Nine years after their second album titled “Youth!”, South Korean indie duo Glen Check is back with “Bleach”, a mash-up of electronica, rock, and R&B. Here, they take us through each individual track.
June One: We always like to have an intro track for an album – “Acid Test” was literally a testing piece while designing the sonic spectrum of the album. We got inspired by many acid techno tracks and wanted to make an intro song using instruments that acid techno artists frequently use, such as TB-303 by Roland. We layered many electric bass guitar recordings on top of the TB-303 to add new flavours, and ended up just naming the song “Acid Test”.
Hyuk Jun: All great albums need a good intro track. “Acid Test” shows all the elements that we wanted to show in this album, guitars, acid lines, hip-hop breaks.
Dive Baby, Dive
June One: We both grew up listening to a lot of rock bands. We perform live with a band, like a rock band. We both were in a school band back in high school. However, we never released a ‘proper’ rock song, which is why we made this song. It was arguably the hardest song to record and mix. We had to study a lot about mixing and recording in general and had to purchase a new guitar (Fender Jaguar with two humbucker pickups) to get the sound right.
We had like a million versions of the mix. We’re happy with the result now.
Hyuk Jun: This is an important song for us because it really expands our musical spectrum. Also, a really fun track to perform live and we can’t wait to play this live at summer festivals.
June One: This song was the very first song we finished for the album. We struggled for years to get a clear vision for our next step, and this song gave us the vision we needed. We wrote the song like how we wrote songs for our first album back in 2011. We tried not to think too much about how fresh it should sound, how progressive it should look in the history of Glen Check. We just wrote it. It taught us the importance of “bleaching our minds.”
Hyuk Jun: A song that links sentiments from our first album with what we are experiencing now. It’s a good idea to remind yourself of your roots every once in a while. An idea of where you come from can be a hint at where you need to go.
June One: After learning a lesson through the writing process of “Dazed & Confused,” we gave another shot at writing a song based on the writing method of our second album ‘YOUTH!’. It’s a little funny because although you follow a certain writing method, it sounds completely different from what we did before. It’s fresh, more honest, and has progressed somehow.
Hyuk Jun: Much of the writing process for our second album ‘YOUTH!’ took place in Barcelona. The inspirations for this song were quite simple – palm trees, youth, waves.
June One: All the songs in the album are about situations where you feel fear, loneliness, shame, and so forth. Some are based on personal experiences, some are imaginary. “Sins” is about someone loving someone so much that the person doesn’t mind becoming a sinner.
Is it a good thing? Is it true love? We’re not suggesting to actually become a sinner to love someone boldly but to look into yourself and see what you truly want to love. Because maybe, it’s not love, it could be some sort of separation anxiety or the fear of being thrown away, and they’re illusions.
Hyuk Jun: A love song, albeit a dark one. Because all good things, even love, have a dark side. Maybe that’s what makes it so worth it because what’s “love without a fight?”
June One: You really gotta shake things off sometimes. We wanted to have a short interlude-type track in the middle of the album with a strong statement. It’s about 45 seconds long but was definitely one of the most difficult tracks to make.
We wanted to blend ‘shoegaze’ guitar sounds and B-Boy drum breaks. We imagined Supreme’s skateboard videos and B-Boy dancing clips while making this song.
Hyuk Jun: We’re both 90’s boys who grew up listening to albums on Walkmans. We both love interludes in between songs that really bring the whole album together and give it character.
June One: This is the only song that features another artist on the album. We sent a short loop of sounds to Sokodomo and asked him to record a verse on top of it. We came up with so many new ideas when we heard his verse that the song ended up being completely different from the demo loops we sent.
It’s actually inspired by a song I uploaded on Youtube a couple of years ago, called “Y i Like U”. We took the groove from that song and built a new vibe around it.
Hyuk Jun: Big thanks to Sokodomo for being the first and only artist so far to feature on one of our songs. It’ll be fun to have him on stage with us when we perform this one in front of a live audience.
June One: Originally, this song was written for another solo male artist in Korea. However, we loved the song so much that we decided not to sell the song. We deconstructed the whole song and replaced parts with new sounds to make it sound more “Glen Check”. Many of the synth sounds used in this song were inspired by artists like Beach House and other dream-pop bands.
Hyuk Jun: Ignorance is bliss and sometimes we’re better off not knowing how certain things will end. This was one of the central ideas behind the making of ‘Bleach’, not knowing how we wanted the songs or the album to turn out and just going with the flow.
June One: During a random conversation between us, we realized we both had a similar experience in dance clubs: That moment when you feel alone, feeling apart from everybody else in the area. That moment when it seems like everybody else except myself is having the greatest time of their life. That moment when it feels like nobody is interested or has the slightest passion to care about my existence. “Raving” is about that moment. We somehow felt lighter after finishing the song. Making the song was a “bleaching” exercise of the mind.
Hyuk Jun: We are both influenced by the club scene in Korea. Nights can get weird sometimes but there is just something about raving that makes us just want to keep going back.
June One: We like albums with experimental sounds in between hits. We like to experiment with sounds as well without thinking deeply about playing them live on stage, or writing a vocal melody on top of the sounds. In our previous EP ‘The Glen Check Experience’, we included an experimental track called “Long Strange Days Pt.1”. We named it Part 1 because we knew we’d want to experiment again in future albums.
Now in ‘Bleach’, we have “Long Strange Days Pt.2”. It’s inspired by the psychedelic sounds of Boards Of Canada, an electronic duo we love.
Hyuk Jun: A continuation of the Long Strange Days series. A similar idea to “Sometimes You Gotta Shake It Off” in that it gives the album more structure as well as serves as an outlet for some of our more experimental projects.
June One: This song is about the fear of being still. Oddly, many people have fears of being calm and still. It’s because they secretly fear their surroundings. Stress is another word to describe this feeling. You want to run away. We experienced the same thing. Visually we were inspired by dark gothic images.
Hyuk Jun: Sometimes you feel like you just gotta run away from it all. We’ve all been there as well. I especially enjoy the synth lines on this track. The distortion gives it a guitar-like texture which I think is interesting.
June One: This song is mainly about shyness. Shyness comes from a fear when you look into it deeply. When you’re shy, you’re afraid of rejection, you’re afraid of judgments about you, you’re afraid of attention, and so on. “4ever” is about a person falling in love with someone, but feeling too shy to make an acquaintance. The person loses the chance to get to know that loving someone.
However, so many words, thoughts, and feelings are going through the person’s mind. The person sings “I’ll be thinking about you” inside their head, which nobody will hear in real life.
Hyuk Jun: June One’s vocal performance on this track was phenomenal. It’s a track that really shows what a long way he has come as a singer. This one should also be really epic when we perform it live.
June One: “Bleaching” the mind is like meditation. It’s about letting go of things you held very tight. It’s about taking things slow. Although “I Feel Like Ridin’ Slow” is not about meditation, it contains a similar meaning. It’s about letting things go and taking things slow for full pleasure, appreciating the things around you. The outro was inspired by Pixies – “Where is my mind?”.
Hyuk Jun: Living in modern society can really be fast-paced and it can be hard to appreciate the small things in life as we go along. We should always remember to cherish every moment and always be mindful of the present as we move into the future.
Once you’re done with this review of “Bleach” by Glen Check, click here to catch up with our April 2022 issue!
RELATED ARTICLES
