Melissa: I would..whoa! James: Yikes! That's cool.
Umu: This is NCT. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Melissa: Non chord tone, 127.
Umu: Well, you're gonna get lots of non chord tones. Oops, spoilers! Melissa: Wow, circle every non chord tone.
James: Eww. Melissa: Take a shot for ever non chord tone. James: No, stop. Oh, my God!
Jordan: So now you're reacting to a b-side track from NCT's 2018 'Regular to Irregular' album.
Elizabeth: Why are those men prettier than I am? What the hell?
This piece is composed by Hitchhiker and Kim Kyung-min. This track, called 'Regular to Irregular':
'Interlude', begins as spoken word over the music of NCT
2018 yearbook number one.
Umu: And the four members, Jungwoo in Korean, Yuta in Japanese, WINWIN in Chinese, and Johnny in English, discuss dreams. Seiji: Yuta?
Japanese guy? Umu: Yeah!
Jordan: And the music switches from tranquil to discordant as the song transitions from the album's themes of 'Regular to
Irregular',
exploring the concepts of dreams and reality. Fiona: Tres, dos, uno.
Elizabeth: Nice repeated piano note. That feels very like
movie music, when something dramatic happens.
Isaac: This is Eric Satie. Kevin: Exactly. It's like Gymnopédie No. 50.
Melissa: Yeah, he really is just speaking.
But like, so softly.
Henry: Wow, his piano playing is very nice.
Elizabeth: That mic must have been so
close. Henry: It's very hot. He was very clear. You can could hear the
sound of his mouth. Elizabeth: The noise in the back of his throat, yeah.
Henry: I kind of like, love that, actually. Elizabeth: No, no, I like it.
It feels very intimate, when you can hear sounds like that.
Stephen: aww! Seiji: Pretty good translation, yeah.
Melissa: Is this in three? I think it's in three.
That's cool. That's new.
Stephen: I mean, not your standard. K-pop song, for sure.
Like, I was expecting like a giant synth pad and something to just like, you know, start pounding four on the floor. Seiji: Waiting for the beat drop.
Maybe it'll happen still.
Isaac: Those shakes, though. Uh, uh, uh, uh. Kevin: I just love the freedom. There's like
no restrictions.
Melissa: Like, I know it's not waltz-like at all,
but like, it feels like it is. Like, you can move to that.
Woo! Low voice.
Lindsey: Their voices are all very calming, also.
Fiona: Their resonance that, with which they sing, their resonant voices, like it comes through in their speaking voices.
Jarod: This is so interesting.
Melissa: That's from that one poem.
James: Ooh! Melissa: Have you read that poem? James: Ooh!
Half steps.
Collin: I actually really like this.
Jarod: I really like this cuz it takes like, the slight rhythmic feel that they had earlier and kind of like, the rhythm is still there,
but obviously the sound is distorted into like,
this. Collin: it's gone
Stephen: Well, there's that beat. Seiji: Yeah, so I guess we were right about the drop. We did get the drop.
Elizabeth: This is Stockhausen!!WAIT!
Henry: It's also the same progression, but recorded backwards.The keyboard playing the same thing underneath, it's the same ??????? material.
Melissa: Whoa!
James: Yikes! That's cool.
This is very dreamlike, it's like that crazy dream that you have
sometimes, where just like, the world's exploding and things are melting, and you're like, oh, my God!
Jarod: Wait, is this it? Collin: What?
That's actually sick.
Whoa!
Jarod: Okay, I... Collin: Shh, shh, wait, it's gonna-
Oh, never mind.
Jarod: I actually really like that.
That was cool, because it's this whole dream concept of regular and irregular.
So it's like, it opens up with this like, you know, really smooth, goopy, sustains
It was very well paced, but there was like a lot of nuance in the playing of the instruments. Like it seemed to just like
slide. It just felt like really, it wasn't like a...
It was very relaxed, and it was like very in time,
but at the same time it really seemed to stretch like they were in no hurry. Like it was really cool, because it creates like that
nebulous dreamscape that one might think of when thinking of a dream, and then it was cool, cuz like he was like speaking on top of
over it. So it kind of added to that kind of atmosphere.
Collin: It sounds like poetry--Jack Kerouac. He'd do that.
He loved jazz, so he would
Like there'd be a jazz band behind him, and because he was famous and he was a good poet,
he would just like read his poetry and they would improvise in according to what was happening in the poetry. Jarod: That's awesome.
Collin: So it is a little bit like that,
yeah. I thought the most valuable thing though, was actually the contrast. At first I didn't like how they were developing,
and I was like no, don't see what I think, cuz I thought it was about to become like this stereotypical like, club beat,
Jarod: Right. Collin: and it was like no, you've done something actually really interesting, but then they ended it.
