Umu: So I guess this is the first time you guys are reacting to,
this is a K-indie artist named Cacophony,
this is her 2023 release called 'Change'.
In the past we have reacted to her music:
Davis: Also, that's f%cĸing genius,
and I knew that's exactly what was gonna happen...
I love it!
Cloud: Woooow!
Henry: I love it!
Owen: She always has the best, like...
Elizabeth: Everything?
Both: Yeah.
Umu: And she seems to enjoy it when fans give their own personal interpretations of her music
and of what message she is trying to tell, even if she has a specific message in mind.
Cacophony: Every shot is crafted by thoughtful intentions,
so it was really fun to read other people's interpretations on the internet.
Umu: So that's why I'm not gonna have any script for you guys today.
The song is composed, written, and produced by Cacophony.
Stephanie: Three, two, one, play!
Kevin: Sony!
Oh, it's the moon, sorry. It's not the sony logo.
I was thinking about this chord specifically today!
It's C with the added 13.
I've been playing that a lot.
And now I hear it...
That's so weird.
Stephanie: It feels like I am at a movie theater.
Leon: Yeah.
Or it's like when I'm playing Mario, when the NPCs start talking.
Kevin: Oh, the F is never gonna show up cuz it's just the tension!
It's always on C!
Henry: What would that be?
Kevin: Huh?
Henry: The F?
Kevin: Oh, so that it resolves.
Cuz it will be *F*, but it doesn't, right, it stays in this dominant.
Oh, stop-motion.
Henry: Oh, the panning.
Kevin: Mm.
What are you?
Stephanie: What is that?
Leon: Yeah, what is that?
Kevin: Caterpillar? Definitely.
Leon & Umu: Caterpillar.
Stephanie: Aaah.
He's a fluffy caterpillar, he's very fluffy.
Henry: I like the bug imagery.
Kevin: Oh, this is insane. Henry: I always, there is something about Cacophony's music
Henry: that always feels like there could be a little bit of like a bugginess to it.
Kevin: Well that's a chord right there. Henry: Oh, the piano figure?
Kevin: Mhm. Henry: It just sounded kinda creepy.
Leon: Oh man, this chord is so cool!
Henry: The *shhh*, oh that's so unsettling.
Kevin: Oh~
Stan Brakhage right here.
Stephanie: Aw.
Kevin: Woah, that G felt so pure.
Henry: Oh, the bass.
Leon: He died?
Stephanie: Oh, is he okay?
Henry: This could be like a metamorphosis.
Kevin: Mm.
Stephanie: Oh-
Kevin: There it is.
Stephanie: What?
Kevin: Oh!
Henry: The way it kind of like dissolves away?
Kevin: It just sounds like someone's tapping this table.
Henry: Yeah!
Kevin: It sounds so close.
Stephanie: Wooow!
Kevin: Wow.
Leon: ah.
Stephanie: Hm.
Kevin: They've been doing Honk! the musical right now. That's exactly what this is about. Henry: The piano has gotten quicker.
Henry: And more consistent.
But we still have the guitar.
Kevin: I think the production side of things is getting more and more precise.
This is the most precise that it has ever sounded in her music.
Also the music video is nuts.
Kevin: Oh there it is, industrial. Woah!
Leon: AaaaaAaahhhhh~
Henry: Wow, this is like a cypher beat.
Kevin: Wow, 4/4!?
Stephanie: Trippy!
Leon: Oh, this is so good.
Henry: Those are wings?
Kevin: Uh?
Henry: Those are wings!
Kevin: Yes.
Kevin: Wow, it's got the Björk quality.
Henry: That's it?
Kevin: Yeah, it's like a whole, it's like an interlude.
Henry: It looks - maybe there's something else there?
Kevin: Oh, we're back.
Henry: Please fly through that hole.
Henry: Oh, the slide.
Leon: Oh my god! Stephanie: Wow!
Leon: The animation is incredible.
The music too, of course.
Henry: What, what?
