[INTERVIEW] Indie band Autumn Vacation - Part 2

Autumn Vacation [Lee Jin-hyuk/10Asia]

10: What kind of voice?
Gyepy: A completely different voice, rather than just trying to refine my original tone. I recently had a chance to do a narration for a traveling program and the producer wanted a grown-up voice so that's how I spoke but he said I sounded lifeless. So I tried to sound more lively but then he said I sounded young. It turned out that my voice can't satisfy both aspects. So it was through that narrating experience that I came to realize what voice would come out when I use my voice in a certain way. It was a very interesting experience. I think it'll help a lot in controlling my voice in the future.

10: What is it like to find out new things about your own voice?
Gyepy: It's like adding a component. Like I had a hand so far but I installed a bluetooth? (laugh) My spectrum is widening with the addition of something new that's good.

10: Another characteristic of Autumn Vacation is that a female vocal sings songs where the guy is the main character. Is there a reason this is the case?
Bobby Chung: I'm looking forward to one of the two things when I make a new song. That either this is something that Gyepy has to sing or this is something that'll be interesting if Gyepy sings it. The latter case is where the guy will be the focus of the song.
Gyepy: It's not like we decided to go for it for fun because it's something that other musicians don't. Not that it's also something we discussed to the point that it has post-modernistic meaning. (laugh) We both think a lot about how people will respond to the songs we record but it becomes unfamiliar to them when the speaker of the song is a guy. And they'll think about the lyrics to the song again because of that.

Autumn Vacation vocalist Gyepy [Lee Jin-hyuk/10Asia]

10: What do you pay the most attention to when singing a song with an unfamiliar vibe?
Gyepy: One of the things that I wanted to express the most through Autumn Vacation was duplicity. I want my voice to sound cheerful yet gloomy and gloomy yet cheerful. Sort of like overlapped colors. Bobby's lyrics are like that as well -- as if they have twists to them somewhere. He never expresses things directly.

10: It seems like you don't want your song to be interpreted in a single way.
Chung: Of course there are times it's more fun for what we sing about to come off directly. But with us, there is the peculiar vibe that Gyepy's voice creates and the lyrics may be sweet but make the listener wonder, 'What's this lonely feeling I'm getting?' There's an ironical resonance within our songs.

10: What's the source for your ironical songs?
Chung: Ideas to lyrics are the best to note down. I watch a lot of movies and I like director Hong Sang-soo's film starring actor Kim Sang-kyung in particular. Movies like "On the Occasion of the Turning Gate" and "Hahaha." The actor's lines are funny and tasteful. But there aren't that many supplements to director Hong Sang-soo's DVDs. I mean, you buy DVDs for the supplements, if it wasn't for that, you'd just go to the movies to watch the film itself. But this is similar to dating. All you really need to do is just see someone but seeing someone after trying to define what that relationship is, is similar to buying a DVD. Then again, there are people who don't provide you with that many supplements when it comes to dating. So I've written this down in my notepad, thinking it'll be fun to write a song comparing DVD to people who are boring dates. I'm sure I'll turn this into a song someday.

10: Then when we'll we get to hear your second album?
Chung: When I talk to Gyepy, I never say, "Let's work on our second album next year." Instead I say, "This is what I'd like to try if we get to work on our second album." (laugh) This is how we talk to each other.
Gyepy: (laugh) That's right. If one of us is holding a certain card, we'll slowly lay it down in front of the other person. Silently. We're asking the other person to think about the cards.

10: Then let me rephrase the question. 'If' you got to release a second album, what would you want it to be like?
Gyepy: With bands, you can do ensembles but it's extremely hard to do that as a duo so I'm hoping we'll get to something different with our second album.
Chung: We were able to make our first album very quickly and easily so with our second album, I'd like to try a variety of things such as friction, discord, experiment, and fighting. (laugh)

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Reporter : Lee Ga-on
Photographer : Lee Jin-hyuk eleven@
Editor : Jessica Kim jesskim@, Jang Kyung-Jin three@