[Rossini's Semiramide Overture playing]
Umu: Before we are whisked off to the world of the Kwangya,
we wanted to let you know
that we were able to film and edit this video
thanks to our Patreon.
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
uncut reactions to this song,
reactions to Japanese releases, live stages, games and more.
Now it is time to take it to the Next Level and start this reaction.
You are now reacting to the four member girl group æspa
and their first comeback, called 'Next Level'.
(Jason: Fire) Umu: æspa is a K-pop group with actually suuuper detailed lore.
(Ju Young: Fire) Umu: æspa is a K-pop group with actually suuuper detailed lore.
Umu: æspa is a K-pop group with actually suuuper detailed lore.
so I'll do my best to summarize that lore
so you'll at least understand the context
for the lyrics and the music video.
Fact number 1:
æspa live in a futuristic world
where data collected from the internet
can become digital avatar counterparts, called æ.
Raffi: I/æ designed you.
. . .
Sam: Oh.
Umu: These æs exist in a virtual world called the Flat,
where they can travel to the real world via Port Of Soul
and synk with their human counterpart.
OKay, following?
*garbled speech*
That's actually downstairs.
Jason: He's following. Yeah, that's sick.
Liam: Hm. It sounds like some Black Mirror stuff.
Umu: Yes, exactly, it's very black mirror.
Before this music video takes place something went wrong
and the æs got hacked by a mysterious existence,
called the Black Mamba.
So æspa and their æs travel to a place called the Kwangya
to try and find that mysterious existence
and to see what the heck happened.
Liam: Oh my goodness...
(Umu: And then there is the nævis, "nævis, calling"...) Rachel: Oooooh, yeah, I didn't know that!
Rachel: Oh my god that's so interesting.
(Owen: Nice.) Umu: So therefore
SM Entertainment has created an SM Culture Universe
where æspa's story line will eventually overlap
with NCT's, EXO's, Red Velvet's...
Owen: What? with NCT's, EXO's, Red Velvet's...
Owen: They are Marvel now!
Umu: Yeah.
Owen: Wow.
Stephanie: Oh, that's sick! Leon: Woooww!
Umu: The song is composed by Mario Marchetti, Adam McInnis,
Sophie Curtis, and 유영진 (Yoo Young Jin).
Either of you guys fans of the Fast&Furious franchise?
Jarod: Family, baby.
Umu: Okay okay, so this song was actually originally released
on Hobbs&Shaw, Fast&Furious.
And so they contacted those songwriters
and the songwriters agreed for it to be redone for æspa.
Jarod: Wow.
Leon: Wow, the music video looks dope.
Stephanie: Yeah!
Aah, 3 2 1 go!
Woo!
Leon: Dang!
Stephanie: Whoa!
Will: Phat synth patch!
Raffi: Oh?
Sam: Oh wow, they really...
they fiddle with the EQ so that way that snare or tom sounds so hollow,
that's interesting, especially for the futuristic sound,
that hollowness makes it sound very otherwordly.
Kevin: I definitely like the very legato, tenuto, bass. (Owen: The synth, yeah.)
Stephanie: Mmmm!
Leon: Mmmm~
Stephanie: A little drum break.
Kevin: Also there is some weird sampling in that. Owen: Yeah, they had like a blues sort of thing, *whistles*.
Liam: Oof.
Rachel: It's so cool.
Raffi: Oh, I like that.
Liam: A little bit of major there.
*Rachel singing along*
Liam: It's a really satisfying progression.
Rachel: I know!
Daniel: I kinda wanna stand up.
Umu: Do it!
Let's go!
Daniel: Okay.
Umu: Second camera!
Daniel: Here it is.
Ju Young: There's a lot of sound effects in this.
I think that carries the song.
Sam: Oh, the chromaticism, the brass.
Liam: The pitch-down bass-
OH, HELLO?! What is that?! (Rachel: Yeah, I know!)
Leon: Damn~
Stephanie: Mm~
Harmony, right?
Will: Oh~
Jory: Mmm... Will: Okay.
Owen: Did it go to iv minor, is that why it feels weird?
Raffi: I feel like I've been played with, like...
I didn't see that coming.
Sam: Oh wow!
Raffi: What is going on?!
Sam: Ooh, okay!
Raffi: I'm feeling musically frustrated!
Rachel: "Beat Drop!"
Liam: Pfhrhfszwds- WHAT the hell? Rachel: Ahahaha, right, I know!
Stephanie: Hm??
Stephanie: WHAT?! Leon: Woooww!
Stephanie: I'm kinda confused, though.
Jason: ARGH! That f#%ked!
That f#%ked!(x3) I like that!
Sam: Oh my gosh!
Dude, that syncopation in this synth is nuts!
Daniel: It's very like pop-y, you know, like uuhhh?
It's very sparkly, the music.
Jory: Yeah, her voice is baller.
Jason: Aha.
That offbeat, *imitates*.
Sam: That pocket is so crazy!
Liam: Yeah, it's almost like a throwback R&B type beat.
Rachel: Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
Stephanie: Ooooh... Rachel: Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
Stephanie: Ooooh...
