Rachel: Huh?
Liam: Hohohooo! Hello! Rachel: Is this a dance break?
[Rossini's Semiramide Overture playing]
Umu: Before we begin this reaction
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to film and edit this video.
Since we are unable to monetize any of our react videos uploaded to this channel
it is our Patreon that provides us the funding to continue making our channel bigger and better.
We have a lot of interesting and exclusive content uploaded to our Patreon, which includes
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Many thanks again to those who were able to support us,
let the reaction begin!
*Keyboard jamming by Will*
Umu: You are now reacting to NCT's Chinese sub-unit WayV
and their 2021 release called 'Kick Back'.
Jory: Sick.
Umu: While their latest release was about turning back time -
you guys remember 'Turn Back Time'?
YEAH!
Wait no...
I can't remem-...
STOP!
[E] REWIND!
[E] TURN!
[E] BACK TIME!
Okay, never mind.
'Kick Back' is focused on kicking back in the moment.
Cloud: Turn back, and now we kick back.
We fixed it and now we can just relax.
Umu: That's...
basically it.
Cloud: Guys, I did it.
Umu: They sing:
"The moment in the past is the future,
it doesn't matter if we wait."
They're telling their listeners to escape from the entangled confusion of time
by taking the time to empty your thoughts and fade away Jory: Ooh, empty your thoughts~ Will: Oh, wrong chord there.
Umu: Once you take that time for yourself,
you'll be able to come back and change the meaningless rules
and unfold the secret of time. (Jory: Okay.)
Liam: So the moment in the past is the future?
Umu: Yeah. Liam: Is happening?
Umu: Yeah.
Liam: Meh, I'm just gonna go head empty for this, I don't need to think about it.
Rachel: No thought.
Umu: The song is composed by Harald Philippon (Alawn),
Jasmine Kara Khatib-Nia, Keynon KC Moore and Ryan S. Jhun,
and Alawn and 유영진 (Yoo Young Jin).
Kevin: Okay, do you know what the Chinese title for this song means?
Umu: No...
Kevin: So the English name is 'Kick Back'. (Umu: Mhm)
The Chinese name is 'Secret Realm'.
Umu: Woah.
Kevin: 3 2 1 g-
Okay!
Okay...
Liam: That synth is nasty
Kevin: I don't know why this beginning is so overwhelming.
Will: Phatt synth bass patch.
Raffi: I love the timbre.
Liam: It's a really interesting flow.
Sam: Okay
Liam: More cool synth sounds added in.
Like the upper harmonies.
Ju Young: Aha!
*Imitates rhythm*, Mm~
Jason: I like how long it took for the hi-hats to come in,
that was a nice touch.
Rachel: Oh I like that. Liam: More hemiola?
Rachel: Yeah, hemiola!
Ju Young: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Sam: Oh, wow!
Sam: Wow.
Brianna: Ah~
Jason: Bass going down, strings going up, contrary motion.
Kevin: Oh, of course.
Ooh, they introduce an F during the C chord? That's kind of cool!
Rachel: Yeah, I know this part!
Liam: That delayed gratification on that, that was so cool.
Kevin: See, this is an example,
it doesn't feel too loud, but yet it feels just right.
Jason: I like that layer, like the double-time hi-hats,
they're just, *tigidigidigidi*
Jason: Oh, *F♯-E-D*, I like that resolution. Raffi: Oh yeah, yeah(x∞)
Jory: The chorus was actually pretty sick.
Kevin: Oh-
OoOH!
The nasty bass comes back.
Cloud: I'm really enjoying the simple texture to the very full texture, and going back and forth.
Jason: Yeah, now we got the, that like... Raffi: It's building, where is it going?
Jason: We didn't have that before, like that,
that little snare, kick hitting and creating a different energy. (Raffi: Aaah~)
Ju Young: It's descendingggggg!
Jory: I love this like double pre-chorus thing.
Kevin: And the major.
Oh!
Oh, it's different!
Owen: It's different? It feels the same, but I trust you.
Sam: Woah, it just like skipped a whole section of the song, didn't it?
Sam: I'm-
Umu: That was the pre-chorus, this is chorus, this is post-chorus.
Jason: *Sings bass slide*, yeah, that's effective.
And it's these string hits.
Raffi: Yeah, this is effective layering.
Will: That was cool.
Brianna: Ah~
Jory: They're dancing so hard and there's no beat.
Jason: Oh, and then half-time!
I f#%king love half-time! You know that's my sh*t!
Kevin: Like straight up trap. But it's kind of quiet, I like it.