And it was like, what?!
Jarod: Yeah! I think that's what I really liked about it, because this track is called 'Interlude',
so it kind of serves a greater function in the album. Collin: Yeah.
Melissa: That was crazy. James: I really liked the use of like four different languages, and the
message that it was at least communicating to me was like, yes, we're all dreaming about these different things, but
we're all able to communicate in our own ways about these dreams and even though we're from different cultures and we speak different languages, we
all kind of share this collective kind of experience with like, dreams and what they mean to us.
I thought that was really nice. It was kind of like, oh, made me want to cry a little bit.
Melissa: Aww! James:Yeah, it was really nice. Melissa: Oh, James!
And I loved the duality of like the cello and the violin kind of playing together, and I noticed the first time they came in together
was when one of the guys was talking about,
in his dream, like, you were with me, or like you were there.
He was like talking about someone else. Melissa: Ooh! Text painting! James: Like a lady of some kind, or a man, you know, who knows? But
I just thought that was really nice, and that part at the end was really interesting, too. Melissa: That was lit!
James: It was spooky.
Isaac: What the heck was that?
So we went from Eric Satie, and then we had a nice cello solo, and a very nervous violin,
but it came out fine. Kevin: Mm, hmm.
Kevin: Became nervous. Isaac: Then in the whole like, lavender town. What the heck was that?
Why? I think it does symbolize what they're
transitioning. It's like, from regular to irregular, so you have very nice and simple
dashing melodies, and then later it's just like, very
rough.
Kevin: (speaking Chinese) Isaac: Oh, gosh!
Kevin: I think this song is very creative.
Isaac: Mmm.
Umu: Can you explain in further detail
what Satie and the violet...
Isaac: Well, I was referencing to his gynmonsympathy Kevin: Gymnopédie Isaac: Gymnopédie
Kevin: There you go. Here, piano time!
Kevin: Do you know this piece?
It's a pretty, little, simple piece by Eric Satie, who was a really weird composer. But every time you hear, it's like a nearly waltz,
but it's just one two, one two, and it oscillates between two chords.
That's why this song's connection to Gymnopédie is so strong. Because it starts by oscillating between two chords.
Henry: Wow. I thought that was really cool.
Elizabeth: Yeah, we were just talking about how if you're gonna have very different sections, you have to have something that's the same, and in this case,
they actually took the material from the first section and just reversed it. So you still recognize all of the sounds,
it was just, it felt weird because it was the other way around
Henry: Well, and I didn't even noticed it at first. Good music, you don't notice when there is a single thread going through every single
section. I mean that's like the beauty of you know, like a piece like Brahms 4 or something like that.
Where it like, you know, there's just, there is something that keeps it all tied together. I think it's...what? I think it's great!
Elizabeth: I'm not a Brahms person.
Henry: You play horn.
Elizabeth: Yeah, that's why I'm not a Brahms person.
Henry: I thought that's why you would be a Brahms person. All right,
Elizabeth: Learn every solo in B natural. Do you like transposing by a tritone? Aaagh!
Henry: I think
it was excellent. This piece.
Stephen: I feel like this would be a really great track to put in between two other tracks in a CD.
Seiji: Yeah, it's a good interlude. Umu: Yeah, that's exactly what they did.
They had around like four or five tracks
under the 'Regular' section, and then they smash this one in the middle, and then the rest were under the 'Irregular' section.
Stephen: That's awesome. Wow. Seiji: Yeah, it's a great, it's a story, and the harmony makes it like more
crunchy, and it makes you kind of like get to the edge of your seat a little bit, and then you kind of feel angsty, and then like,
whoo!
And then you have that drop. Super cool.
Stephen: Yeah, one thing I just thought of, its really nice, too,
I feel like the music really reflects thematically what's behind the song. Cuz I mean, I don't know,
I feel like when we all have dreams, sometimes they can be very simple, or almost
naive, in a sense, and I feel like that's reflected where it's just like, oh, you know,
you know, string quartet, just basic 3, 4 waltz.
And then, I feel like, at least hearing this song from that
interpretation, when you kind of see reality in how things aren't always black and white but are more gray,
I feel like that can be reflected in how all of a sudden they distort everything, which is really cool, by the way,
whatever they did, whether or not they used a synthesizer, or used a combination of that, and like distorting the
strings that you were hearing, you could hear how everything was kind of more murky, more unknown, which plays into you know,
real life.
Hello everyone. I'm Umu, and 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 the links to a doc with our release schedule in the description.
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