[Lucid Fall] Mintpaper Interview

As Lucid Fall is Mintpaper's Person of the month February, they did an interview with him.

It is a rather comfortable one and nice to read. I didn't gave his radio appearance a listen yet though.


Mintpaper: Because of your schedule of the level from an Idol, there were a lot of people worrying about your health.
Lucid Fall: Actually, it’s not so good. So I’m drinking almost no alcohol. A difficult point is also that the radio broadcast (EBS World Music Travel) is in midst of the day.

Mintpaper: Is it one year now since you came to Korea after the end of your long oversea travel? How did you spend that time?
Lucid Fall: Since I came back last year February 3rd, it’s exactly one year. When I came back that time, I had the live ICON performance right away. After that I looked around for a house, after moving in April I arranged the house and… I worked on the album and it came out. Like this one year passed.

Mintpaper: Did you do a lot of travels in Korea?
Lucid Fall: I couldn’t go to a lot. To that extend that I stayed for just one or two days. I went to a hot spring in Icheon once, went with my parents to Hadong, and went with my school friends to the Southern Sea. I thought I would be able to go on a quiet travel, but it didn’t go well.

Mintpaper: It seems you decided the title ‘Les Miserables’ for the 4th album long time ago, didn’t you had any difficulties because of that?
Lucid Fall: I decided it 2 years ago. There was nothing especially difficult; my thoughts were connected to it all the time. Because I didn’t wrote some exceptional lyrics. As I was connected to the title, the process was a rather fluent one, like flowing water.

Mintpaper: Different from your 2nd and 3rd album, you continuously stayed in Korea from beginning to the end and made the album during living here; it seems to be something special.
Lucid Fall: As I told at the Mint Radio, first, the way of doing the job was different. It is also different that the mixing and mastering has been all done in Korea. During that time I always wasn’t there when the mastering was done. I just did the mixing and had to go in a hurry. So it’s not that there aren’t inconvenient points. Of course it is a nice feeling to see everything from beginning to end on site. The album jackets before where just talked about per cable, this time, continuously seeing each other, we could talk about it.

Mintpaper: That’s why the fish, which you like, appears on the jacket.
Lucid Fall: The person who shot the photo said that it would be nice to have a fish in it after listening to the demo, so the person went to the Coex Mall Aquarium, I think, and shot the photo.

Mintpaper: Who is the female vocal that participates at ‘Les Miserables’ and ‘문수의 비밀’? I’m curious why you worked together with a female vocal.
Lucid Fall: It was also like that at the last album, but, I don’t really like my voice and I wanted to avoid that it becomes monotonous. So I always had other vocals in view. From the beginning I thought of writing ‘Les Miserables’ for a female voice; people said ‘it wouldn’t be bad if there’s a version with you singing’, so I wrote the lyrics again and two versions were recorded. I also wanted to write ‘문수의 비밀’ for a guest vocal. I wanted to let it be sung by a child, but that seemed to be too conventional, so I made a compromise.
I continuously searched, and received recommendations from several people. Bong Nina wanted a voice like a little girl, so after searching I came to know her through a friend; she’s a student majoring in vocal now and I came to know Lee Darang through Yoon Jung Oh.
People also talked about why I worked together with a vocal with an unknown name; I didn’t thought of anything, I just wanted to find the person with the fitting voice to the song.

Mintpaper: Seeing the album with all its flow, ‘문수의 비밀(Munsoo’s secret)’ seems a more jumping track. Because of that cute charm, there are also a lot of people coming to know and like Lucid Fall through ‘문수의 비밀’. Munsoo also seems to have a lot of popularity.
Lucid Fall: Am I benefitting from Munsoo? (Laughter)

Mintpaper: I know that you tend to write lyrics and song at the same time. As I am interested in your lyrics, I am curious how you write them. Do write down the lyrics really fluently or do you rather worry a lot about them.
Lucid Fall: These days it also happens that the song comes out first. In the case of the lyrics, that can be divided into two kinds, I wrote ‘고등어’ and ‘문수의 비밀’ really fast, and ‘그대는 나즈막히’, ‘외툴이’ took a really long time. ‘평범한 사람’, ‘걸어가자’ were also written rather fast.

Mintpaper: I saw an interview that said that writing poems is your dream. If there’s a difference between writing poems and writing lyrics, what is it?
Lucid Fall: They’re totally different. You feel it when time goes by, ‘lyrics are listened to by the ear, poems are read by the eye’. There are still countries in which poems are read, but in our land’s culture poems aren’t read anymore. It seems the rhyme(각운), you feel when a poem is read, is being substituted by the rhyme(라임) of the lyrics now. When you write lyrics, the feel of rhythm, can it be called like that, there are also times it comes out unconsciously. On the other side you’re not talking of rhymes in poems now.
With the time I came to think that poems and lyrics are different fields. Both have the form of poetry, but one is very visual and the other one is very auditory.

Mintpaper: Did you ever thought of going on the platform?
Lucid Fall: I don’t know. I met Ma Jong Ki, and thought about doing it… That time I didn’t thought of poem and lyrics the way I do now. I thought ‘lyrics are the form of an imperfect poem’; my thoughts changed a lot.

Mintpaper: Different from the album trend these days, it has a long running time and the number of songs is a lot; don’t you hear that often?
Lucid Fall: I actually planned to leave 3 songs away and go with 10 songs. But I absolutely can’t take away songs. Still, I wanted to pick out some this time, but at the end every song has been included.

Mintpaper: Seeing people who like Lucid Fall, there are a lot of cases that all have another favorite album; why is it like that?
Lucid Fall: Maybe it is because the album styles are bit by bit different. It will be in future also like that. Looking at it, it’s not that you know an artist right from the start, so it is that the album you come to hear first stays strong, that’s why. In my case, I listened to ‘Chrysanthemum(들국화)’ backwards. I listened to ‘추억 들국화(EP, 1987)’, then the 2nd album and after that the first; my preference is exactly this order. A lot of people say they like the first album the most, I don’t feel like that.

Mintpaper: It seems it is the first time for you being able to be active so long like this after the album release. There is really a lot on the schedule you have to follow, there seem to be also some difficult things.
Lucid Fall: Photo shooting becomes uncomfortable. There are also things I don’t like to do because it is difficult for my body… I don’t like it the most, when I get the feeling that I become the subject for photography. It can also be that I have a good mood at the same photo shooting; ‘Please try it once like this. Please take your hand up once. Please take off your socks.’ Those things are when it becomes uncomfortable. It is as if I become a pierrot… I mean, my job isn’t model.

Mintpaper: There’s also another point that changed because you’re in Korea, the frequency of seeing the name ‘Guest: Lucid Fall’ on other concert posters became more.
Lucid Fall: There are three types of doing a guest performance. Either I really like the music, or we are personally really close, or there’s a debt. In the case of Oh So Young, I do it because of the debt that she did a featuring before; I do it for No Reply because I really like their music. I think No Reply’s ‘그대 걷던 길’ was the single of last year.

Mintpaper: The encore performance is over, what do you want to do if you have free time?
Lucid Fall: I want to do a hot spring travel.

Mintpaper: Lastly, a word to Mintpaper members please.
Lucid Fall: Please come to the Beautiful Mint Life in May. Because it is something new Mintpaper does, I’m also curious. Would be nice if we see each other in spring.