#the synth in the verses of fake out and the little brass hits in so much for stardust

[strangeterrain]

its the texture its the Layers its the way there is always Something to hear its the . its the detailing and its the different sounds of sounds . and it all Fits together

[kpodcast]

When the three of us did our Stray Kids bracket "God's Menu" was the winner. Combine that with "God's Menu" being one of the most prolific Stray Kids song, it only makes sense for this to be the first song for our weekly Song Breakdown.

On the surface, "God's Menu" is loud. There are sirens, gunshots, percussion, shouting. But in digging deeper, the song is traditionally constructed with tight harmonies and the instrumentation helps to reinforce the message of the lyrics.

So let's break it down.

First, the basics.

Your average pop song follows a pretty standard format. Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Chorus. "God's Menu" is no exception to this build, but it's a little trickier to catch. These verses don't line up in terms of vocal lines, but in terms of the underlying instrumentals.

Obviously, we start with Changbin's intro which leads directly into Han's rap. That's Verse 1. It's important to note that Han's rap has 2 different backings: the sirens and quick percussion until 0:24, then the bass hits afterwards. (0:00 - 0:29)

Rolling into 0:30 we have the Pre Chorus with Bang Chan and Seungmin which slowly builds into the chorus. (0:30 - 0:53)

The chorus is split into two parts; the iconic "DU DU DU DU DU DU" (0:54) with an incredible dance break followed by the melodic chorus (1:08) "I just wanna taste it make it hot".

That "DU DU DU DU" also makes way for Verse 2.

"Cooking like a chef" is that second verse. It introduces the verse the same way Changbin did back at the beginning. This verse is easier to break into the instrumentals. It starts with Felix (which has the same backing as the Bintro, but muted and without the percussion), then the sirens and quick percussion for Chan's rap ("Idea Bank") and finally switches to the bass hits for Hyunjin. (1:20 -- 1:43)

By 1:44 we're back at the Pre Chorus and the build up, which is expected to lead into the chorus once again, but instead, 2:09, we're faked into a lower-energy bridge before culminating for one final chorus and the outro, which is the exact same as Changbin's intro! (2:33).

Second, traditional vs non-traditional elements in music.

For our breakdown, traditional musical elements include: melody, harmony, bassline, percussion, strings, horns, etc. and how they work together to create music. Non traditional elements are just noises (ex. gunshots).

For being "noise music", the only noise in this song are the gunshots and the sirens. The rest of the sound comes from traditional instruments - bass, percussion, synths and strings. It's loud, to be sure, but not simply noise. Go ahead and listen to the instrumental of "God's Menu" as well, which will help make sense of this section of the post!

Let's start with the verses. The music starts with low brass and percussion, which is heard through the rest of the song. Then it all cuts out and we're left with sirens and quick snare lines backing the lyrics (Han and Bang Chan's raps, respectively) before the brass and heavier instrumentals come back, leading us into the pre-chorus.

The continuous siren during the middle part of the verse is pushing us forward. The sound itself is like an alarm - designed to give a feeling of urgency. It's coupled with a really tight drum line, the snare punctuating off beats with a consistent hi-hat line behind it. It's short, like 14 seconds total in the entire song, but without the bass or brass layered underneath, the sirens really stand out. The two parts are very different, but pair really well.

The pre-chorus is melodic and harmonious and, after such a heavy verse, it's light and feels acoustic. The only music in the backing is this synth-y piano which slowly builds, adding the a snare drum that slowly starts speeding up, from quarter notes to eighth notes and ending on sixteenths before cutting out. This builds momentum and prepares us for the drop into the chorus.

The chorus has the gunshots under the second trio of "DU DU DU" as an emphasis. It doesn't occur out of rhythm, it's there to hammer in that specific lyric. (like, DU DU DU DU DU DU). The only other gunshots hit after the drop, with Hyunjin's "Ne Sonim" to usher in the final chorus and Changbin's outro. It's a very deliberate choice when those gunshots are placed.

When we come to the fake out drop, after the 2nd pre-chorus, it's the same backing as the last time Felix sang. The quiet, understated bass and horns allow for Felix's voice to shine through. The percussion layers in, quietly building to the final chorus to take us home.

Third, lyrics/meanings

Anyone can recognize that this song is about Stray Kids unapologetically being themselves in their music. This was their answer to being labeled as 'noise music'.

So let's talk about some lyrics that popped out to us especially.

