Stephanie: Mind blown, oh my god.
[Rossini's Semiramide Overture playing]
Owen: NMIXX
Umu: Yes.
[Various attempts at expressing "O.O"]
Umu: You are now reacting to JYP's new girl group NMIXX
and their debut song titled-
Raffi: OO Jason: Oo
Raffi: OoO?
Jason: O?
Raffi: O.
Jason: O?
Or maybe just:
Raffi: Oh yeah, yeah. Jason: Yeah, no sound, just:
Umu: 'O.O' is telling its listeners to get up,
get prepped for a journey ahead that may be full of shock and fear,
follow NMIXX forward, baila baila, which means-
Raffi: Umm... Jason: Dance!
Jason: I took four years of Spanish and I know nothing!
Jason: Except for dance, and- Umu: Well you know dance.
Umu: Holá. ¿Cómo estás?
U: Muy bien, gracias. ¿Y tú? Jason: El baño. La biblioteca.
Jason: The bathroom and the library. Umu: Poquito. Uno poquito?
Umu: So trust NMIXX to be your superhero and experience your dreams in real life.
Jason: That's a good concept about being musicians. Raffi: That's... that's expecting a lot from me.
Jason: Yeah, but I like that.
(Raffi: I feel like the...) Jason: It's like a mirror, the music becomes a mirror
for you to work through something and move and dance with it, that's fire.
Umu: This song is composed by Brian U, Enan, MarkAlong,
Charlotte Wilson, Chanti, EJAE, Awry, Ayushy, Jan Baars, and Rajan Muse.
Jason: Are we ready?
What's the thing with the- Oh, SpongeBob! They be like:
"Are you ready kids?"
"Aye aye, Captain!"
Umu: "Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?"
All: "SpongeBob SquarePants!"
Henry: Follow them on a journey?
Henry: Well I already see the imagery with this anchor on the shore, (Cloud: I. Love. Adventures)
Henry: or on solid surface, that means like anchors up. Cloud: But it's not anchored, yeah, we're going up.
Kevin: ~Anchors away my boys~
~Anchors away!~
3 2 1 Chex mix!
Rachel: It kinda sounds like a French horn.
Liam: It sounds like one of those Norse viking horns.
Jason: WhAt?
Henry: I can't get a sense of downbeat?
Now I do... interesting.
Cloud: But that's because the snare came in.
Henry: Oh wow, I like how they layered in the bass.
Mm~
Oh YES! I love that sound!
Liam: The floor kind of just like dropped out from under it.
Owen: So they're going from movie vibes,
Owen: Cuz I associate that with being at AMC. Kevin: It's very Alita Battle Angel.
Liam: Wow. Rachel: Mm.
Liam: Now the floor is back, very full.
Rachel: Ooh~ Liam: Yeah~
Jason: I like that!
Liam: Yeah, I like those sounds, that was a nice drop.
Mm~
Henry: I love it when they rhyme with other languages.
Stephanie: Ooo~
Kevin: It's kinda cool.
Raffi: Oh oh, she fell on the door. Stephanie: The door? That's like a totally different world.
Sam: Is this a coke ad? Stephanie: Wooow?
Cloud: Weird?!
Leon: Whaaat?
Rachel: Oooh~ Liam: That little vocal riff is nice.
Cloud: They lied to me, they said "The real starts now" and she just starts freaking flying!
Rachel: The f#%k? Liam: How did we get here?!
Liam: Oh my god.
We just went in that goddamn donut shop
And now everything is colorful!
Rachel: I love her voice.
Jason: What's going on??
Sam: This feels like a skittles commercial.
Kevin: They're not going back?
Owen: Not yet, it started, it was, it started out like away,
Owen: and then they did a little thing ... Kevin: I like the mixing here,
Kevin: I think the blended the guitar and the drums or-
Jason: *Vocalizes* on top of that was kinda cool, the harmony.
*Vocalizes*
Those harmonies were nice - oh?
BASS!
Henry: Okay.
Stephanie: HHhHhnHGh?
Leon: WHAAT?
Kevin: OH, it took the rhythm back to the thing!
Liam: Wooo that metric modulation was nuts! Rachel: *Screaming*
Kevin: I understand what happened!
Stephanie: Mind blown, oh my god... Leon: Yeah.
Jason: They're a good group too, they're pretty in sync like...
There's an energy about them that's pretty in sync and like...
...pretty good.
I've never commented on dancers, wow.
Stephanie: W-?
Leon: Change again?
Stephanie: I don't know - OH, what? Leon: Wait no? What, that's it?
Owen: That was fun. It's a good place to stop.
Kevin: It's... Ah, I kinda wanted-
Owen: Definitely you want more.
That's why I think it's a good place to stop.
