[subtitles by @angelade17]
RAFFI: Talk to me! (SAM: Oh my god!)
RAFFI: TALK TO ME, talk to me!
[Rossini's Semiramide overture plays]
HENRY: Hey y'all, before we get to reacting to Dreamcatcher,
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*stammers*
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Now, Dreamcatcher.
UMU: So you are now reacting to the 7-member girl group Dreamcatcher and their 2021 release "Odd Eye",
which is the 3rd release of their Dystopia trilogy.
UMU: You guys reacted to their 2nd song "BOCA" um. (JASON: I remember.)
UMU: So this trilogy started in early 2020 with their title track "Scream",
which was a song about dealing with hate and bullying, and feeling the need to scream.
The 2nd of the trilogy is titled "BOCA",
and sends a direct message to bullies telling them to shut their mouths if they have nothing better to say.
"Odd Eye" talks about trying to find the read to utopia, a perfect world full of beauty where no toxicity or negativity can follow.
But they reveal the sad truth, no such utopia in the real world exists.
UMU: 'Cause in the real world, you can never really please everyone. HENRY: Yeah.
UMU: They tell their listeners that instead of dreaming of this utopia in real life,
you should look for it within yourself, since beauty lies within.
The song is composed by LEEZ and Ollounder.
KEVIN: Cool. OWEN: That's a good message.
UMU: Yeah and if you want to read the lyrics you can go ahead and turn on the CC's. KEVIN/OWEN: Cool.
HENRY: 3 2 1!
CHARLOTTE: Oh! I did not expect that, I'm so sorry.
CHARLOTTE: Is that blood? Is it blood? (HENRY: Oh! Are you good?)
(HENRY: Yeah that's- oh.) CHARLOTTE: I don't think that's blood, I think that's juice.
STEPHANIE: Kinda creepy. Hm.
LEON: Woah.
RAFFI: Ooh, nice bassline.
RAFAEL: It's like, a partial lament bass.
That's kinda cool. It's a nice sound.
HENRY: Ooh!
STEPHANIE: It doesn't feel like the very beginning of a song. Yeah.
STEPHANIE: Woah lots of energy already. LEON: Yeah!
SAM: Oh those half-steps, oh my god!
SAM: Ooh I love that line! The *sings*
SAM: Ooh! RAFFI: Ooh, ooh!
SAM: That falsetto on that ooh vowel! (RAFFI: Ooh!)
RAFFI: Talk to me! SAM: Oh my god.
RAFFI: TALK TO ME, talk to me, talk to me. *laughter*
JASON: "Endless thirst", instant gratification yes.
Chasing a mirage that's not there, very true.
JASON: Social media. Very wonderful. Perfect illusion. (JU YOUNG: Oh I like that.)
JU YOUNG: The lyrics are very deep. (JASON: This is great.)
HENRY: Agh! Ah classic pre-chorus, but I'm not mad about it because there's so much energy!
HENRY: Drink the Kool-Aid, drink the Kool-Aid! YES! (CHARLOTTE: YEAH, DRINK THE KOOl-AID!)
KEVIN: It's like a counter-melody, the instruments kind of imitate it yeah. (OWEN: Yeah the guitar.)
JASON: I like how they don't sing along with like that guitar synth lick until the 2nd like part of the chorus.
JU YOUNG: The guitar has a different motive. (JASON: They let it go on an off beat.)
JASON: *sings* Then they sing it.
SAM: Aw the instrumental of that chorus is so dirty. That's so good!
RAFAEL: That's beautiful.
KEVIN: I like the filtered vocals vs the prominent vocals.
KEVIN: Ooh staccato bass! (OWEN: It's- I know, yeah! It's-)
STEPHANIE: Ooh! That really sound- that really does like the fire like burning.
HENRY: Oh the guitar's got some lead
Yes!
HENRY: Daaaamn!
LEON: Sick. STEPHANIE: Yeah!
HENRY: There was SO much there! CHARLOTTE: Yeah.
SAM: I loved that chorus, because throughout the entire song there's just so much instrumental stuff happening,
so the fact that in the chorus everything comes together for that *sings* is so, it- it draws your ear in so much.
STEPHANIE: For me that was one of the strongest like melodic like phrases.
And the reason is because like first, the singers, it's like the vocals *sings*
And then a few seconds after, um the instrumentals copy that.
