Umu: I hope we have an outro.
[Rossini Semiramide Overture playing]
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let the reaction begin!
Yes, okay, so you are now reacting to the girl group Dreamcatcher
and their 2022 comeback 'Maison'
which is French for...?
Jason: Bread.
[t/n: r u hungry?]
Ju Young: That was very close.
Jason: What is it?
Umu: Close, yeah.
You'd find bread in this place.
Jason: A bakery.
A store.
A market.
Umu: You're getting further away.
Jason: No! An oven!
Umu: What is an oven in?
Jason: A kitchen.
Umu: What is a kitchen in?
Jason: A house!
Umu: Yeah!
Jason: Yeah!
Umu: 'Maison' is a song that sends a message
to those that shamelessly destroy the environment
in this current state of the Earth
which is gradually loosing its original state due to the actions of humankind,
#GlobalWarming
#
#ClimateControl
#
#RecyclePlease
#RecyclePleaseAnd
#RecyclePleaseAndCompost
#RecyclePleaseAndCompostAnd
#RecyclePleaseAndCompostAndElectricCars
#RecyclePleaseAndCompostAndElectricCarsRight?
Sean: Or just walk.
Umu: Or just walk everywhere you go! Sean: Or bike, if you are too far for walking.
Sean: I walk everywhere.
Umu: Go Sean!
Umu: They sing,
"Save my home in the jungle, Save my home in the polar,"
"Protect my home, Please someone fight for us"
Kevin: nice
Umu: The song is composed by Leez and Ollounder.
What was that face?
Raffi: I just don't know what to expect.
Umu: Yeah yeah, just based on that concept,
what kind of song do you think-
this is Dreamcatcher, so it's gonna be partially rock.
Sam: That makes it like even less clear what it's gonna be.
Raffi: I feel like that like 70s like anti-war vibe.
You know what I'm saying?
Umu: Mhm.
Raffi: Like a political movement.
Sam: She's like, "NO..."
Raffi: She's like, "We're editing this out"
[t/n: sike]
Sam: Well, we're about to find out very soon.
Three, two, one.
Trois, deux, un.
Umu: Wow.
Wow?
Sam: Woow.
Liam: Oooh, that's a sick bass synth line. Rachel: Oh my god, look at her bangs!
Umu: WOOOOOOOW!
Sean: Those are...
helmet choices.
Umu: They added in some white noise to the guitar sound
and they get EXtRa diSToRtEd!
Owen: It does a very good job of sucking you in,
I'm already forgetting the world around me,
it's just whatever this is.
It's cool.
Liam: Oh dude, that like 80s synth going,
oh that's so cool.
Sam: Is this the final mix?
Okay, I have something to say about that.
Umu: Short hair G-?! What?!
WHAT?!
What?!?!?
You look so good girl!!!
That's so cute!
Okay, interesting choice.
Sean: Are we in the chorus?
Umu: I think we're at the chorus.
Liam: Ooooooooh~
A little half step up to make it a true dominant.
Sam: Oh my gosh.
Raffi: Love the darkness in her tone!
Liam: Oohohoho! Rachel: I like that.
Owen: She keeps that motif of ending on the second little group, like *demonstrates*.
Sam: I don't know, just like these chords are just, they feel like home,
they feel so familiar but they're just like so good.
Raffi: Yeah.
Sam: Oh, she -
Sam: she just disintegrated? Raffi: She disappeared!
Liam: That synth pad is so fat. Rachel: I like how it just goes straight into the chorus.
Liam: Yeah, no, there's not a lot of buildup.
Umu: Ah~
This little breath?
Ah~
Umu: Different key, different key!
Umu: We're somewhere else! What?
Ju Young: Hmm, what? Umm...
Jason: Yeah, keep going! Ke- yeah! Ju Young: Pourquoi? [Why/What for?]
Umu: New drum beat.
Sean: Yeah, more driving.
Umu: Nice.
I hope we have an outro.
Sean: Yeah, this is, this felt-
*Jason singing the B♭ up to C♭*
Wow. That was cool.
Raffi: That was nice chromaticism.
Sam: That is really good chromaticism.
Umu: Okay cool!
Sean: The chorus is back but with new harmonization.
Sam: Now the chromaticism is going up. Raffi: Yeah.
Raffi: It's like this anxiety, like it's running out of time, you know?