"We just keep on making new things Because we're one of a kind" "No one can copy us, our own game" "Idea bank, empty your head" "What's our secret ingredient, we don't use such a thing"

All of these convey the same message. "We did it on our own. Our heads are a bank of ideas and no one can copy it. We're unique. We're iconic. We'll keep on creating in our own way."

This can almost come across conceited, but instead it comes off confident. This isn't "we're better than you" but "we know what we're worth".

Just to emphasize that confidence, the song is literally called "God's Menu" as if the menu of Stray Kids music is worthy of godhood. And even magpies, the National Bird of Korea, will come to enjoy SKZ music.

[grimelords]

October Playlist

My October playlist is finished and it’s complete from Rico Nasty to Rachmaninoff. I absolutely guarantee there’s something you’ll love in this 3 and a half hours of music, and probably something you’ll hate too! Something for everyone!

If you’d like to have these playlists delivered to your inbox instead of having them randomly appear on your dash, please subscribe to my tinyletter here.

listen here

Santeria - Pusha T: In anticipation of Jesus Is King I relistened to the entire Wyoming Sessions project a few times, and a year removed from all the hype and controversy here's the thing: it's fucking great. The individual albums ranged pretty widely in quality and felt slightly unfinished for how short they were sometimes, but taking the project as a whole 5-album 120 minute playlist it turns out it's a masterpiece. My personal tracklist goes Ye/Daytona/Nasir/KTSE/Kids See Ghosts, which isn't release order but I think makes it flow the best - both Kanye albums bookending it and the less impactful Nas and Teyana Taylor albums buried a bit further in where you can appreciate them now that you're deep in the mindset of the whole thing rather than alone on their own.

Puppets (Succession Remix) - Pusha T & Nicholas Brittel: This remix is such a perfect match: Pusha T’s corporate villainy finally given a context and prestige it deserves. It’s also short enough that it could feasible be the actual theme song next season, which would be a marked improvement imo.

Use This Gospel - Kanye West, Clipse & Kenny G: I am and remain a Kanye stan, even after everything. It’s nice to see him going back to the extremely uneven mastering of MBDTF era, it’s a sound that is uniquely his and it’s fun to see him revisit it. The thick vocoder harmony is so soupy you get lost in it, and the way it opens up to include the full choir in the No Malice verse is beautiful. Kanye reunited Clipse through Christ and we have Him to thank for that at least. The Kenny G break is great, and the grain and dirt on the whole track when the beat kicks in is so gritty you can feel it.

Man Of The Year - Schoolboy Q: I didn't love the Chromatics album they surprise released but it did thankfully remind me of the time Schoolboy Q sampled Cherry for Man Of The Year. Taken exclusively on lyrics, Man Of The Year is a triumph: he's the man of the year and it's all worked out but the sample and the beat underscores the dead eyed melancholy that runs through the whole of Oxymoron of never winning even when you've won.

Cold - Rico Nasty: This song fucking tears your face off. Imagine STARTING your album at this level of intensity. She just goes straight to 100 and burns the house down. Outside of Lil John so few rappers can get away with just straight up screaming in the adlibs but the way she just lung tearingly screams GOOOO through this is fucking sick.

Fake ID - Riton & Kah-Lo: TikTok songs are becoming their own genre, but it’s a very nebulous sort of a mood encompassing everything from aughts pop punk hooks to skipping rope raps like this. It’s a strange new way for songs to blow up that everyone seems compelled to write articles about but my take on it is it’s exactly the same as ads were in the old days. Remember how many songs did absolute numbers because someone put it in a Motorola ad? Same thing except you’re not being sold a phone this time, so in some ways it’s better. Anyway, this song bangs. The spirit of 212 era Azealia Banks lives on even if she’s doing her best ever since then to kill it.

Doctor Pressure - MYLO & Miami Sound Machine: There was a very good era in the mid-2000s where you could just put mashups out as singles and they’d chart, it was sick. My only two examples are this and Destination Calabria but I’m sure there’s more. Drop The Pressure is a masterpiece but as an alternate version this mashup is equally masterful.  

If You’re Tarzan, I’m Jane - Martika: Martika is unfortunately best known for the 1989 one hit wonder Toy Soldiers, a sort of boring overdramatic ballad which is best known for being sampled by Eminem in 2004 in his quite bad super duper serious song Like Toy Soldiers. I say unfortunately because every other song on her first album is great, it’s all hypercolour 80s synthpop and I love this song especially because it is so completely stuffed with activity it becomes dizzying. It gets so lost in itself that they completely abandon the dramatic pause before “I’m Jane” for some reason toward the end and instead just layer three different tracks of vocal adlibs. Every part of this song is great, the weird ‘o we o we o’ chant before the second verse? The neighing horse guitar before the bridge? The musical tour of the world IN the bridge? The part where she says ‘I want to swing on your vine?’. This song has everything.