2nd time it's just the vocal again, but then the 3rd time they do it in unison!
And that was like ooh! I like that like whole texture, it's like they double that pretty like strong melodic statement,
and it's like hmm I like it.
RAFFI: I loved how it grew. Like in the beginning it's- it started off you heard just kinda like the static and the dripping,
And then they sing you know, but then um there was one phrase that talked about like the lie, and like the word "lie" was like accented.
And so that kinda built it up and then it ramped off, and then um-
I also love the rapping oh my gosh, that low-
RAFFI: It's like- that was like contralto right? Like really low- (SAM: Yeah it was some LOW notes.) (UMU: Dami!!!)
SAM: That's- what was her name? UMU: Dami!
CLOUD: I also really liked Dami, and like another trend that I've been noticing in their songs is
when they have Dami rap, sometimes they'll do the echo below of like the double octave, to like give her more depth to her voice.
And they do it quite a bit, but I REALLY enjoy it every time.
And her voice is already naturally so low, like- I'm like "Oh that's great!"
RAFFI: Yeah it's just- it's very unique.
And then also like, there was- there was text painting in this too,
when they talk about fading, the music did fade and then it built back up.
And it's just, I love it when the words tell the story, you know when the music emphasizes the words.
But it takes a lot of effort. It's amazing.
BRIANNA: Woww.
CLOUD: I really like Dreamcatcher, this is great. (BRIANNA: I didn't pay attention- Oh I-)
BRIANNA: *laughs*
(CLOUD: Wait what are you screaming at?) BRIANNA: I took off my headphones forgetting I had to hear you. *laughs*
BRIANNA: I was like, where'd the- where did you go? Cloud?
Anyways, I didn't listen to anything like musically, that really sounds bad,
but I was really paying attention to the words because it was just like, I totally get what they're saying.
Mentally, you don't know what's going on behind someone's eyes.
I'm the type of person, like I really like bottle up all of my feelings,
but like you don't know what they're going through and just like this facade that you-
If you feel as though you're putting that on for people, that it's happening within but it's not,
you're just really just sad, angry, you don't know what to do with yourself. And like yeah,
and it's just- and it- and it like gradually crumbles down until you can't put on that facade anymore,
and you start losing hope for a better future.
And I just felt read, I felt like cornered 'cause it's just like,
sometimes if you like tell yourself you're happy and you show that to other people, like it's not- it's not really what's going on within you.
HENRY: Gosh! I love Dreamcatcher. (CHARLOTTE: Ohh. What a major rager.)
UMU: Henry you're like "Ah I love Dreamcatcher!" Why? What- what about this song makes you say that?
HENRY: I think it's a good thing 'cause I like them, that I'm- I'm hearing a lot of similar sounds to their other songs,
mainly because I listen to that CD you gave me like on repeat, a lot.
Yeah, they have a lot of similar timbral things going on.
Like one, that they just use- they utilize that- just that metal guitar sound.
KEVIN: And I've been no stranger to criticizing it in the past, but I think in this song it's really good because they didn't ever use the drum kit,
you know sometimes they would have a - in their other songs they would have a section where it's drum kit,
and then have the um more synthetic stuff come in.
And usually the, the acoustic drums just wouldn't sound as powerful.
They would always sort of hone it down in the acoustic sections.
But in this song, they- they had the guitars, but the percussion remained the same. It was that digital type of synthetic sound.
And so the whole soundscape felt very full.
And within that, they were able to play around with it, with like the crazy drone bass at the beginning,
and then um the rap section which was really nice and vivid.
HENRY: Their layering in this was also a great job, which they've done in a lot of their other songs too were they-
they have their catchy melody, and their pretty standard verse and pre-chorus, chorus, like bridge structure.
But you know, every- every chorus they add on something, and then they- oh you have the last chorus,
you save a little and then you break, and then they add on the vocal descant,
and you- I heard a guitar lead that like flew over the little bit, all the while you have *makes instrument noise* going on underneath it,
and it just sounds really metal. And I like that that's continuing through the- through their sound, right.
KEVIN: Yeah and I think right at the beginning, in the pre-chorus or like it was during the verse um,
one of the singers went to her high register, she was singing like the high E's very early,
I- I thought it was really early, when the bass was still very much in the low register,
and I thought we were able to see or feel how wide the music- the range is early on,
and I think that really set us up really nicely for how the rest of the song explored that range.