Owen: It's a very dramatic chord progression too,
when you come up and tonicize that minor chord and then fall back down. (Kevin: Yeah)
Liam: Ohohoho! Rachel: Mmm~
Sam: Look at that! Look how beautiful the cacti are!!!!
Jory: I love how often they hold notes out like that.
Rachel: Huh?
Liam: Hohoho, hello! Rachel: Is this a dance break?
Jory: That's a really unexpected place to do that.
Oh that's it.
Brianna: That's really good.
There is, at the end I noticed that the time,
the pulse stayed the same
while the beat itself was going in different feels.
So their bridge is usually like,
it's really like, they use a lot of harmonies,
and the feel feels a lot slower
and then the chorus is "Kick kick [...] back",
you think it's faster but it's just the same
and you finally realize that they're the same
when at the ending they put them together.
You could hear the underlying "kick kick [...] back"
under this more like lyrical, you would think more slow tempo,
but it's really just a subdivision of the original tempo.
I think it's cool how they put it together too
and how it fits so well together,
and just, yeah, they brought it back.
Ju Young: That's so trippy! Umu: 왜요?!
Ju Young: 왜요!!! That's so trippy! Sam: Wow.
Will: Sick! Jory: Pretty lit. That was like very unexpected.
Liam: Nothing about that really went how I was expecting it to go.
Will: There was so much cool harmony going on the whole time,
lots of tonicizing vi minor.
Umu: What does that sound like?
Will: I think we're in D, D kind of minor,
but then the chorus goes to like D major,
so it starts on the D major chord,
*Sings melody*
something like that,
[C major]
[B♭ major], and then here, and then it goes:
[A dominant 7 with ♭9 and ♭13/♯5 in melody]
is the melody...
Jory: I think that's only in the voice though,
like it's just like a dominant 7 kind of thing.
Will: Yeah, yeah, I think it might have a ♯5 in the... [t/n: The melody has an F, but there's also an E.]
maybe it's just a dominant, I don't know.
But the melody implies the ♭9, which is just cool. Jory: Yeah, really cool.
Will: And it kinda goes to major. Jory: And back to major.
Will: So yeah, lots of ~modal mixture~ going on.
Sam: I realized I had my beanie on,
so I couldn't actually hear the song for the first like, 2 seconds. (Umu: Maybe that's why you thought they skipped.)
(Umu: 2 seconds-) Sam: No no, I swear, I swear on my life,
Umu: Oh, maybe don't swear on your life, Sam: that they skipped...
Umu: maybe like swear on a single cactus in Arizona.
Sam: The chord structure is like the exact same in this and the second verse,
and then it has this section at 43 seconds,
where everything is like major and weird.
Umu: It happens again at 2:07.
Sam: But it's minor that time!
Umu: Huh?
Sam: SEE? I'm like not going crazy, I told you, you- Umu: OoooOoOoOHhaHahA!
Sam: You were like, "Sam..."
Umu: Well you said they skipped a section of the song,
not they changed, like they changed the tonality of the song. Sam: I knew something was weird!
Sam: I was like, "wait", cuz I was listening for that major section again
and I was like, "This is, this just doesn't exist again."
That first section, I was like,
the tonality is totally weird
cuz they still had this chord [B♭ major]
which would be a pre-, which would be the pred-
- oh, thank you -
which would be the minor, which would be the ♭VI of [D minor]
when you're thinking about-
or would be the natural VI [B♭ major] of this [D minor scale.]
So it was kinda like doing like a descending,
as I think Ju Young mentioned it,
[D minor - C major - B♭ major] that kind of thing,
but then the first time they did it, it was this:
[D major - C major - B♭ major]
which was just major chords descending,
and sounded like chord soup, I was very confused,
but now in context I'm like, okay,
I guess there's like a tonic here,
I just wanted to make sure I wasn't like loosing my mind.
Liam: In the pre-choruses, like they kind of varied the length of them,
like the buildup into each of the choruses,
it just kinda kept you waiting for it
and it kinda made that moment, like that arrival, more satisfying.
Umu: Right, that bar of 2/4 added in?
Liam: Mm
Umu: I think you're talking about, yeah.
Cloud: Cuz when you are in 4/4 and every single strong beat is on 1,
sometimes your body just gets into that groove
so it can be really powerful to be like, "2/4, haha!"
so it breaks you out of that.
Raffi: Once you pointed out the subdivisions that's all I could hear.
Jason: What is that? That's a polyrhythm, right?
Raffi: A hemiola.
Jason: Yeah, it's a hemiola, but like... Umu: It's a kind of hemiola, but which?
Jason: Or maybe it's just triplet.
Raffi: Yeah. Jason: Oh yeah, they are.
Umu: Oh, lit. Jason: Oh god, they're just quarter note triplets.