Stephanie: That was like oddly smooth.
Owen: For some reason I didn't want to go back,
I wanted to go to a third place.
But I guess it made sense as far as different worlds,
maybe that's what they're doing with the æs,
being the different tempo and world.
Liam: There's a lot of almost Latin percussion
kinda sample stuff going on,
like with the claves and the cowbell stuff. (Rachel: Yeah.)
*stifled chuckling*
Daniel: He's totally vibing, he's totally having a good time...
Jason: So there's two synths going on at the same time,
there is one that is more articulate
and then there's one that is completely seamless,
so that's what creates kinda the *demonstrates*,
and then there's the *more "draggy" synth*.
Sam: Interesting.
Wow.
Umu: Raffi, you were speechless
for like the whole entire second half of that,
after you said you were musically frustrated.
Raffi: I got lost, like...
I got lost and I couldn't find my way back home,
and I still feel lost. :(
Leon: That was too much information.
*Umu loling* Stephanie: That's- yeah, I agree.
Jarod: That's, that's a dope song.
Daniel: I'll be honest, this is probably one of the most fun songs
I've listened to on this channel.
Rachel: And like every part of the song
is so interesting and good to listen to,
and also it's just like "What is going on",
so you want to keep listening to it.
Liam: I think what goes on in the chorus, that makes it so groovy,
is it really lands on the 'and' of 2, it's like *demonstrates*.
Rachel: Yeahyeahyeahyeahyes. Liam: And then it just opens up.
Liam: That beat switch is so sick.
Leon: Is that like metric modulation?
Stephanie: I really wanna check that. (Leon: Yeah)
Stephanie: Cuz I was not... Leon: That was so cool.
Stephanie: That's like the last thing I would expect,
I've heard- yeah! (Leon: Exactly!)
I've heard, what, like key changes,
metric modulations that are clear to hear
but this is just like...
they went into like a completely different word, kind of,
but still it kind of made sense.
*Clapping to keep track of tempo*
Stephanie: Ooooohhhh...wait, wait wait... Leon: Bruh, what the hell?!
Leon: What was that?
Stephanie: It's just like a completely different feel?
Liam: The groove changed so much,
like it went to that triplet feel, like *mimics*.
Jason: I'm gonna do this tempo
and you're gonna get the next tempo.
Na, I just changed it.
*Super Smash Bros Brawl "Failure" sound*
Jason: It could sort of be like a dotted eighth note slower.
Sort of.
[t/n: How u do that??]
Jason: That's a dotted quarter note with... (Ju Young: Alright) yeah.
So it could sort of be that...?
BuT tHaT sH*t bUmPS!
Leon: But how-?
Stephanie: It's like really laid back.
Leon: But how can it transpose so smoothly? Stephanie: Transition, yeah...
Leon: It's 92 and 110 (BPM), how is that even related to each other?
*Confused rhythm clapping*
Umu: I think perhaps they used the 1-2-3-4
to just accelerate from the 92 to the 110.
Leon: Yeah, I think so. Stephanie: Yeah, I think so, too, yeah.
Umu: The key to creating smooth transitions
between two unrelated things is just
have one bar of a breather, in that you will accelerate or
put a bucket over someone's head, spin them around,
so it becomes a smooth transition cuz they don't know where they are.
Leon: It's just like when the stage goes dark. (Stephanie: It's like illusion...)
Umu: Yeah, they turned off the lights on us and then turn them on
and we completely teleported. (Leon & Stephanie: Yeah)
Stephanie: Wow~
Ju Young: I didn't expect- honestly,
I didn't expect much when I first listened to it, cuz I'm like...
Umu: Cuz it lulls you into a sense of calm... Ju Young: Yeah, I was like:
Ju Young: "Oh, this is gonna be like repetitive, muh", but then-
Umu: What's wrong with repetition? Ju Young: No no, there's nothing wrong, it's just,
Ju Young: there were no layers, I guess like,
it would be fine if there were layers of different instruments going on,
(Jason: I agree) it was literally just-
it was just three things, right?
Sam: Rather than being expanded vertically
it's very expanded horizontally.
So for example, that last 20 or 30 seconds of the coda, per say,
was very sparse in how it was instrumented,
there was really just two synths happening,
with like an 808 and drums and then the hook,
which didn't really even have very many notes,
it was pretty much either intoned or just sort of like spoken,
however, what's really interesting is that, across the board,
there were quite a lot of different sort of
sounds that they were bringing to the table
to present "okay, so this is what this section is gonna be,
this is what this section's gonna be..."
There were some spots that I thought were really really strong,
for example I think the part in which they completely changed tempo
and they sort of found a more swung tempo,
so that way there was a really satisfying pocket,
I thought that was really strong.
I definitely see what people are saying
when they say that it's very simple.
Songs like this, their strength is like:
"Over the course of the time,
how can we sort of like take you up and down
through hills and valleys to tell the story..."
So yeah.
Jason: I just think that the juxtaposition
of the two rhythms was cool,
cuz in the song they're telling a narrative, right?