You Got Me Into This - Martika: Every part of the instrumentation in this is amazing. The bass sound, the main synth, the extremely athletic brass, the wonderful echoing 80s snare that’s as big as a house. I just love it. She also does some really intriguing slurs on the word ‘love’ all the way through, just moving it around absolutely anywhere.

Space Time Motion - Jennifer Vanilla: I love when someone has such a clearly defined aesthetic and mission from the very beginning. Jennifer Vanilla is the alter ego of Becca Kaufmann from Ava Luna who I've had in this playlist before but never competely investigated. Jennifer Vanilla feels like an episode of Sex And The City where Samantha gets really into Laurie Anderson and she is incredible. This video is the best mission statement I’ve ever seen and is currently criminally underviewed so please do your part and support the Jennifer cause by watching these two videos.

So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings - Caroline Polachek: Caroline Polachek said watch me write a Haim song and did it. Apparently the very early versions of this album started when she was in writing sessions for Katy Perry, but then it started to turn into something else and she took it for herself, and I think you can hear that. With more normal production and a little faster this is a hundred percent a Katy Perry song, but instead it’s completely uniquely Caroline Polachek and it’s all the better for it. And also Katy Perry must be furious because her new songs are simply not good at all.

Electric Blue - Arcade Fire: I just love the obsession of this song in the outro, chanting over and over and over “Cover my eyes electric blue, every single night I dream about you”

Promiscuous - Nelly Furtado and Timbaland: I got a youtube ad for one of those Masterclass videos the other day and it was Timbaland teaching production. This ad went for five minutes for some reason and I watched the whole thing and it made me admire Timbaland even more. He’s demonstrating his compositional technique which is basically to just beatbox, and then loop it, and then add some extra percussion layers with more beatboxing and hand percussion, then loop that and add a little melody by singing or humming. ‘It’s that simple’ he says. Then later he goes back in and puts in actual drums or synths or whatever. I was stunned because suddenly a lot of his music makes sense. Without the barrier of instrument or timbre to get hung up on it allows him to write from this instantly head-nodding place of just making up a little beat you can sing and dance to immediately. Listening to a lot of his music now you can hear the bones underneath everything so clearly, all his beats are supremely beatboxable and all his melodies are very hummable, they’ve never overcomplicated by instrumental skill or habits, they just exist to serve the song.

Serpent - TNGHT:  TNGHT are back baby and this song is like nothing I’ve ever heard before. It feels like afrofuturist footwork from another dimension, the mbira sounding lead against the oil drum percussion in this cacophony of yelps and screams that just builds to an irrepressible energy without a bassline in sight.

Ghosts Of My Life - Rufige Kru: I'm reading Mark Fisher's Ghosts Of My Life right now and some good person has put together a spotify playlist of all the songs he mentions. He has a whole essay about why this song is sick so I’m not going to go into it here but it’s interesting to hear about someone growing up with jungle when it’s a genre that has always felt very niche to me. I guess partly as a result of it never really making it mainstream as a genre here, and also me being a little too young for it.

Renegade Snares - Omni Trio: My biggest introduction to drum and bass comes from the game Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition and this really great song from the soundtrack that is finally on spotify after a very long absence. At almost the exact same time as I discovered this song with its spacious piano and repitched snares, I discovered Venetian Snares and breakcore in general. Having no particular frame of reference for breakcore as an offshoot of drum and bass only amplified its appeal to me as a completely alien genre that sounded like nothing else I’d ever heard, and so my personal history with drum and bass is a story of walking backwards into it after the fact which is interesting if not helpful.

Punching In A Dream - The Naked And Famous: The Mark Fisher book also mentions the Tricky song which I’ve never heard from which The Naked And Famous got their name and I thought ‘man remember The Naked And Famous, they were sick?’. The sort of harder edged Passion Pit instrumentation mixed with pop punk, a winning combination.

Vegas - Polica: My favourite part of this song is the unexpected blastbeats after the chorus, using their two drummers to their full advantage and just shaking the song by its foundations every now and then lest you get too comfortable.