OWEN: That's sort of surprising, 'cause when you think about uh like an average um pop song,
it will sort of build up to a peak and then have that peak where the singer sort of belts out a high note.
OWEN: And to in a way sketch out the range with the singer hitting that high E, I think it was pretty unusual for a pop song. (KEVIN: I would agree with that.)
KEVIN: And I think the rest of the song was able to live up to it.
HENRY: And especially if it's supposed to be like a trilogy, a cumulative sound, it built up pretty-
It- I didn't expect this kind of sound at all with the theme of like it's not really utopia, kind of looking for a good place.
HENRY: This was way more hardcore than I- than I expected. It went really hard! (UMU: No utopia, bitch!)
HENRY: I liked the pre-chorus, like- *laughs* UMU: We going hard because we can't find the road!
HENRY: Uh pre-chorus has that great drum build-up *sings beat* you know,
and then I like how they, they don't drop right away, they had like a vocal anacrusis before it,
*sings* And then the beat came in. So that was, that's always a nice lead.
JASON: So like throughout history like there's tons of utopian/dystopian you know, kind of novels.
I think they may have made an allusion towards this book called the "Brave New World."
It's just like a dystopian social science-y fiction book really weird,
but then I mean like even looking back at things, like reading like "The Giver" or "Fahrenheit 451",
the interesting thing is- is what they're talking about here is they're trying find a utopia.
And every single dystopia thinks that they are a utopia.
Every single dystopia thinks like the people leading it or, or the social media
or anything that's going on that's trying to control, to make things le- lead and seem perfect.
So I mean it's- it's in, all over the place like in- in "Fahrenheit 451" his wife is like sitting in front of screens, in front of like the news,
and it's just all these constant stories that- and things, of a dog got hit by a car, this happened, this person this, and this happened, and then in this part of the world, this-
Like it's just saying all these things, and she's mesmerized by it and she's just sitting in front of it,
and she's almost inhumane, like she's not a human anymore, she's just staring and being hypnotized by what's happening.
But in this- you're right she is sitting in a mask, that's really cool.
So right in the beginning you see like the dripping water, there's a- there's a drink, and there's a television.
And so something that they talk about is this like idea of like the perfect illusion and there's all these things like,
that rap was great, we chase a mirage that's not there, like all these things that you know, it's totally true,
we are given social media platforms, we're given you know TV and the news and all these things to control our information and to control our knowledge.
The thing is that no matter what in the end, it's always you know, when- when a dystopia tries to create perfection,
once you really struggle through it, and in these books, the novels always end in chaos.
You know it's like, once you recognize that you can't continue to look at these social norms and to find yourself through them,
and that you can't continue to- to you know follow what is being told, follow what is being shown and do your own thing
and you follow, try and create within you utopia, that- that's the only way to go about living life is-
is to look within oneself and go with your intentions and your emotions and how you feel and what makes YOU happy,
not what social media and that mirage that people chase you know, show.
So I think that like chromaticism in like the melody going into the *plays piano*
Like I think that in a sense can like speak to this idea of like trying to create a utopia that has these um darker tendencies that- that are like unfamiliar and will not work.
So it's just like a foreshadowing of like a resolution that is not to come.
Which is, in the case of every dystopian society, the resolu- the wanted resolution is always chaotic and wrong. So *plays piano*
And then I think *plays piano* what chord- scale is that? That's Phrygian right?
UMU: The pre-chorus is, but then it goes to the minor. (JASON: Yeah, 'cause the Phrygian is that whole thing. *plays piano*)
JASON: Whatever. Modes are not my friend, I gotta do more modes.
JASON: All I gotta say is *slams piano* JU YOUNG: The camera's dying.
JU YOUNG: Camera's dying, camera's dying, camera's dying, I'm dead. (JASON: My computer JUST died when I hit that, that was crazy!)
[subtitles by twt @angelade17 ^^)
SAM: Wow. UMU (irl name is Emma): And her English name is Emma!
SAM: Really? UMU: Yeah her international name, she- they like decided it for themselves, and they announced it on like a radio show,
And she was like, "My international name is Emma." and I'm like *heavy breathing*