Kevin: I liked it a lot, it was super great, but- Henry: What, what?
Henry: What??
What???
Umu: Mhm.
Henry: What?
Umu: Mhm.
Kevin: I like that we don't see the sort of the butterfly,
Kevin: we just see sort of the beginning, yeah. Henry: Just the wings.
Henry: And then we see it cut it in the distance, a little fluttering,
like, I guess it all worked out, right? (Kevin: Mhm.)
Kevin: Guess so.
Henry: I wonder like what significance that specific style of percussion...
Kevin: Yeah, it felt a little lounge-y, it felt a little - Henry: Lounge-y?
Kevin: Almost- Henry: Like Nujabes?
Kevin: A tiny bit?
Henry: That specific beat sounds like a hip-hop cypher,
(Kevin: Sure, exactly) you know, something to keep a groove and then you freestyle over,
Kevin: It is Nujabesish, yes. Henry: And...
Henry: And like, the 4/4 time feels like a big,
it might reflect the metamorphosis, like some big shift away from what we were used to,
this didada didada that feels like kinda rocking back and forth,
(Kevin: mm hmm., 6/8, yeah) I usually get rocking images, and like,
larvae kind of remind me of babies too, so that fits,
and then this, that hip-hop beat to me,
a lot of hip-hop culture is very counter-culture and rebellious,
so maybe that has something to do with
rebelling against, or rejecting, the prior
and fully embracing and finding your own voice within a new meter
which is encourages in a cypher...
Kevin: Yeah, it's not just the rhythm, it's also the timbre,
Kevin: it's a very specific - yeah. Henry: Yeah, it's a very tinny snare.
Kevin: I've had, you know, a little bit of trouble sometimes
with the way Cacophony like,
when a song eventually explodes into like a big wall of sound,
sometimes the wall, like, I could feel the ceiling a little too much.
This one I felt was very clever, where it wasn't just like loud,
it wasn't like, it didn't feel very spacious,
but yet every decision feels very intentional,
it's like, oh, I think the drums,
the fact that it still a kind of like a soft explosion,
it really worked.
Cuz again, I think that her production or people producing it for her
are all like, it's more intentional,
there is a lot of detail that I can not pinpoint with one listen
but I could just tell that there was so much precision
in the way to decide how to mix the sound that they have chosen.
Also the sounds themselves were, you know, very precisely selected.
Umu: What part was your favorite?
Leon: It's definitely when the low F hits.
That's just like so ffffing satisfying.
Umu: What chord was that?
Leon: Here.
Umu: And you were like "AAaaAaHhHhHH!" Leon: Yes, like silence - BANG!
It kind of gives me the Exit Music vibe.
It kind of reminds me of that.
Umu: Oooooh~
Umu: Radiohead is one of like, she likes Radiohead, yeah. Leon: Really?
Leon: It's like, there's a moment, it's like:
and then just like peace.
BANG! And then it just goes hard.
Umu: How, why is it satisfying in her case?
Leon: I think it's just the texture change.
Radiohead on that case is just like really clean acoustic guitar
and then suddenly change to like super distorted sounding.
Umu: Yeah, this one did the same thing, it was very ethereal and then it changed *chrch*
Leon: Yeah.
The front was already amazing but I didn't expect that.
Umu: Yeah.
Henry: There's a moment where there's that guitar figure we hear:
But then later in this song there's this,
like a bit of a faster piano motif on top of it,
I don't know if it was in like different, if it lined up,
but it seemed like it was in different...
Kevin: The phasing of it, yeah.
Henry: Not even just tempi, but like maybe triplets over-
or quin- quartuplets, groups of 4s over 3s, I wasn't sure,
but it felt like, without a better word, like a bit of a cacophony,
but something that we are familiar with to create these layers,
and then just, she's just floating and soaring over these high notes,
they just build up such a big crescendo of emotion.
Umu: Can you explain a moment, like, that's dissonance, and why it works?
Leon: There was so many dissonances, just like,
not only the chord dissonance but also the time dissonance.