Right Words - Cults: I’m beginning to suspect I may be the last surviving Cults stan but if this be my lot I’ll gladly do it

Running From The Sun - Chromatics: The new Chromatics album got me to relisten to their definitive document Kill For Love, and something new I appreciated this time about an album I love a lot is its length. Kill For Love is almost 80 minutes long and it luxuriates in that length. It’s sequenced perfectly so it never feels like it’s long for no reason, but large chunks just completely space out and go out of focus in the soft neon light and the second half of this song is a good example. The whole thing just evaporates into smoke and it feels perfect. If this were a shorter and more concise song that had a proper ending it wouldn’t feel right, this whole album has no straight edges at all and it’s all the better for it.

Chance - Angel Olsen: I cannot belive this song. This feels like she wrote her own version of My Way looking forward instead of back. Instead of the ruefully triumphant "I've lived a life that's full / I've traveled each and every highway" it's “I don't want it all / I've had enough / I don't want it all / I've had a love." before the turn from the future to the present at the end, where she gives up on a forever love in exchange for right now. I love how raw this vocal take feels. It's not her best voice but it feels very very honest as a result. She's just singing her heart out in this huge showstopping closer. In an interview she said "I didn’t love the recording of it very much, and now I just feel in love with it as a closing statement, because it’s a way of saying, ‘Look, I have hope for the next thing in my life.’ I’m not going to anticipate negativity or hate or an end. But instead of us looking towards forever, why don’t we just work on right now?"

Something To Believe - Weyes Blood: This album just keeps paying dividends. I’m systematically going through long obsessive periods with every single song on it and now it’s Something To Believe’s turn.

Don’t Shut Me Up (Politely) - Brigid Mae Power: Without meaning to, Brigid Mae Power seems to have created some incredible fusion of folk music and stoner metal. The way this song absolutely sits unmoving on one deep and resonant chord for so long is amazing. When it does change chords it feels like a full body effort to get up and shift. She has a similar feeling to Emma Ruth Rundle, who more explicitly wears her metal influences, but Brigid Mae Powers' strength is in how much it resembles the traditional folk side of the spectrum. Her voice is also amazing, with the huge effortless runs she goes on about halfway through just coming unmoored from the song completely and floating off into space.

Sweetheart I Ain’t Your Christ - Josh T. Pearson: I had a real problem with Josh T. Pearson for a long time because of how he presents as so authentic on this album, and as I’ve previously discussed in these playlists the concept of authenticity in country music is a source of neverending anguish for me. But his newest album The Straight Hits! has largely cured that for me because it’s not good at all, is extremely contrived (all the song titles have the word ‘hit’ in them) and he’s shaved his beard and replaced it with one of the worst irony moustaches I’ve ever seen. So now I’m free to enjoy The Last Of The Country Gentlemen as a character construction, which allows me a far deeper and truer engagement than the idea of a man actually living and thinking like this which is frankly a little embarrassing.

Codeine Dream - Colter Wall: I love this song, it has that feeling that great folk songs do of feeling like you’ve always known it. The strongest moments on this Colter Wall album to me are in songs like this that chase this particular feeling of morose isolation, and where he leans away from storytelling like his biggest hit Kate McCannon - a kind of cliche country murder ballad. This song is fantastic because of the way it wallows in this black depression not as a low point, but as a reprieve from the lower previous point. Things are as bad as they get now, and they’re always going to be like this, but at least I don’t dream of you anymore.

Motorcycle - Colter Wall: I only just found out about Colter Wall this month and have been listening to this album over and over. When I first heard him I though it was strange I'd never heard of him before because he's obviously some old country veteran based off his voice, but it turns out he's 24 and this is his first album he just sings like he ate a cigar. I love this song especially because it's so straighforward. It's a simple and supremely relatable mood: what if I bought a motorbike and fucking died.

Who By Fire - Leonard Cohen: I watched American Animals a couple of weeks ago and it’s a great movie, highly recommended. This song plays near the end and I waited for the credits to find out what this great song was, and like a rube found out it’s only one of the most celebrated songwriters of all time. I’ve never had much of a Leonard Cohen phase, somehow. In my mind I always get him mixed up with Lou Reed, which I’m learning is actually way off. I love the harmony vocals in this, and the way they move around into the shadows in the ‘who shall I say is calling’ parts.

Words From The Executioner To Alexander Pearce - The Drones: Alexander Pearce was a convict who escaped Sarah Island’s penal settlement in Tasmania with seven other convicts in 1822. He was recaptured two months later alone. In 1823 he re-escaped with a fellow convict, Thomas Cox and again was returned alone.He was executed by hanging later having eaten six men during his escape attempts.

