Davis: Oh, so, that's f*cking genius, and I knew that's exactly what was gonna happen. I love it.
Umu: So now you'll be reacting the K-Indie artist called Cacophony, and two songs off her 2018 album called 'Harmony'.
Cacophony made this album with the thought of her mother, who died after a long illness.
So when her mother passed, she decided to begin her career as a singer again, since she thinks she inherited her mother's artistic talent.
So the very first release that you'll be reacting to is called 'Rosetta', which was written, composed, and arranged by Cacophony.
Stephen: All right, here we go.
Davis: Oh, I thought it was a still, but it's a picture. Nice.
Peyton: Wow. Didn't see the Rhodes major seven chord come out of nowhere. Charlotte: Nope.
Kevin: It just immediately captivates you.
Melissa: I love her voice.
James: This is art. Melissa: Ooh, I love the bass!
Davis: Oh!
A singular trumpet note. Lindsey: Yeah
Lindsey: Her voice is so
like
pure, with like a slight rough edge just to it, like, it's like a slight rasp to a very otherwise pure voice.
Oh, my gosh! That was awesome. Davis: That was pretty sweet, yeah.
Peyton: Woo! I like that!
Oh, wow, this is really cool!
Yeah, it's a lower octave.
Ah, I see.
Oh
Ah, I'm so torn, because the music's so good, but these images are so heavy.
Elizabeth: They keep having these interjections with other instruments that are not,
they're not
converging with the rhythm
or the key at all.
Henry: I feel like it's sort of almost like a representation of just like how
invasive grief can be, Elizabeth: Um hmm.
Henry: and how out of tune it sounds with the rest of your life.
Elizabeth: Yeah. Oh, true. Henry: That's seems to me why it's sort of like,
totally just in a different key. Elizabeth: Yeah
Peyton: Wow, that is haunting.
(singing)
Charlotte: Flugelhorn?
Kevin: It's such a good build...
It's like an anti-EDM type of build-up that works as an EDM build-up, though crazy pianos that are off rhythm,
it's like (singing)--drop.
This is (singing) and then chorus. Immediately cuts with the chorus. I think it works so well.
James: Oh!
Melissa: A! James: Love that.
Melissa: Me, too.
Charlotte: Like open 4ths and 5ths!? Peyton: Uuhhhh...
Charlotte: Gregorian chant?
Peyton: (singing)
Stephen: It feels really disjunct, to be honest, but it's really cool when it comes to a song like this. Like, musically with where
she's going and how it mixes
thematically what's going on.
Like it makes sense. Seiji: Yeah, it's like it's like a story. Stephen: Yeah
It's just really cool to hear a song like that.
And also, just what the piano's doing, like stuff like that is really tasteful, I think.
So.
Melissa: And then it ends.
It ends with the humming.
Henry: Wow. Elizabeth: Ooh.
Henry: That was just like a horror movie that we just watched. Elizabeth: Actually, I think horror can be a very good
medium for understanding pain. That sort of like creepy,
odd,
ambiguous vibe,
I think that can be a very good place to talk about things that make us uncomfortable and make us sad, and make us
feel
like we're apart from the rest of the world.
So I think that was an appropriate route to take to discuss the pain that the artist was feeling.
Henry: Yeah, I would agree.
There are times when
the video serves the music, there are times when the music serves the video, and then there are times when they both serve an entirely different concept.
And I feel like this was one of the last of those three options, and I definitely felt like if this was the soundtrack
to this artist's grief,
that was an extremely honest look at what they were going through and I really appreciate that level of vulnerability.
James: There are very few things that we have seen on this channel...
Basically what I'm trying to say is I've never really been like speechless, but I'm like a little bit speechless.
That was just,
for me, that's the kind of thing that you just like sit there and you just like
get absorbed into. I know I'm on a reaction channel right now, but
that level of art kind of like demands your whole attention. And her voice was awesome, and
you know, haunting. There were a lot of haunting elements. Melissa: I felt like it actually expressed like sadness.