Sam: Oh, that's a good observation.
Jason: Wow, that was...
a thing.
*Small Ju Young sound*
Jason: That was pretty crazy.
That was overwhelming.
Sam: Dang. Raffi: Okay?
Sam: That was good. Raffi: Wow.
Liam: It f#%king slaps, dude.
Rachel: As soon as the tom fill happened...
that was like, yeah.
Umu: Overall I enjoy this comeback.
Ju Young: The one thing that really stood out to me is that
they use the same material in like the first verse,
with the guitar *mimics*, for the chrous,
so it was just very copy-paste there.
Umu: I think we're just used to having such a different textural experience
when you arrive at the chorus for Dreamcatcher. (Sean: Yeah.)
Sean: I feel like the chorus itself is...
is not of their better ones.
Umu: Cuz it prolongs the same energy that we had in the verse
(Sean: Right. ) and typically when writing a pop song
you want to have that energy grow a little.
Sean: Yeah, and it's kind of the same general progression.
Kevin: The chorus is just *E♭*
and then *C♭-B♭-A♭-G♭-F-E♭*, 6 5 4 3 2 1 on a minor scale.
I feel like they've done,
they've done songs that are more diatonic
but more interesting than that, you know?
Sean: I really enjoyed the texture change at Dami's rap.
(Umu: Ooh.) Sean: And also her rapping is great too,
but like beyond just the quality of rapping,
I think that texture change really helped,
especially cuz it's coming out of the chorus that didn't have as much texture change
and then it really shifts for that.
Umu: Yeah, I was like,
"I'm gonna have mixed feelings about this song if the texture doesn't change"
but then texture changed and like,
I no longer have mixed feelings.
Liam: I love how they add back in layers towards the end of that rap verse,
that's super cool.
Sam: There was something about how they composed that
where the bass, the 808, kept the guitar line
and then when the guitar came in I was like,
"Dang, they really made that sound really cool."
Liam: Just the frickin, like it's-
she's just spitting 16th notes (Rachel: Yeah)
but like where it starts, I think, makes the inflection really wonky,
like it's really cool.
*Rachel imitating*
Liam: Oh yeah, it starts on the "e"
Rachel: Yeah.
Liam: On the "e" of 1, that little line.
Umu: I thought you were about to tear apart the mix, but you like it?
Sam: I like the song, I think the mix is not very...
Sam: Okay- (Umu: Yeah.)
Sam: They mixed it like it was a dance song.
The thing though is, because of that
the vocals are way too quiet.
Raffi: I was gonna say I couldn't really hear the vocals! Sam: The vocals were way too quiet,
Sam: you could barely pick out any of the harmonies or any of the voices at all
because that distortion in the guitar is so loud.
Raffi: Do you think that's the symbolic point though?
Beacuse if it's hard to hear them, that's frustrating.
Umu: Mm.
Raffi: And I feel like that's how a lot of people advocating...
you know what I mean, like to raise awareness of climate change, feel,
like it's very hard to hear them, it's hard for them to be heard.
And it's something like a distortion and it's drowning it out,
so it's like *Hngngn!* you know, like "Why can't I hear them?!" (Umu: Yeah, yeah.)
Sam: I think that's... a good idea,
I just think, if we can't hear the message then the message itself is getting lost.
I think the composition, composition-wise all the elements are there
but for me the mix was so distracting.
Jason: I think the production in this needed some help
because like first of all, the bass was very low,
like I just, there was no like grounding in it,
but then when we got to the, when we get to the bridge,
the piano, the acoustic piano sound, just went *WHOOM!*
and it just like smacked you in the face,
and it was like DIFFERENT!
It like punched you in the face, saying "THIS IS A BRIDGE!"
"WE ARE DIFFERENT NOW!"
But like, if they just mixed it a little lower
then maybe it would have worked and been more subtle
but that was just like, "Oh, pretty world-"
BOOM! CHORD!
So it was just like really intense,
but then it was cool, like it build up,
like I actually liked that.
It was very energetic.
Umu: I kinda wanna go in and talk about
what happened in the bridge harmonically
and then we added a new, some major, right? In the-
Sean: Yes. It had been a lot of:
[E♭ vocals with bass moving E♭-G♭-C♭-A♭-B♭-E♭]
That sort of thing.