It Ain’t All Flowers - Sturgill Simpson: I found this album going through the Pichfork 200 albums of the decade list and I feel like a fool for not having heard it sooner because now I am completely obsessed. Sturgill Simpson is doing the very best work in country music right now because he's looking backwards with one eye and forwards with the other and this song is a great illustration: a perfect Hank Williams Jr type country song with big voiced hollers that morphs into a surprise psych freakout for the whole second half.

Desolation Row (Take 1, Alternate Take) - Bob Dylan: I’ve always liked Desolation Row a lot as a song but the acoustic guitar on the album version is simply not good, it's just kind of mindlessly playing this long directionless solo the whole time and over the course of a song this long it really adds up to just being annoying. Luckily because it’s a Bob Dylan song there’s a whole universe of alternate takes and mixes and this is a great pared down version I found without it. The best kind of Bob Dylan songs are the ones where he just makes an endless stream of allusions and bizzare imagery, and this and Bob Dylan's 115th Dream are my favourite examples of it.

Living On Credit Blues - El Ten Eleven: This is a groove I get stuck in my head a lot, and this is also a song I think would work well as a theme for a tv show. I've been meaning to do a 30 second edit of it just for my own amusement, maybe I'll do that soon. El Ten Eleven are a duo where one guy plays drums and one guys plays a double necked guitar/bass and looping pedals and somehow against all the odds of that description they manage to make emotional, driving instrumental music of very deep feeling, like this song which is one of my all time favourites.

Dusty Flourescent/Wooden Shelves - Talkdemonic: This is sort of a companion Living On Credit Blues, and Talkdemonic are similarly an instrumental duo with good drums. This entire album from 2005 is highly recommended, it's a sort of halfway between the post rock of the time and a kind of acoustic hiphop instrumentals that ends up sounding very rustic and homemade, like a soudtrack for a winter cabin.

Turnstile Blues - Autolux: This is a perfect song, built around a perfect beat. Every part just fits perfectly.

Fort Greene Park - Battles: The new Battles album is finally out and I absolutely love it. I cannot think of another band that has shed members in the same way as Battles; originally a quartet on their first album, then a trio for their second and third and now down to a duo for their fourth album - and somehow still performing material from their first album live. The paring down has seemingly only servers to focus them and the new album sounds fresh but still distinctively Battles, with no sense of anything lost or missing. This song is my standout so far, and the guitar line in particular is so good and interesting to me because I don’t think I’ve ever heard Ian Williams play something so distinctly guitar-y in his whole career. This is a straight up pentatonic riff with bends and everything. Filtered through his usual chopped and looped oddness it feels like he’s almost gone all the back around the guitar continuum and is this close to just doing power chords next album. And I’ll support him!

Diane Young - Vampire Weekend: I've listened to this song a lot in my life and I only looked up the lyrics the other day to find out that the opening line is 'you torched a SAAB like a pile of leaves' which I somehow never noticed. What a power phrase. There's also this very good quote from Ezra about it: "I had this feeling that the world doesn’t want a song called ‘Dying Young’,“ says Koenig, "it just sounded so heavy and self-serious, whereas ‘Diane Young’ sounded like a nice person’s name.”" and he was right to do it. This song is 100 times better because he’s saying Diane Young than it would be if he was saying ‘Dying Young’. That’s a songwriting tip for you.

Monster Mash - Bootsy Collins & Buckethead: Hey did you hear Bootsy Collins and Buckethead did a cover of the monster mash? Thank god for freaks.

The Dark Sentencer - Coheed And Cambria: There's not that many bands that I absolutely loved as a teenager that I've completely abandoned. I've moved on from a lot but I'll still keep up with them if they have a new album or something. Coheed And Cambria are one that I've almost completely turned my back on. They've had 3 apparently pretty patchy albums since I stopped listening after Year Of The Black Rainbow, which was extremely bad and really taught me what people mean when they say an album is 'overproduced'. On a whim I decided to see what they're up to now and listened to their album from last year and guess what: it rocks. It's got everything you'd expect from them: big riffs, bad and confusing lyrics, his weird high voice, overwrought and overlong songwriting, cheesy muscleman solos. Everything about this band is sort of cheesy and embarrassing and takes itself way too seriously, but I'm discovering slowly that that's what's so good about it. The weird pulp sci-fi story and mindset that underpins this whole band is ridiculous and overwrought and as a result it gives the music a reason to exist the way it does. It’s so big and dumb because the story it serves is so big and dumb. It feels exactly like reading Perry Rhodan or some increidibly long and dense but not especially good series like that, it’s pulp music and that’s what I love about it.

