Damn Idol, Episode 190
It had been the same when he first auditioned with Coming Up Next’s rookie development team, but this was what Han Sion did best.
Breaking expectations.
Music has been with humanity for a very long time, and commercial art is no different.
Even if you handed a few sounds arranged in money chords to members of the public with no particular knowledge of music, they could connect them into a fairly plausible melody.
Because they were sounds they had heard far too often.
Han Sion was skilled at giving the public sounds they were familiar with, then suddenly tearing them apart and raising the peak, before returning once again to familiarity.
For Han Sion, who had made so many songs, composition theory no longer really existed, but this was the method he liked best.
This time, however, it was even more fun.
The one providing the familiarity was On Saemiro, and the one shifting it into unfamiliarity was Han Sion.
The reason there was no discomfort felt within that tension was because the two of them were producing beautiful sounds.
If the sounds I wrote for you remain, how wonderful would it be if those sounds reached you?
At a glance,
In reality, however, it contained Han Sion’s feelings about the world after his regression.
If there was one thing Han Sion, who knew how to compose, mix, master, and direct all by himself, did not do, it was writing lyrics.
It was not that he could not do it at all, but he did not particularly enjoy lyric writing.
Most of the lyrics to the songs he had sung with Sedalbaegil so far were ones created together with professional lyricists and then memorized.
There were songs where Han Sion had taken the lead in writing them, but even then, they had still passed through the hands of a professional lyricist.
This song, however, was not like that.
It was a song he had written purely and entirely by himself.
To be honest, even Han Sion found it somewhat bewildering.
‘I can’t believe I’m actually thinking of singing this song with someone else.’
Either not singing it at all, or singing it alone.
Those had been the only two options for this song, but while working on Sedalbaegil’s second full-length album, he had thought that this song would suit it.
And so he was now singing it with On Saemiro.
Meanwhile, the song sank down again, and On Saemiro formed a pleasant tone.
What the song gave, repeating formation and rupture, was catharsis.
The high range created by the two vocalists poured out over the sound of an acoustic guitar.
But if its genre had to be defined more precisely, it would be unplugged rock.
A track made without using electronic sounds at all, created from the natural sounds of instruments.
It strongly carried the feeling of an eighties song, yet the melody used within it was extremely refined.
That was the kind of song it was.
And so the song came to an end.
* * *
The moment Han Sion and On Saemiro’s song ended, Self Made also came to an end.
Because a caption appeared announcing the finale:
But the viewers did not take their eyes off the TV.
It was not because they were left with a deep lingering emotion……
“Huh?”
It was because Han Sion appeared on screen once again.
Han Sion smiled broadly and fiddled with a turntable, and the screen swiftly shifted to show the top of the turntable.
There were three LPs on the turntable, and the colors and shapes of the records were familiar.
Three deep-blue LPs of different sizes were layered on top of one another.
Looking closely, they appeared to overlap from above, but from the side, the three were arranged at different heights.
What this meant was all too familiar.
Anyone who had ever visited Sedalbaegil’s YouTube channel would recognize their symbol.
Three overlapping deep-blue circles.
At that moment, the LP on the far left began to spin.
A familiar musical intro flowed out.
It was the first track and title song of the unit album released by Masked Robbers.
It was the song already being evaluated by diehard R&B fans as the best R&B track ever released in Korea.
However, someone with a good ear might be able to feel that the song playing now was subtly different from the original.
The BPM was slightly different, and the texture of the sound was different as well.
Not in a good way, but in a bad way.
The distinctive up-and-down of rhythm and blues had become faint, and the sound pressure Han Sion constantly emphasized—if compared to piano, the velocity—had grown weaker.
For those who knew the original, the shadow of the original was there, so they did not think much of it, but for those who did not know the original, it would sound a little bland.
Just then, the song cut off abruptly, and Han Sion played another LP.
This time, it was the first track of Choi Jaeseong’s unit album.
It was a song currently enjoying tremendous popularity and devouring trend indexes and buzz indexes like a monster.
Yet there was a change this time as well.
The synth-pop built on a New Jack Swing framework sounded like a deflated balloon.
The pleasure given by the bouncing, thumping sound disappeared, turning it into merely listenable electronic pop.
After playing for about five seconds, the song abruptly stopped, and the final LP began to spin.
The song released on music sites along with the ending of Self Made.
Han Sion and On Saemiro’s unit album.
It was the first track of that album,
There was a change to this song too, but the direction was a little different.
The sound of the guitar riff became stronger, and the BPM sped up.
Rather than a clear, sparkling guitar sound, it was closer to an exhilarating guitar sound, producing a far more refined sound than the distinctive feel of folk rock.
Whether they liked Sedalbaegil or hated them.
Whether they liked Han Sion or hated him.
People focused because they had no idea what kind of video this was.
Then Han Sion smiled broadly and opened his mouth.
[STAGE.]
It was just one word.
Soon after, Han Sion spun the LPs.
He did not spin them one by one as before.
He spun all three at once.
Then……
♬♪♩♪♪♩♪
Music flowed out.
Instead of the New Jack Swing rhythm that had formed the framework before, the guitar riff of
Even so, the bouncy drumline unique to synth-pop remained intact.
