While the melodies here are expected fare for what you’d expect in a post-shoegaze record, they’re punctuated by piano, keyboard, and synth hits that bring them out of the realm of standard. Meanwhile the face-scorching heat of the MBV-cribbing “ 격변의 시대 (Age of Fluctuation)” comes courtesy of those thick, opaque guitars, produced in such a way that it hits the heart directly. The fact that they’re over-compressed actually works wonders here, forming a messy edge that counterbalances the loose candor of the vocals.
On punk-forward tracks like “청춘반란 (Youth Rebellion)” and “변명 (Excuse)“ the drums hit hard and crisply, the kick drum side-chained in a way that punches through the walls of distorted guitar. It’s the emphasis on high-end that does the most work, piercing through the ears like a sonic emergency. Much of the source of Next Part’s power is in its production, which across the board feels miles ahead of its more humble predecessor. For people aligned with that energy, this record will be like catnip. Lyrically and aurally, the album is a cyclone of nihilistic hikokomori ennui cast in a shimmering darkness, a dream pairing of shoegaze textures and emo colors. If thousands of English-speaking people are suddenly starting to connect en masse to the work of one anonymous Korean student, it’s because To See the Next Part of the Dream succeeds so viscerally in its goal. That makes for a peculiar meta dynamic, one where a self-described “loser” takes inspiration from a fictional artist – someone written to be larger than life – and makes music that both reveres and attempts to transmit that unplaceable power. Similarly, we don’t know the person behind Korean indie-rock act 파란노을 (Parannoul), who takes the underwritten mythos behind Iwai’s film and turns it into a thematic foundation (their first record, Let’s Walk on the Path of a Blue Cat, directly references the screen name of the film’s sadist center, Shusuke Hoshino). In its dream-like cinematography juxtaposed with harrowing teenage cruelty, the film feels like a precursor to Gus Van Sant’s Young Death trilogy in how it portrays adolescence in an adolescent language: all edges and rife with extremes.
Shunji Iwai’s 2002 film All About Lily Chou-Chou depicts high-school students who are connected by their fandom towards an enigmatic pop singer. For a guide to the review color rating system, click here.
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