Romance In A (6 Hands) - Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano works for 4 hands (where two guys sit next to each other on the same piano) have always seemed to tend towards the realm of the gimmick or party trick, and works for 6 hands (where three guys do it) even more so - but this Rachmaninoff piece is just beautiful and I can’t believe I haven’t heard of it before this month. It doesn’t overload everyone with a million things to do, it just builds this very wide harmonic bed for the simple melody to swim in - then the way the melody transfers over to the middle register is just magical before the tension of the final section takes over and builds.

Love's Theme - The Love Unlimited Orchestra: I’m so glad I got to learn about the Love Unlimited Orchestra this month. Aside from having one of the best names in music, they were Barry White’s backing band and had their own solo instrumental records too. Here’s a fun aside: Kenny G was a member when he was 17 and still in high school. This is a genre of music that has seemed to totally disappear into the realm of parody and farce only which is sort of a shame because it is unironically very beautiful and dense in its own way.

Dancing In The Moonlight - Liza Minelli: Can you believe I thought Dancing In The Moonlight by Toploader was an original until the other day when my girlfriend played this Liza Minelli version that predates it by several decades? This also isn’t the original! It was written by a band named King Harvest in 1972, with this version AND a version by Young Generation both coming out in 73 and a whole bunch of others in between (including a Baha Men version in 94) before Toploader finally had a proper hit with it in 2000. Truly the world works in mysterious ways. This version is the finest I think, it just goes and goes, frenetically unwinding at a breakneck pace before opening up into a flute solo of all things and then winding up again even and finishing in a kick line breakdown. Absolutely no limits.

Girls - Royal Headache: The sheer amount of power and melody that this song manages to pack into a minute and a half is incredible, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more instantly relatable opening lyric than “Girl! Think they’re to fine for me! Oh girls! And I’m inclined to agree!”

Pov Piti - Matana Roberts: In anticipation of Matana Roberts new volume of her Coin Coin album series that just came out I relistened through the three previous albums and they are even more powerful than I remembered. This song serves as a pretty good mission statement for the whole project, and the heartrending tortured screams that open it set the tone for the rest of it. Matana Roberts sings the injustices of slavery into being, and her sing-song delivery highlights the trauma - her indifferent delivery mirroring the indifference of the world at large. The way she rattles off this story like she’s gone over it a million times and grown numb to the facts only accentuates the pain in the telling, a pain that rises to the surface in the screams of her instrument and herself.  

Kingdoms (G) - Sunn 0))): This new Sun 0))) album is one of my favourites they’ve ever done because it’s so straightforward and back to basics. Every song is just ten minutes of straight up no-nonsense, big, rich, drone. They even put the notes in the track names so you can drone along if you like.

listen here

[fmdtaeyongarchive]

↬ we are no more than friends, i know.

date: august 2020 / october 2020.

location: kiha’s studio / ash’s apartment studio

word count: 2,048 words.

summary: idk. ash has issues other than the vogue korea september issue if you catch my drift. the ending of this is so melodramatic but so is ash, leave us alone

triggers: alcohol mentions + metaphorical suicidal imagery and gun violence imagery. also metaphorical blood imagery. yeah, ash is on his love = death shit again. i’m sorry. he’s not taking his antidepressants in the later parts of this + he’s read too much about bonnie and clyde for this song + meningitis causes “emotional disruption” so please just blame it on all of that.

notes: creative claims verification. more mentions of youngjoo. also…  an appearance from npc ash’s producer crew friend kiha so i gotta say now that kyung and kiha have both made appearances in ash solos... erin is the only one of ash’s npc crew trio friends with a brain to mouth filter, which is why he gets along with her the best.

ash doesn’t have much experience with unrequited love.

for someone who’s defined so much of his music-making by the heartbreak he’s been through, he knows the heartbreak of once-requited or still-requited feelings far more than he does the heartbreak of loving someone who doesn’t feel the same way. perhaps it’s one small way in his life that he’s been lucky. rarely have his feelings that weren’t returned ever gotten very serious. he knows getting starry-eyed over someone who doesn’t know he exists or affection for someone who doesn’t see him as an option, even yearning for someone he suspects might be yearning for him in return without confirmation, but love? love is a two-way street.

which is why he’s caught off-guard when kiha asks him if he’s in love with some chick who doesn’t love him back when ash shows him the latest song he’s been working on.