Behind it, the rhythm and blues rhythm contained in Masked Robbers’ song formed the backing sound.
The three songs, which had sounded as though their strength had weakened, mixed together and created a perfectly harmonious sound.
It was impossible to know what to call the genre.
There was R&B in it, synth-pop in it, and the guitar riff of an unplugged folk song in it.
All of that mixed together to create an intense sound that felt somewhat like electronic house, and somewhat like hip-hop.
But the public is not greatly bound by genre distinctions.
What matters is whether the music is good or bad.
And this was……
—Hey!!!!!!! Holy shit!!!!!
Good.
It was good without needing anything else at all.
Together with that music, captions appeared.
[2+2+1 = ?]
[Sedalbaegil 2nd Full-Length Album STAGE]
[2018. 2. 18]
[Coming Soon]
That was right.
The video aired after Self Made ended was an advertisement for the album release.
There had once been a time when albums were promoted through TV commercials, but now it was a method that had died out for various reasons.
It had been revived through Sedalbaegil, who had joined hands with M Show.
* * *
—Wow, holy shitㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
—So if you mix the three unit albums, a different song pops outㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
—Huh, isn’t that only if you combine the first tracks?
—No, no, go look at YouTube trending. There’s a music YouTuber experimenting with it and freaking out.
—The ridiculous thing is that no matter how you mix them, the sound comes out pretty decent.
—Masked Robbers track 2 plus Choi Jaeseong track 3 plus On&On track 4 is insane;
—No, is this even possible?
—Apparently you do have to tweak it a bit. If you mix all three as is, the sound pressure gets too strong and it gets noisy, so you need to cut some out. The YouTuber said he has no idea how the actual second album is going to come out.
—If you mix Side A, B, and C, the main body comes out? Isn’t this basically a combining transformation robot?
—Wow, no wonder the last track on every unit album was named STAGE.
—Is that going to be the title track?
—Yeah, yeah, yeah, right now YouTubers are putting their hearts and souls into every possible effort to infer the song.
—There are over thirty combinations that are listenableㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
—Crazyㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
—Wow, this is Hip Sion itself.
—No, but isn’t Side C seriously good? This got buried because of the album release teaser, but the On&On unit album is seriously freaking good.
—2222 If you go to an Itaewon lounge pub right now, it plays every day. I even heard it at places that only play foreign songs.
—Foreigners asked me what song it was, but I couldn’t explain it.
—Why? Sedalbaegil is a team preparing their second album, and they split that into three unit albums and release them... Fuck, you really can’t explain it.
—Rightㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
—An album made with a single acoustic guitar is working in 2018; and on top of that, it sounds hip;
—Old school is the new school, originally.
—Hey, but he really is Hip Sion. When people were making a fuss saying it made no sense to split the album into units because of Han Sion’s musical greed, he must have just been smiling.
—Yeah, yeah, Hip Sion is smiling.
—And on top of that, the decision to release his own unit album last in case it got buried by the album release teaser. Isn’t he a true leader?
—But it didn’t get buriedㅋㅋㅋ On&On sing insanely well.
—If Lee Ion, Han Sion, and On Saemiro release a unit later, is it going to be On&On&On?
—With these bastards’ naming sense, that’s entirely possible.
—ㅋㅋㅋㅋ I guess God really doesn’t give everything to one person.
—Masked Robbers, Choi Jaeseong, On&Onㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ They are pretty lame.
With the airing of Self Made, TV advertisements for Sedalbaegil’s second full-length album began pouring out on M Show.
Some people were shocked, wondering just how much money Sedalbaegil had spent, but this advertisement was free.
Because it was one of the things M Show had proposed when it clearly joined hands with Sedalbaegil.
Of course, the advertisement was not the sixty-second video that aired right after Self Made ended; it was distributed as a fifteen-second version suited to TV.
But whatever the case, it was being passed from mouth to mouth.
The news of Sedalbaegil’s second full-length album.
At the same time, the song released by Han Sion and On Saemiro was……
1
— When the Curtain Falls (new) (hot)
2
— Is Wrong Right? (new) (hot)
3
— Drop (hot)
4
— The Same Place (new) (hot)
It slammed its name into the music charts.
Considering how enormous the instantaneous buzz must have been, Choi Jaeseong’s song, holding onto third place, seemed impressive to the point of absurdity.
At this point, Korea’s agencies were dumbfounded.
“No, are they the only singers in the world……?”
“Business ethics…… Business ethics……”
It had already been three weeks.
Three weeks since the names of Sedalbaegil members had embroidered the Top 10 of the charts like constellations.
Just when Masked Robbers’ strength seemed to be waning, Choi Jaeseong came out, and just when Choi Jaeseong’s strength seemed to be waning, Han Sion came out.
Then, absurdly enough, Masked Robbers’ songs began slowly lifting their heads again.
It was because of the news that all of this would combine into their second full-length album.
By the time the unit albums’ strength completely faded, what would come out?
Their second full-length album, STAGE, would come out.
“Ha…… Working is hard.”
“I heard the PR team leader is taking hair-loss medicine……”
“The CEO is taking stomach medicine……”
In short, it was the Sedalbaegil occupation period.