James: Yeah. It's just it's the kind of art that really jumps out at you and it makes you go, "Oh".
You know, this is like high art. Melissa: Yeah James: This is serious. You know, this is the real deal.
Lindsey: I feel like her sound and like the way that all of this music is put together
is absolutely nothing like anything I've ever heard before, but at the same time, I feel like I could put her in a genre
with a lot of other
artists that I have listened to throughout my existence.
But that was just very moving, like the what she did with the visuals. Davis: Yeah Lindsey: Like very intense.
Davis: So well filmed, dude. Like it was filmed beautifully. Lindsey: Incredibly well done.
Umu: So, this next song is 'Breath', and this is actually the very first track on her album 'Harmony'.
So, 'Rosetta' was actually the seventh track.
This is the very first track of the album, and this is a song where she sings with her dead mother
Jason: The pianist in the track also helped to arrange the song. And this is a song where she sings with her late mother.
Elizabeth: Oh! Jason: The lyrics are talking about her mother's song, and breath continuing inside her.
Jason: I really hope she's successful in the future, cuz she just deserves every bit of success. Oh, my God.
Melissa: Is that her? Umu: Yes. Melissa: Okay.
Melissa: She sounds really sad.
James: Hmm
Melissa: It's so expressive.
Oh, so that's f*ckin' genius, and I knew that's exactly what was gonna happen. I love it.
Lindsey: Oh, it's like her mother is singing above her, and like, behind her, but it's her singing. Davis: Yeah, yeah.
Lindsey: Oh, my God! Davis: She's like watching over her, dude. Lindsey: Stop!
Davis: That's amazing.
Peyton: Yeah, I like the time and the piano.
Elizabeth: Ooh, yeah. Let's have that modal mixture!
Henry: Big, augmented sixth.
Seiji: She's got like a very like pure style, which I really appreciate.
Stephen: Yeah, it's interesting, like with the drumbeat that I'm hearing, like, and how it's orchestrated on like, a lower toms, I don't know
At least it reminds me of something military. So it's like, almost like an anthem, you know. Seiji: Yeah, then having the classical
instrumentation makes a big difference.
Kevin: The duet becomes more intense
Every....
Cacophony's lines and her mother's lines are shorter. So like she sings shorter stuff, and then the mom repeats quicker.
Lindsey: Whoa! H*ll, yes! Davis: Nice. Nice.
Henry: Huge vocal tambour change. That's so cool.
I really like that, actually.
Melissa: Like, dang, she can get like dynamic range. We never hear dynamic range.
James: Wow.
Melissa: Brah!
Henry: Also, the orchestral background elements are so cool. Elizabeth: Yeah
Henry: The drum tracking is so interesting.
Elizabeth: Whoa! Henry: Whoa, hey!
Melissa: Back to a whisper. James: Wow.
Melissa: I think she can sing.
James: That gave me chills Melissa: Alberti bass!
Henry: Also, the video is interesting, that it's just
various things sort of flying on the screen, and then it's just zooming in and zooming back out, and zooming in and zooming back out.
Elizabeth: Yeah
Henry: Very, very thoughtful music video, actually.
Again, it's really hard to get that intimate and vulnerable, and be comfortable doing it.
Davis: It's not gonna resolve.
Is something else gonna happen?
Okay, I think it's over.
No, it's not. Whoa. Lindsey: No, there's 40 seconds left. Davis: Is it just gonna say this for 40 seconds?
I guess we'll see.
Melissa: I mean, the silence is part of the music, I guess.
Unless there's more.
This is like a tour of music history, because we just went like Mozart, with the Alberti bass, and now we're going straight to John Cage.
Charlotte: She's great. Peyton: Yeah, I think it's probably the most
artistic thing I've heard. Charlotte: I mean, I have no idea what she's saying, but like I'm very connected to
her emotions in that song. It's powerful, and her voice is so interesting and different
that it allows her to do her own thing,
entirely.