Jason: Nails.
Why does her hat say nails?
Raffi: Because some people like nails.
Liam: Yeah, waht the f#%k was up with that donut shop?
I wanna know, too.
Raffi: Oh, look in the building! It's the "O.O"!
Jason: Oh, it's the O.O thing. Raffi: His eye is going...
Stephanie: Why? They just leave us hanging like that!?
What the hell?
Oh my god, that was epic!
Leon: Yeahaha.
Stephanie: OoOooO...
Raffi: It was a lot.
Umu: Yeah.
I just went through a lot.
I liked the song, I like it as a whole,
and I especially like the beginning.
Jason: It's like a boat siren.
Raffi: I think cuz rhythmic right away...
Jason: Displaced pulse.
Raffi: Yeah.
Raffi: Yeah, I like, it was like you could drop it like it's hot. Jason: And it immediately just throws away the pulse.
Liam: My brain is kinda breaking here.
Liam: I don't know what's going on. Rachel: Yeah, I'm really confused.
Henry: They ended up with the right amount of bars
so that it would, if you kept a 4/4 pattern since starting the first note,
you'll land on a downbeat,
but it shifts the meter in there somewhere.
Cloud: And it's so crazy that when they first start,
there is not, there is no bass or anything that is informing that meter,
it's just a whooshing kind of thing that's giving you the 8th note feel.
And then that comes in.
And they start singing.
Henry: It's off, it's off! What the f#%k is going on?
Who is this person in the middle,
doing "WhOOk WhOOk ayy Look at that moving eye eyes,"
in the white?
Cuz she's destroying my musical brain right now and I appreciate it.
Cloud: I mean the out is...I think the out fine, right?
Henry: This is fine, yeah.
...2-3-4-1-2-ugh-
Oh, and now that I've heard that so many times back
I really like how they peeled back a lot of that drum and instrument
so we can really feel that weight want to like...
Henry: fall into the downbeat of the first verse. (Cloud: It's just as soon as...)
Henry: I think it's on beat 3 after she gets in there.
Hihihi.
Woo!
Jason: The drastic changes in pulse, you don't know when to feel it
because in the beginning they lead you to feel something
and then they change it immediately, and you're like
"I'm embarrassed... because I though something else was happening."
So I would say just like a consistency in pulse
where it either goes into one another through modulation, like meter modulation...
(Umu: That's what the last transition did.)
Jason: Yeah?
Well the last transition felt right, that's why I was saying it,
like the ending was fantastic,
but just like the beginning, it was- a meter modulation type stuff or half time, full time,
all that would have been great.
Henry: Why would that even matter in pop music, right?
So they're just feeling "Oh it's taking a little bit more time"
"and then we get into something-"
"And we're back in- Like-"
Cloud: So you know when like in American pop,
how they start by introducing the song sometimes
and it's like EDM or like pop music
(Henry: Before the vocals come in?) that has like trap, and they go like,
like "Hey, it's so and so on the drums, blablabla..."
It feels like they're doing their call outs there,
so it's not necessarily in the meter specifically but always get back onto it.
I think that's why it doesn't sound horribly weird to me
cuz I feel like I've heard things like that before
but it's also very cool.
Ju Young: I think what's more- like,
what tripped me out was the different sections.
Have we heard a JYP song that's done that?
Jason: Because the thing is, if I were to hear this on the radio, I don't...
I don't know if would listen to it again, unless I was a fan of them,
because it does so much, if I was driving I'd crash.
I would get really distracted cuz it takes you into some really cool places,
but it's just, the ideas are not...fully...
There's really not a lot of connection between some of the ideas,
and it's cool, it's fascinating, I like it a lot.
Actually this is one of my favorites I have heard in a while.
If there was a bit more cohesion, I think it would have been fantastic.
Liam: It's super distorted.
This synth going into the drop is so cool.
And they also got like the reggaeton thing,
like the Latin pop, the typical Latin pop beat going on,
but it's like really subtle, it's not like the in-your-face like
It's kinda buried within the kinda trap hi-hat and snare sounds a little bit.
Ju Young: There's some trumpet action going on too, like what the hell?
Sam: I gotta be honest, I don't like that trumpet at all.
I think it breaks the atmosphere.
It brings this really brassy texture to something that is otherwise very soft
and something that's - not soft as in quiet but soft as in like, soft lika a brush would be.
It adds something that's very metallic or something
to something that should be like a water color painting.
There's like this harp between like 47-50,
the instruments that you hear are like this synth that's like *bwaaaawwm*
and then this plucky thing...
It's like very like washy sounds.
I feel as though with a song like this,
it's just like adding calamitous noise
that I don't really find myself drawn towards.
Which is a shame because the sections after this first section, I feel,
are significant- like significantly better.