Stephanie: Yeah, I felt that! It was- yeah. Leon: It's so cool, it's like, yeah,
Leon: the drum is keeping the very precise beat,
Leon: but then the piano on top, I forgot what that is. Stephanie: Yeah, and the guitar,
Stephanie: Yeah, and I thought it was off, I was like like, oh, kinda weird. (Leon: Yeah!)
Stephanie: For like 5 seconds, but then it kind of just went away,
or it just didn't really matter.
Leon: Yeah, it was like, man,
The tension that it actually creates in terms of time, it's amazing.
Umu: Did that like disrupt your enjoyment of it?
Umu: Like hearing it kind of off? Stephanie: For a second I was like, "Hm?"
Leon: Yeah...
Stephanie: But...
Leon: But that happens all the time in jazz.
Leon: It's like, Herbie will play some really out time thing,
and then you'll be "oh!"
Stephanie: Mm, true.
And if; somehow like the entire mix of it just like works,
(Leon: Yeah...) I don't know, it's like...
It's not like oh, we are weird an like keep hearing it.
Leon: She loves diminished.
I think she is using a lot of tonic diminished.
Umu: Mm.
Leon: It's like that chord.
I don't know what that is.
And then later at the climax, peak,
they are just super reverb sounding,
but when it's like:
like that tonic diminished chord,
but the previous sound is still there, so it's like clashing a lot.
Umu: But it's just because that supports the atmosphere that she goes for, why like...
Leon: Yeah. yeah.
Umu: ...isn't something that we're gonna say, "Oh that's wrong!"
It's more like that was creative with intent and...
Leon: Yeah, it's like Ligeti, that kind of vibe.
Umu: OooOH!
Kevin: I have a theory.
And like a weird thought experiment.
Umu: Let's go!
Kevin: The knocking sound, I'm thinking like,
what if that's like a metaphor for a cocoon and a butterfly ready to come out,
like, what if it hears this knock from like nature,
or it's like the timing, it's like, "Ooh, it's my time to come out"
That's what the knocking is, it's like:
Welcome to the world, welcome to your new self
and stuff like that.
Reminds me of a scene in Mulholland Drive where the cowboy goes:
Time to wake up, sweetie!
And then the film disintegrates.
Umu: What?
Kevin: It actually does feel kind of Lynchian.
David Lynch is the director, and yeah, it does have the surrealistic landscape going on, so...
Henry: The animation in this was so beautiful,
like it was kind of inhuman,
like seeing the big bird's mouth open up and swallow the bug and it dropping it in the water,
but it was also, because like, it was like felted wool claymation,
it felt still really like gentle and kind of,
I mean, look at that little guys face, tiny little eyes,
it's very inhuman but he's also just a little guy, he's a cutie pie.
And then this was just like, wow,
Kevin: I also like how- Henry: Like the butterfly wings, just masterful.
Kevin: It kind of exists between 2 and 3 dimensions.
It's like, there is a lot of flat,
but then, like you see, sometimes there's depth, but it's like,
Oh, it's like, if you like shift it a tiny bit
it's like oh, it will all turn out to be another flat surface.
It just really feels like that 2.5D
Stephanie: Yeah, I was really so intrigued by the animation, honestly,
and the music definitely fits in very well with it.
I can kind of see the artsy fashion vibe,
yeah, I can definitely-
Leon: It definitely is like suitable to play in an art museum.
Stephanie: Mmm~
Umu: Mhm.
Henry: This is art song.
Kevin: Mm
Henry: This is an art song. Kevin: Björk!
Henry: Because I think it's so, I don't know, it feels very expressive
and it's, it doesn't play off of any of my expectations of commercial music.
But it draws from history, you know, like with just that, that to me is clearly a cypher beat, later,
and that *sings guitar line* (Kevin: Yes!)
at the beginning feels, it evokes a lot of a cradle to me, so
There is so much interpretation that has been begotten from this
that I, that this feels like a little art piece.
Umu: Yeah