So they're telling a narrative of two different places,
so I thought that choosing a completely different tempo
and completely different pocket for the rhythm
was a very smart idea because they both-
like the emotionality of the words in both areas
were different, very different
and so I thought it was just like very effective,
and it bumped.
Kevin: Yeah, I think the production is
very pristine and very precise and very nice,
but...
...you know...
I may have liked the song if it didn't go to that second tempo range.
I mean they're going for somewhat of like a-
I don't wanna say trashy, but it reminds me of this trashy music,
in a good way, they were trying to do this sort of like,
like deep bass sort of like "Yeah, next level",
like flex, flexflex, um...
*loling*
For some reason this one...
maybe it's because the accompaniment,
the bass was so TRON-like and so electronic,
I felt like the sort of flexing, "next level", slow rapping type of lyrics,
it didn't really jive with the really nice
electronically produced instrumentals.
I don't know, but I get like,
there's a really cool concept behind it
and knowing the concept actually makes me appreciate
what they're trying to do,
cuz I think they're trying to fuse a bunch of stuff together.
But then they go into the middle section, and it just...
I become even more lost in what they're trying to do.
Umu: Were you able to read the lyrics at all?
Owen: I didn't read lyrics. Kevin: Some of it, something threat, something threat-threat...
Owen: There was an æ somewhere in it...
I think the song does an alright-
it does a pretty good job of keeping that concept
because I feel like this song isn't necessarily
a song by itself in this package
because the music video is such an important part
of this actual experience, listening to this song.
And I think that it does a good job of staying out of the way,
in an interesting way,
so that you can really get into this sort of head space
of being in this world that they are creating in the music video.
So the song isn't necessarily the focal part for me,
I think the visual experience is the main thing
and then the song adds to that by letting you get into that 3D world.
Will: At the very beginning, that little synth line,
I was like: "Oh, this is sick", you know, "It's a phat patch",
and then you hear it over and over for like 2 minutes
and then it's like "okay".
But then it switched it up, it switched it up,
it went to the one part with the more interesting harmony,
like went out of the key a little bit,
and then there's that one groove section.
Jory: Yeah, which was tight, I liked that.
Will: And then it went back to the thing,
and when it went back to the original thing I was like:
"Oh, this is like way lamer than that cool part."
Umu: What about it, do you think,
makes millions and millions of people wanna re-listen to this song?
Jory: Well, the fact that you can still sing it, like,
10 minutes after you've heard it.
That's great, that's what you want, you want that earworm...yeah. (Umu: And maybe even one second after- yeah,)
Umu: an hour after.
Jory: Exactly, yeah.
And you can do like the little dancy-dance thing.
Umu: Can you do it?
Jory: No.
*lol*
Will: You know, it's funny, I'm sitting here
and I'm saying that I didn't like that section,
and then like, my foot is tapping,
and in my mind is the bass line going *vocalizes*
and it's like: "You know what?
I guess it worked."
It's like: "I guess it worked."
Jarod: That song was inspiring.
It feels really eclectic in a way,
kinda fun, kinda quirky, a little gamer-esque with the animations.
(Daniel: Right, right!)
Like, this isn't gonna be music
that you're just like listening to for music's sake,
this is gonna be a music that you're gonna be
listening and watching for enjoyment and entertainment,
this is a very entertaining song.
Daniel: Right. It's because of you.
You are the reason why I love this song.
Honestly your energy, I love it.
No, but I think that's a good point.
Yeah, some music, yeah sure,
you might wanna listen to like Stockhausen
and like, you know, like destroy your brain,
you'll be like: "Oh my god, this was amazing."
But then for this it's more like,
I think it's a song that you have to move your body to,
it's like one of those things that you need to move
in order to really feel.
So I think there is something to be said about repetition.
Repetition is necessary, actually, to get your point across,
in music we hear repetition all the time,
ABA form and sonata form,
A comes back and B is just a transformation of A,
because it repeats and it repeats stylishly
we're able to have a stylish experience, you know?
And you can see how his body just naturally reacts,
because he's never heard this song before...
Jarod: Never heard it before.
Jarod: I'm- a quick one-
Oh man!
That's so weird, that's so weird, I don't know why I did that.
Jarod: Cuz think about it, you come across this song,
yeah, you've never heard it before,
you only get one impression on the song,
so they wanna make it repetitive
so that way you can feel like you're part of the song
and that you've heard it before and you get that familiarity
before it's over, so that way you are tempted to listen to it again.
This YouTube video by itself has 129 million plays,
which means that culturally this song is killing it
and it's like resonating and connected with an audience.
Daniel: Or maybe it's just you, Jarod.
Jaord: Maybe it's just me, oh yeah,
Jaord: I listened to that 129- no, I know I'm not, (Umu: you're the 129 million plays)
because I have friends who have been learning the dance to it.
I mean, I've never heard this song,
but I know that's happening.
Daniel: And isn't that what good music is?
You wanna come back to it.
Jarod: You wanna come back to it.
Umu: The aliens were added in 1800?
Jason: No they weren't, they got there just now.
They are from...
G- Kw-
but these aliens are the æ-guys!