It feels as though it has this kind of like, it has a groove,
it has this kind of memorable guitar line, and it's simple.
Kevin: For me the b-section, the middle section, is so much more confident.
Maybe it's because normally when I hear this type of grungy dark vibe
I'm kinda used to the song being like long and then having all sorts of different sections.
But then when we get to the middle section it just felt like
"Oh, we are there. We're somewhere new."
*Plays E*
Liam: That silence is just deafening. Rachel: Oh my god. *Plays A*
Liam: It's like a palette cleanser essentially, right?
Umu: But they don't include it in the official track.
Liam: Oh they didn't-? Bruh, okay. Umu: It goes straight in.
Liam: That... that would be a lot. Rachel: Wait wait wait.
*Rachel figuring out harmony*
Rachel: Because we were in E minor, now we're in A major.
So it's on major IV, and I guess...
Liam: And ended right on minor i.
Rachel: So it's just i to IV.
Umu: Okay, so the genre changes didn't throw you off and turn you off, you thought it was epic?
Stephanie: Yeah, for real!
I thought it was sick.
Like, going back to it especially, I was just like
"How did that happen?"
Leon: Oh, it's a metric mod.
Stephanie: MMmmmm~
Umu: How so?
Kevin: So it's 16th note to triplet, new triplet equals previous 16th note.
Liam: The bright epic dream section...
Rachel: That's 16th notes.
Liam: This four, four notes fit into the beat.
Rachel: Yeah, so like-
Liam: Instead of keeping the feel in triplets like
they change the feel to 16th notes,
so it feels like it's just speeding up a ton.
So instead of
when the vocals come in it's like
So this is what they use for the transition, triplet.
And then when they get into it:
It immediately goes to 16th notes.
Rachel: That's pretty cool. I like that a lot actually.
Kevin: So the "Ba bola boly" is confusing because of where the last "ly" syllable lands.
Umu: "Baila"
Kevin: Or "baila"? U: Yeah.
Kevin: It makes it sound like a weird hemiola thing.
So when we hear "baila baila baila" we're hearing it in 1-2 1-2 1-2.
And then when we're hearing a triplet we're hearing 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3.
So in this case it would be
There is a very nice clash that I think makes our brains do a lot of speed math.
Rachel: I think it's really interesting that songs are starting to do this
and that we're hearing songs that have such distinct textural and like...
I don't know, just very distinct changes, right?
And I think kind of like the reason for it is
what it seems like what they're trying to do here,
where they're trying to show, like make a story in a video
or make a story in...
Like, "Here's this group and here's their background", right?
Here's the story that goes behind the group so you can have like theories and all these things,
it's a whole different world
Rachel: and they're like pulling you into it doing this. Liam: Oh yeah, it functions really well as a storytelling device.
Rachel: Yeah. Liam: Not so much as a standalone song, right?
Liam: Just cuz it's not gonna make sense
unless you really understand everything that's going on here.
Rachel: But it makes sense in this K-pop world
because it's never just about the song, right?
It's about the song, it's about the members, it's about the dance, it's about everything.
And this is just like adding another layer to that.
"Here is this story and we're making the music...
like, show off the groups story and message, right?"
Raffi: It brought me to a very deep philosophical place about music and where we're going,
cuz I just don't know.
I understand the mix genre, it's just always very jarring to me,
but it also is like aesthetically- like it's pleasing in a way, but in like-
I don't have synesthesia but a lot of my musical mentors do,
like it's pleasing in that kind of way that you're in a new space, completely.
It does feel supernatural, I think it fits where our world is at,
Raffi: we're in a very virtual world, yeah, we're used to stimulation. Jason: And completely like... so much going on.
Raffi: I'm for it, and this really made me think, it's a lot to digest.
Kevin: Yeah, I like it, it's theatrical,
I think it uses the K-pop medium to say something.
Owen: Yeah, I thought it was clever, I thought it was fun,
I liked the different vibes in each section
so I think it was a good debut.
Henry: They sound great.
I love this kind of exploration of metric modulation,
(Cloud: This little descant there, yes, okay.) I love this kind of exploration of metric modulation,
it's a really fun way to get into it, (Cloud: This little descant there, yes, okay.)
it's really well layered, I love the sounds they're using.
What a good intro.
Thank you.
Umu: Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
All: SpongeBob SquarePants!
Jason: Who's porous and yellow and hghgabmenvn
All: SpongeBob SquarePants!
Jason: -Nautical nonsense is something you wish-
SPoNgEbOb SqUArePaNtS!
~SpongeBob SquarePants, SpongeBob SquarePants~
~~~SpongeBob!~~~
~~~SquarePaaaaaaaaaants!~~~
Jason: That was a digression.