“huh?” the shock on ash’s face is genuine, but kiha laughs like ash is fronting for the sake of evading their conversation.

“come on, man. no one who actually doesn’t care writes a whole bryson tiller knockoff with the lyrics ‘just friends, who cares?’ that’s rule number one of the friendzone.”

ash scoffs and turns back around in his seat, trying not to show that the other’s words had caused some hurt, which only earns another chuckle from his friend.

kiha really gets on ash’s nerves sometimes. being his go-to clubbing buddy doesn’t make him an expert on what’s going on in ash’s life, and ash doesn’t even believe in the friendzone anyway. that’s for people who believe the world revolves around whether or not they can have sex with each person they have in their lives.

he only gets more annoyed as kiha speaks yet again. “what? too much of a hot shot for the girls and guys not to jump at the chance to get with you?”

kiha is joking and ash knows, but it strikes a tender nerve that ash would very much prefer were left alone. there come times like this when their different worlds clash too strongly. kiha finds the whole idol thing to be a joke and, frankly, so does ash, but that doesn’t mean he wants to deal with his friend mocking his entire public image.

he burns red with guilt at the simple fact one person immediately comes to mind as kiha drones on about ash ‘getting in his feelings’.

it’s not like he thinks he and youngjoo have anything in common with infamous american criminals on the run, but he has to channel feelings from somewhere and despite his best efforts to pretend otherwise, ash knows very well where nearly all of the romantic feelings he lays bare in his music come from these days.

it’s not that ash hasn’t considered that what he feels for youngjoo isn’t reciprocated, but then again, there are times she says things and does things and he lets his hopes get the best of him in believing he isn’t the only one feeling what he does. and even if she feels nothing for him, that’s fine, too. it’s not like he’s fallen head over heels, unable to get up, can’t eat or sleep without her. he has a little crush, and that’s fine. he’s not the first person on earth to have a crush and he won’t be the last and, considering their history, it’s only natural that sleeping together again for such an extended period of time would reawaken once-dormant feelings. he’s let himself get comfortable, that’s all. he could stop feeling the way he does any time he wants to.

it doesn’t matter whether her feelings for him go beyond what they have or not, anyway. that’s the point of the song. nothing’s ever going to happen between them again besides what they have now, so it doesn’t matter if they’re just friends or if either of them want more. that’s where the bonnie and clyde metaphor had come in — doomed no matter what they do, playing with fire, not belonging to each other.

after all, bonnie parker had been wearing her wedding ring from another man when she’d died by clyde barrow’s side.

bonnie and clyde may very well be lovers immortalized in name together and romanticized in media, but sworn to one another is something they’d never been.

as if on cue, ash’s silence prompts kiha to speak again. “and what’s the bonnie and clyde thing about?”

“american bank robbers? the quintessential romanticized reference of doomed lovers, if you aren’t counting romeo and juliet.” ash doesn’t bother to turn around from where he’s fiddling with one of the vocal lines to check and see if recognition lights up kiha’s eyes or not. if he’s going to be a dick, ash isn’t above being a little condescending about his song inspiration. “bonnie and clyde died for their crimes instead of as casualties of a violent feud between families, though. they saw their death as inevitable, if bonnie parker’s poems are to be believed. nihilism in the form of passionate love. i’ve been reading up on them here and there. they’re pretty interesting, actually, once you shed the lore around them and look at them as real people who did some bad shit.”

“damn, you’re ready to die for some girl?”

of course that’s what he’d taken from everything else ash had said. all ash had wanted was to ask kiha if he thought the vocal delivery should be looser or not, and this is where he’d gotten. he isn’t sure why he’d expected anything better.

“that’s not what i said, kiha.” ash rolls his eyes, knowing full well that the older man can’t see him, as he puts the finishing touches on his work before saving it and beginning to pack his things up as fast as he can manage while still looking unaffected. “it’s probably best if i go. it’s getting late.”

“never knew you were so masochistic. that just emotional or does it make you freaky in bed, too?”

the look on kiha’s face tells ash he’s finally realized too late that ash isn’t in the mood for the kind of jokes he’s cracking about the song or the untold story behind it. kiha doesn’t try to stop ash from leaving, though, and he doesn’t open his mouth again until ash is in the doorway and turns around to concede a goodbye.