Tri-pa-let...
No they're not.
I don't know, I don't care!
Let's let music be ambiguous about putting labels on them
because I can't figure it out because I'm stupid.
Umu: Is it dotted quarter? Jason: Oh, it's a dotted eighth, I mean dotted quarter, over a quarter.
Jason: It's a dotted quarter. Hemiola.
Cut out all the parts of me being stupid!
Raffi: I just wonder if that feature is text-painting kicking back,
you know, cuz if you're like kicking back,
it's like you're kind of dragging along,
and that's like what I felt rhythmically! AAaAHhH!
Jason: That's kinda cool. and that's like what I felt rhythmically! AAaAHhH!
and that's like what I felt rhythmically! AAaAHhH!
Owen: So the chorus, I think if you would characterize a beat for it
you could give 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4, right?
(Kevin: Mhm) But I think on another level there is a hypermeter,
But I think on another level there is a hypermeter,
[Little Sean voices: ~Hypermeter!~] But I think on another level there is a hypermeter,
[Little Sean voices: ~Hypermeter!~] that goes 1 2 3 4, Strong measure - weak measure, right?
And I think what makes the chorus feel off
is that it occurs on the third beat of that hypermeter measure,
(Kevin: Mm) is that it occurs on the third beat of that hypermeter measure,
(Kevin: Mm) so it goes, it's like 1 2 3 4, 1 2
*Chorus hits*
Kevin: Yeah, I thought it was interesting because (Owen: You know?)
every time I heard "tic toc tic",
I though the chorus was gonna start on the second "tic"! (Owen: On- yeah!)
Kevin: But no, there was a, like a two beat buffer. Owen: No, it was on the "toc".
Owen: Exactly, yeah. Kevin: Yeah.
Owen: So I think that that shock, it just changes the hypermeter
from if you had actual measures from like an even hypermeter
to an odd, strong measure.
Umu: So this is why Sean an hour ago said:
"Have fun counting"
Owen: Cool
Owen: "Have fun counting", he knows!
Kevin: Their lyrics are still kinda crazy,
like fantasy becoming true and all you know, the secret realm...
Owen: Secret realm. Everything about the secret realm.
Kevin: Right, you just gotta kick kick kick kick kick back
(Owen: kick kick kick kick kick) and enter your own secret realm.
See, that's the thing.
The word "realm" in this context,
you're not sure if it's a real place or if it's like a head space,
it can be a state of mind.
And I think that's intentional.
Umu: Do you have a favorite section of this song?
Ju Young: Bridge!
Dude, when it comes to SM it's always bridge!
I don't know why, but it's bridge.
Will: That whole section is like super gorgeous,
it kinda has that quick like,
[Dm-C-B♭]
down to here and then
[A dominant 7 ♭9 ♭13 - D minor]
Jory: That's pretty cool.
Umu: So was the rest of the song
that didn't feature the modal mixture or the strings,
was it just not your cup of tea
or did you feel like it made the track too monotone?
Jory: No, I think it was nice
because it helped these other elements pop out a little more,
cuz you really only notice a really sick second half of the chorus
if the first half is like a little held back.
Umu: You said, after the strings came in, the chorus became dope.
Why?
Jory: Well before it was just like kind of this robotic kind of groove,
robotic meaning like the sound design,
everything sounded kind of like early 2000s kinda...
it was a little strange, but it was like cool,
but then it became like super symphonic all of the sudden
and really full, and I was like, "Oh okay, yeah."
That's lit.
Cloud: I was listening to like the different stacking
of like how many layers you had.
In the beginning you just have like simple rhythm,
kinda like snapping, like the percussion line,
and then as you get closer to the refrain it's adding in
strings, there was a piano in the bottom,
there's some synthesizers,
there is like the low bass going down, still,
and it feels really full
but it's like a nice kind of full,
like I don't feel like it's too much
and it doesn't overpower the vocals.
I feel like it was enough for me to be like,
"Ooh!"
And like just enough for me not to be like,
"I'm overwhelmed."
Kevin: This song dared to go quiet
when nobody else dared.
And still you will hear it because it's so quiet,
and you will listen carefully.
Umu: Are either of you really good at opening vitamins?
Liam: I'd like to think that I'm pretty good at that.
Umu: Help!
Rachel: My many talents.
Umu: It's like there's a press down and twist one,
Umu: and I did that and it didn't work. Rachel: Oh I- I suck at those, I don't-
Rachel: Oh my god!
Umu: Did he?!
Rachel: Wait-
Liam: Yeah.
Umu: WHAAAT?
The f#¢%!
Rachel: I have like the same issue, you're like,
I am pressing, and I am twisting, and it's doing nothing!