And then it suddenly went:
[B♭ major] went to this, which like,
kind of coming out of nowhere just sounds like it could be a modulation
although I think it was then ultimately [V/i, plays E♭m]
Umu: Just a V prolongation? Sean: Just like a- yeah. [plays V-i]
Sean: A big V-i, but just hitting the V with such a big texture change
makes it feel like you might have just modulated.
Harmonically the bridge is very simple, it's just V-i-V, V continues,
but it feels very different
cuz they haven't been doing that sort of texture and style so
it still works because of the texture changes.
Umu: And they use the choir to get back to tonic.
Sean: Yeah.
Umu: *Sings B♭-D* using that leading tone...
to arrive here! [in tonic, E♭]
Sam: I also wanna talk about the chromatic parts in the chorus.
In the first time the chorus happens it's:
but in the second time, or in the final part, it's like:
[E♭ minor]
[E♭ major]
Kevin: That G is very cool.
Cuz it sounds like they're just doing minor-major
but then they go to the iv [A♭ minor],
and so this becomes the leading chord to that. [V/iv, E♭ to A♭m]
Sam: When I heard it I was like "Oh my gosh, that's REALLY cool!"
With something as important as a chorus
usually you don't take a lot of risks
in terms of like changing the part of your song
that is supposed to be your emotional climax,
but the fact that they did that, and I think they did it really well,
the fact that they did that, I think, is really cool.
Kevin: There is so much minor-major shenanigans in K-pop
that the fact that they went more down to Earth,
and like I guess something more classical, is,
is something that I, that was actually pretty cool.
Umu: That last reprise of everything made it so epic.
Sean: Yeah.
Umu: ~So epic~
I loved- that might have been my favorite part of this song.
Sean: Yeah, like this does seem like it's more,
a little more of an outro-focused song
in how like the chorus isn't hitting as hard
but then the outro is really long.
Like it's a BIG OUTRO.
Liam: It just got this grand feel, like the whole scale of it is super epic.
Everything ties back into the message they're getting across
and that's great, like, (Rachel: Yeah)
how you can just enhance and augment the impact of it,
just through those simple techniques,
like it's, it's great.
*Chuckles*
Am I a Dreamcatcher stan now?
(Umu: Their pronunciation is good!)
[Classical musicians need that tonic]
Umu: Yeah, it doesn't quite reach the full octave, does it?
Sean: Yeah.
Umu: It ends on like scale degree 2?
Sean: Yeah, I think so. *Umu vocalizing bass slide*
Sean: Maybe even:
Sean: I can't remember, I think it's the ♭2. Umu: I think that's what it is.
Liam: This f#%kin grooves so hard.
*Random C*
Umu: Why is that?
We have more repeating material than usual
but why does the groove never end?
Why is it so good?
Rachel: It just like keeps going, there's no like stop, it's just like...
Liam: Yeah, honestly, it just keeps powering through to the bridge, really.
Rachel: Yeah, it really does. Liam: The foundation is the synth line though.
Rachel: Yeah. Liam: The synth line is so sick.
Rachel: And there, I mean there's no buildup to the chorus like at all,
it just goes straight in.
Liam: The syncopation in the vocals plus like just...
I don't know, how groovy the synth line,
like it grooves but there is a sense of urgency about everything
and that lends itself to the message for sure.
Umu: How does it lend itself to the message?
Liam: We're frickin talking about how quickly all of our actions,
all the detriments to the environment that we caused,
are catching up to us.
Like, it lends itself to that message.
Like you gotta take action before it catches up to you.
Umu: And also since this topic is on global warming and preserving our planet
I would like to suggest for people to check out vlogbrothers' and Hank Green's video on...
what is it called?
It's called "How We Fix the Climate"
so if this song by any chance makes you think like,
"Oh, I should do more research in how we can preserve our climate"
that's a really good video to watch,
Hank Green is a...
motivational speaker of some sorts,
he's very entertaining to watch, so that's,
that's a good educational video no matter what age you are
and I tend to rewatch it a lot
cuz there's a lot of info in it about how do we preserve the climate,
how do we save the Earth to protect our homes.
Check it out if the topic of this song may interest you into doing that.
Umu: Our fandom name is called "Insomnia", in dream,
Umu: you're welcome to join any time... Liam: Aaaaaaaaaaaa~