the same in life and it’s a way of life. I can’t always think negatively about when I like something, when I feel comfortable and when I feel stress. Rather, I think it's very important to get to know yourself. But looking back on myself as an artist or a musician, instinctively I realized skepticism thinking that I could castrate myself or maybe realize this is what being a grown-up is all about. kixxikim There are about 50 crayons in the life of musician Hwang Soyoon, but somehow you’re only using about 20 colors by custom or experience. So!YoON! People usually choose colors as they go, and if they continue to draw, they'll say, ‘What's 20? Now I can narrow my color to less than 10.’ So I thought, ‘So!YoON!, you’re boring. You need something.’ The first thing I thought about was finding out what I was afraid of. kixxikim The process of objectification. So!YoON! I tell myself to do what I know I’m afraid of doing. And on the other hand, I also do what I am most confident about. The two simultaneous utterances produced So!YoON!. I think it's the creation of the present So!YoON!. kixxikim Now there are many things that you've been wary of and haven't done. Maybe it's the grammatical part of genre music, borrowing a lot of lyrics in English, or something with a lot of English lyrics, or something visual, but in retrospect, what was the highest obstacle for you? It must have been that much more thrilling. So!YoON! Actually, everything you listed is shown on the outside. For example, visual, I'm going to show you different personas... kixxikim Six personas at that. So!YoON! Yes, I’ve become six So!YoON!s and there are English lyrics. But the most thrilling part for me is actually not shown. It’s just passion. Each person has various forms of desire and we feel it through life. kixxikim Instinctively. So!YoON! Yes, but lighting them up, I think I was the type to solve those desires animalically without simply verbalizing or visualizing them. It's expressed on stage, and other than that, I was a person who used to suppress a lot of my energy. kixxikim Can I express that as a form of self-restrain? So!YoON! I started lighting up the So!YoON! without restrain and performing various forms of my desires, feeling, and experiencing things in the album. But it could be lyrics, visual, artwork, or music video. kixxikim Or it could be the body language. So!YoON! It could be a movement or an expression. I thought waking me up in various forms was the most necessary thing for me. If I’ve been expressing it only with the stem of SE SO NEON as a single stem, I look into them with a magnifying glass and look back on what I've missed, saying, “Oh, right.” kixxikim And that’s how to you discover the desire that’s been inside you. So!YoON! That’s right. So in the end, I’ve become more colorful now and as ironic as it may seem, I’ve become more balanced now. kixxikim In terms of balance, as you mentioned earlier, buildings are actually supported by several pillars. It's that kind of sentiment. When you look at the emotions between the tracks, ‘Till the sun goes up’ has a very direct and direct desire, and ‘Smoke Sprite’ has a very realistic and unrealistic feeling. So!YoON! Unconsciously. kixxikim That’s unconscious desire so when you look at those emotional things, it's not just a flat type of desire, but a variety of forms of desire now exist like pillars, so that’s why you feel balance, don’t you think? So!YoON! You’re right. kixxikim I wonder if I put that right. So!YoON! I think I keep saying yes, but that's right. But it's also ‘Episode1: Love’. Love and desire really seem to go back to the 80s, but it's bound to be one. The reason why I didn't do ‘Episode1 : desire’ is because in the end, it's love, so I think I expressed it like that because it was love in its ultimate form. So I didn't know that I would choose something too straightforward and simple, but I think this album is really about love. kixxikim There's nothing clearer than that. If there is no alternative, is there a reason to go around it? It's so nice. We've talked about the keyword ‘desire’. The other day, I remember you telling me that when you made this album, you brought all the things that were scattered all over the place together and that it was desire. Please talk about that to the listeners. So!YoON! The reason why I described this album as performative is because, as you said, this album was not planned. As I said before, I'm going to do what I'm afraid of and I'm going to do what I can do best. I've worked on it simultaneously with this keynote. I put my faith in fate, or my colleagues, or I've been working on this album without knowing if it's going to be easy, and I think there were various types of starting points. I lived with that mindset and made music with that mindset, so I came to that conclusion. I didn't mean to. The reason why the intro track is ‘IN (Void)’ is because I wondered, ‘Where am I from?’ kixxikim The most fundamental question. So!YoON! Where do I come from? Usually, people want to run in the opposite direction from where they came from. The people I've met, at least. If you’re born in blue, there’s desire to run towards red, and if you’re born in red, then towards blue. If you are in a space, such as a square, you may want to move from one vertex to another. There’s usually a direction in which you want to go. kixxikim Do you think I’m that nature too? So!YoON! ‘Why don’t I have a direction?’ Scarily enough, that makes me someone who has nowhere to go to or be able to go anywhere. kixxikim Naturally, now we can talk about track 1. ‘IN (Void)’ can be translated directly into a huge empty space or emptiness, but I think it's a journey to fill in the questions that started from the source and the ‘IN (Void)’ one by one and finally reach the answer. So!YoON! So when I started making that album, I had this thought. “Where did I come from? Then I can go anywhere, so let's start now. Let's decide where to go.” I thought, “That's what So!YoON! would do,” and even with the track ‘IN (Void)’ I thought, 'I'm going to tell this story. From now on, I'm going to build a pillar one by one in this empty space. At the end of the track, it became a huge building. For some reason, I keep comparing things to a building. kixxikim If ‘IN (Void)’ is a vacant lot, that metaphor would be more true. If you fill in the components, you can be a fellow musician, a lyricist, or a listener. That could be me. So!YoON! I think that’s also a reason why persona is split up in so many ways. kixxikim In a way, the emotional aspect of the album now goes back and forth between reality, but in a different way, it's also quite an autobiographical album. So!YoON! That’s right. So I think what this album suggests is not just about relying on something visual or sensory, but also about how I was influenced by my autobiography in my individual performance. This commentary album itself. kixxikim The intro, ‘IN (Void)’, is a very emotional soundscape. There's a very mysterious and fairytale soundscape. You can say that it's thanks to artist Kim Doeon, who collaborated with us. I think it'd be good if you could talk about this briefly. So!YoON! I think there's a musical part and a certain emotional part. To explain it musically, I don't know if I can say it simply. It could be a shocking statement. I actually like electronic music more than band music by instinct. kixxikim Hwang Soyoon’s fans are confused right now! So!YoON! I usually enjoy electronic music a lot, and I'm the type to respond easily to the aesthetic parts that electronic music gives, and the aesthetic parts that come over and over again, but there's not much to solve. So!YoON! will actively do electronic music. I like electronic music. I had this thought, and it was a year ago. I met Kim Doeon, communicated with him, and I participated in his album, and he also participated in my album. When I first heard the draft of ‘IN (Void)’ I kept saying instinctively, because I'm an instinctive person. I instinctively thought that this track would be the key to this album. kixxikim And that’s why you’ve boldly laid it out as the first track of the album. So!YoON! I thought it must be the key to opening the door. I placed this album in number one and then I started thinking about other tracks. On the emotional side, when I heard this track, the tale Wizard of Oz came to mind first. kixxikim When you heard the first demo. So!YoON! Yes. For some reason I felt like I could transform when I listened to this track. It looks like a consistent track, but it keeps changing. At some point, it's like an electric guitar, but the synth is sporadic, and then the scene changes as the guitar comes out. When I listened to the track, I was reminded of things that change and widen, narrow, go up, and go down. kixxikim The best person to implement such a thing was Doeon. So!YoON! That’s right. I think I felt his unique solemnity kixxikim All right. We've talked about the whole album and the key track, ‘IN (Void)’. Then I'd like to ask you one last question. How do you want this commentary album to work for listeners? So!YoON! When I hear the question, there are two metaphors that come to mind. An A4 paper description that describes between works. kixxikim Sure. So!YoON! I’ll just call it an explanation. No one can understand the whole A4 paper page no matter how many times we read it. kixxikim It’s unreachable. So!YoON! I think I want it to work that way. When I see a work, there is a certain psychology that the work gives, but I think it is also important to explain the intention and time of the person who performs the work. In that sense, it could be a musical explanation or an emotional explanation or a kind of explanation for how these times have been recorded. kixxikim Like evidence. So!YoON! Yes, clues. I hope they’re enough to make it possible. kixxikim I hope they get through to people. So!YoON! I hope so too. kixxikim Let’s wrap this up with impressions of each other. So!YoON! This cooperation was done with every single person as an individual and not a crowd of people like a song camp. That's what I think real collaboration means. The things I learn from it I’m very grateful for and fun as well as hard work. Whenever I do this, it feels like my life expectancy is going down but I learn a lot from people. kixxikim It's a journey of learning and collaboration. Yes, that's not only an album but also a commentary album. So!YoON! Attitude is really important. In order to meet people and do something with them, you have to exchange more energy than you expect, look into the eyes, and have a conversation. I think I feel it more clearly in this album after the last one. kixxikim Life isn’t about living it alone. So!YoON! No, you can’t. kixxikim We’re finishing off with a really free topic. So!YoON! But I bet when you reach the tenth track, you’ll think Soyoon and Hwang Soyoon are really crazy. kixxikim Thanks for coming out to talk. Let’s wrap it up for the day. So!YoON! Thank you, goodbye. kixxikim Thank you.