“hey. you don’t strike me as the hell-raising clyde type, but if some girl, this ‘bonnie’ of yours doesn’t like you back, you gotta get yourself together and move on. why would you put everything on the line for some girl you have to fake not caring about? you gonna repeat history? sounds like bonnie and clyde didn’t get their happily ever after the first time around.”

ash forgets why he’s friends with kiha sometimes. the other man is a great songwriter for someone who seems so unwilling to experience his own emotions and so willing to give advice ash hadn’t asked for.

he has the misfortune of thinking kiha is done right before he pipes up again. “i know you’re done with relationships or whatever, man, but no one who doesn’t want to be loved back writes the shit you come in here and show me, so… i don’t know. go out there and find someone who will love you back so i don’t have to sit through your weird double homicide, dying side by side love fantasies until we’re old and grey and that pretty boy face can’t work its magic from our rocking chairs anymore.”

“hey, kiha? didn’t ask.” that’s all he gets for parting words before ash leaves and forgets everything kiha had said under more shots than he can keep track of.

it doesn’t bother him that kiha cuts right through every layer of armor he’s constructed so easily without so much as lifting a finger when all ash had wanted was some objective musical criticism.

no.

ash wants a drink after a long day. that’s all.

_____________________________________________________________

that’s all.

ash finds himself mentally repeating the phrase more and more as time races on.

kiha hadn’t said the song was a stupid idea, but in the days following their conversation, ash wonders if it is. the concept had been a spur of the moment one, based on a first verse spinning off into something new when he’d fallen down a rabbit hole online one night and he’d begun to wonder: in a different life, would he be a clyde barrow or a roy thornton? the thrill ride or the one that gets left behind?

because those are the only two options for someone like him in a situation like he’s in, in the end.

the song teeters dangerously on the edge of low synths and hi-hats, distorted brass and whispers under the track, a sonic mirror image of the clashing in his head. he thinks if he asked someone with more experience to their name with writing hits, they’d tell him it’s too busy to ever be a fully mainstream record, but ash is past writing for the mainstream with this song.

he doesn’t know if he even wants anyone to hear this. will they pity him? mock him? know him more than he wants them to, like kiha had when he’d reached right into the center of ash’s chest and squeezed around the bloody pulp his heart has become?

each time he ponders any one of the one hundred questions swimming through his head for too long, he’s tempted to leave everything behind again to find his way to the nearest club with a semi-safe standard for who they let in their doors. instead, he gets catharsis by kicking up the percussion up a few levels in volume and re-recording vocals over the parts that feel too soft listening to them back. his tone is darker now, more destructive instead of the romantic interpretation he’d taken on the first demo recording, but everything falls apart after the second chorus and in a peak-climbing moment of emotion, he exits the file completely, leaving him with two-thirds of a track and the remaining self-preservation not to come back to it while it’s playing games with his mind.

his self-preservation must get dropped somewhere in the ocean during his plane trips from seoul to indonesia to malaysia to seattle back to seoul, because coming back to the track happens only a few months after he abandons it.

the first night he returns to it, he weighs it down with the sound of his heart — a call that can’t be made.

if his heart is a payphone, he doesn’t have any change left to sound out a call for help, for forgiveness. 

if he were to call her, would she answer or has she already cleared his number from her phone and blocked it permanently?

the track drops out and mellows where he’d left off. 

even still would you remember me? nah, nah, i’m just...

he’d only hate himself more if the goodness of her heart could be great enough to give him a second, third, tenth chance.

the head-pounding bass kicks back in and then all of the air is sucked back out of it like being flung out into the black abyss of space.

a gunshot.

it’s the closest he can come to describing what he’d done to himself in his bedroom that night. he’d grabbed the gun and put it to his own head. there’s no one else to blame.

_____________________________________________________________

only a few days later, he opens up the file bonnieandclyde again, this time in his studio with full awareness of what it is and where he’d left it. the tequila shots he’d had to celebrate his return home to a dark and empty apartment after the end of his day aren’t enough to get him past the outskirts of tipsy.

the confusion of loss he’d left off at isn’t the correct ending anymore. a week after, and he knows the song doesn’t end with the trigger being pulled, but the last thoughts he’d had as every held-back thought had trickled out of his head in a bright red stream onto his carpet, his own heart beating in his ears — the only part of him foolish enough to keep fighting to stay alive.

i want, want you to know baby, i want you to know how much i love you how much i need you