[Hyukoh's Fifth Album: Love]
Hyukoh returns with a new album,
, one year after <24: How to find true love and happiness>. While Hyukoh's previous working method involved moving toward a predetermined musical goal, the production of this album was conducted in a predominantly process-oriented manner. With instrument recording taking place at the historic Real World Studios in the UK—where artists like Paul Simon, Amy Winehouse, Björk, and Kanye West have worked—and vocal recording and mixing conducted in Berlin with long-time collaborator Norman Niche, this album moves closer to the analog sound that Hyukoh has actively pursued since [23]. In terms of form, they sought to strip away everything except the most essential elements required to create an album. The members pride themselves on this being the result they are most satisfied with sonically; it can be described as a record of the musical dialogue and the process shown by Hyukoh, a band now in its sixth year since debut.
[‘Love’ instead of ‘26’]
“Love exists in the form of what Hegel called ‘the most bizarre contradiction’—something that becomes more difficult and complex the more you know it, and thus cannot be solved by reason. Yet, love remains almost the only alternative that reaches out to us as we groan in the valley of contradiction and absurdity. That is why we repeatedly question the essence of love.” _Jang Seok-ju,
Hyukoh's album titles, which had previously been the age of the members during production—such as [22], [23], and [24: How to find true love and happiness]—have changed. Having sung about the various emotions and thoughts of youth, as symbolized by the numbers in their titles, Hyukoh now expands their horizon of interest and empathy to include various problematic phenomena occurring daily and politically in our society, as well as the practical methods to improve and overcome them.
Issues we experience daily—such as discrimination, hate, fixed hierarchies, generational conflict, and environmental destruction—are the results of a contemporary social structure built rapidly and deformatively without reflective thinking. Rather than presenting a grand catchphrase to overturn and improve these aspects, Hyukoh proposes ‘love’ as a daily practice that can be started today.
Hyukoh, who has supported various forms of love in previous lyrics and music videos, revealed this not through a direct and explicit message in this album, but through their attitude toward the music and the working process. As an alternative to the contemporary mode of consumption that consumes everything quickly and easily objectifies it, the ‘love’ proposed by Hyukoh is not about lightly liking and letting go of objects presented by media or trends, but is another word for a deep affection for a subject one has independently discovered and the happiness found therein.
[A Connected Song Structure]
Consisting of six songs in total, the album treats every track as a title track, and the six songs as one. The members of Hyukoh state that the six songs—‘Help’, ‘Hey Sun’, ‘Silverhair Express’, ‘Flat dog’, ‘World of the Forgotten’, and ‘New born’—can be viewed as a single 27-minute piece. Furthermore, the six songs included in were meticulously mastered so they can be enjoyed consecutively in the order they appear on the album. While each of the six songs possesses its own unique charm, we hope you experience in its entirety as a single narrative and flow with a long breath.
[Wolfgang Tillmans, , 2011]
The image decorating the album is [Work Title] by Wolfgang Tillmans, a representative photographer of the contemporary era, used with the artist's full support. Tillmans was the first non-British citizen to win the Turner Prize, the UK's most prestigious art award, and has received global attention and support through his work recording the daily lives of minorities and outsiders and the objects surrounding them.
Tillmans' 2011 work [Work Title] is a photograph of a roadside flowerbed where various types of plants are mixed together. This scene—where they are all withering together at different speeds, yet all remain alive—is an image that represents the thematic consciousness of , and will be used for the album cover, posters, tour t-shirts, and more.