Isaac: I always listen to traditional pop, like the other, like,
mainstream pop. You listen to the end,
it's like yeah, it ends unresolved, but this one, they went for kind of
like a John Cage approach, with the aspect of silence. Like you look at the phrase and then you respond to it just by listening.
The first time I heard the song, when the ending came, I was reacting with Umu;
I was extremely unsettled, because I found her character very unsettling, in both 'Rosetta'
and 'Breathe'. Already, you have this one-take
intense,
singing in front of the camera style, so that by the end when the piano comes, she is
tearing up because she just gave a
legit performance of the song, and she's clearly thinking about all the themes. And then we have the silence, and I was so
disoriented, because I'm like, is something gonna jump at me? And I really admired it for that,
but I didn't know that the music was about her mother who passed away, and
now that I know that, it makes so much sense. The whole idea of someone being dead, but still breathing--
it's a direct oxymoron, and I think the ending reflects that too, because it's very self-aware.
The line is I'm breathing your breath. I think that the purpose of this ending is
for anyone who's stumbled upon this video to have a moment of silence for her mother.
It's a literal moment of silence. Isaac: Mmm. Kevin: It's a literal homage, and
what better way to pay homage to your mother than to have
5,000 people just listen to it in silence, you know.
Henry: Wow. Elizabeth: That was very powerful.
Henry: That was really cool. Elizabeth: All of the modal mixture that was used was like, it started in
in a minor key and they went to
major chords, which I think is like,
super interesting, cuz you know, this is a song about her late mother, right? So, you know,
sadness and missing somebody, you don't really think like major,
happy, you know, so I think having interjections of major, especially like the last
chord, that happened was a major chord. Henry: Yep, very thorough Elizabeth: I think it's very interesting.
But I think that like, when you're grieving for someone, you have these intense moments of just
so much sadness that you can't think straight, and then you have moments of like remembering happy memories and
laughing a little about how much you loved them. Henry: Yeah. occasionally there's clarity, that breaks through, yeah.
Elizabeth: Yeah. Which I think you know, there was a lot of changes in timbre with her voice, Henry: That was so cool.l. Elizabeth: a lot of modal mixture,
so I think that that's probably,
I think that's probably what they were going for, yeah.
James: Being introduced to her and now having seen two of her songs,
I'm actually like pretty excited,
because she has a very, very distinct timbre to her voice. It became even more apparent
when she started belting. That's really
important when you're establishing yourself as an artist, to have that sound. And she really uses it, and not just her voice,
but the visuals she was like looking straight into your eyes, you know into the audience's eyes,
and I could see the emotion on her face and I could actually almost anticipate what was going to happen in the song depending on
how her countenance changed. And also
I just want to note about the sounds she uses. She has this way of just like
making a whole, like a musical whole. Melissa: Yeah. Cuz I feel like a lot of the sounds
are there for contrast, too. James: Yeah Melissa: Like, it's not just oh, yeah, making like,
toward the big idea or whatever. Like a lot of them are just completely contrasting, James: Yeah Melissa: and you're like,
what? Why is that there? But then, it works. James: But it works.
Well, it must be that there's musical intent behind every decision. Melissa: Right.
James: And everything is geared to you know, passing on the message, or whatever It may be. I know I can't really explain it,
I'm still kind of dumbfounded. Melissa: Yeah
She's f*ckin' cool.
Hello everyone. I'm Umu, and I'm the channel runner of React to the K.
I really hope you enjoyed watching this video. If you're curious about the videos that we'll be reacting to in the future,
I put a link to
a doc with our release schedule in the description.
Last but not least, if you'd like to support our channel,
you can help us out by pledging any amount you would like on our
Patreon. On Patreon you can get access to full unedited pair reaction playlists
reactions to Japanese releases, and much more. And of course, a huge shout out and thank you to our superstar patrons.
Thank you so much for your support.
Bye.