Lucid Fall

-What is it that made you get into creating music and when did that happen?

YUN: I think when I was, like, 14, or maybe 13 years old, I realized that I must be a musician. When I was a high school student, something like that. I don't know why, but I felt like it was just destiny. I realized that without music, I could not live. So I just practiced guitar by myself when I was small, like a teenager. But I went to college and majored in engineering - something completely different from music, of course. But still, I kept pursuing - I tried to pursue - my musical career. There was no way for me to release my music in those days. Then I organized a band called Misoni and played with my friends, a rock band, and the band became a little bit more and more popular in the indie scene.

And then the band disbanded because of some military service issues. After that, I moved to Europe to study more engineering. And then I started my solo career around 2001. Basically, I am a singer-songwriter. And then on and on and on, and now, yeah.

-Tell me more about your techniques, the tapes we saw at your performance.

YUN: Basically, I have released more than 10 albums as a singer-songwriter, but around 2020 I released my first album as a kind of ambient musician. At that time, I thought that I wanted to make music without lyrics. First, and second, I wanted to make music with repetition, without repetition - something unpredictable. So I started using modular synthesizers as well, and I also started field recordings. Sometimes I use ambisonic microphone, but sometimes I use whatever is available, because sometimes it's much better to catch the moment. I also started to get interested in tape loops. Because I'm a chemist as well, I have always been fascinated by the theory - how people in the past tried to capture music using chemical ways. It's really amazing. Such small magnetic particles, and they used those particles to capture sound. So whenever I see a strip of tape, it just feels so good. I can imagine, oh, there are grains of sound! It's incredible! I also started using tapes because it's a unique way. Not many people use tapes anymore. But by using tapes, you can make loops really organic. Whenever you play the loops, they change. Even the loops I used yesterday - it has been almost one year since I made them - the sound has changed completely because they are getting older, just like we are getting older. I can see a lot of artifacts in the sound, both physical and chemical, and that's the point I really love. It makes the music more organic and more unpredictable. And of course, modular synthesizers as well. Once you patch something, even if you try the same patch tomorrow, you will find it’s a little bit different. These are the things I really like and try to employ into my music - unpredictability, and repetition.

-Both chemistry and music deal with time- reactions that unfold, sounds that evolve. Has studying to be a chemist influenced your patience, attention to time, or your relationship to change in music?

YUN: Definitely, yes. I was trained as a researcher in a lab in Switzerland, where running experiments (and often failing to get the expected results) was part of my daily routine. That experience deeply shaped the way I approach observation, experiment design, problem-solving, and troubleshooting.

These same skills apply directly to how I make music. I observe sounds, design soundscapes, infer problems in order to refine the sound, and troubleshoot to find breakthroughs—whether the issue is technical or musical. Most of all, I learned how to think systematically to reach a desired result, while also designing the entire process as efficiently as possible.

-You mentioned unpredictability in music. Do you also seek unpredictability in life, or is music where you allow chaos to exist?

YUN: Such an interesting question! In fact, I prefer a kind of “controllable unpredictability,” especially in music.

When I work on the farm, I often face many unpredictable events—mostly negative ones—such as outbreaks of new kinds of bugs, extreme droughts caused by climate change, or physical accidents (I’ve had surgery twice). These are neither desirable nor entirely avoidable. I can only try to prevent them to some extent, especially the negative ones, and do my best to manage them as far as I can. I try to stay in control as much as possible, even though things often don’t go as planned.

In music, unpredictability can create moments of spontaneous beauty. But I believe it needs to exist within a certain framework of control. As Brian Eno said, we definitely need to “surrender”—and that might be one of the most important aims of art, especially in today’s world. But I believe that kind of ‘surrender’ (perhaps to unpredictability) can’t be truly beautiful without some degree of ‘control’. That’s why I allow unpredictability to happen in music—but not to the point of total randomness. Within a certain threshold, I welcome that randomly generated, unpredictable beauty, and I like to shape it and translate it into something musical for the listener as I like to define it “designing unpredictability”.

-You mentioned that you run a mandarin farm in Jeju Island and you have been doing that more than a decade now. So how would you say this lifestyle change has changed your musical style? And has it?

YUN: Everything. I would say everything, because for musicians - not only for musicians, but for anyone who needs to create something - the environment is really, really decisive. It's critical. I mean, for everyone it's the same, but when we want to create something, we are, I would say, governed by the environment and atmosphere as well. When I lived in Seoul, it was good - convenient, a lot of friends, family. But I had no time to be alone, to really go deep inside myself. It was noisy, so busy, a lot of phone calls from friends, messages - 'hey, come out, let’s go for a drink.' It’s good and bad at the same time. But when I moved to Jeju Island, it was the opposite. I could stay alone, just with my wife and my dog. Because I physically distanced myself from many things in city life... I cannot say, 'Oh, this is because of that,' because it’s very difficult for me to define exactly. But a lot of things are different compared to when I lived in Seoul. Those differences must be projected into my music as well. Maybe if I had stayed in Seoul, I would not have started making ambient music.

-Are there elements of Korean culture you feel have strongly shaped your approach to music?

YUN: As a singer-songwriter, language is essential—undeniably so. Writing lyrics in my mother tongue is the most fundamental part of my lyric-based music. I’ve never imagined writing lyrics in anything other than Korean. That’s because only my native language allows me to dive deep enough to create a truly synergistic blend of words and musical elements—something that transcends verbal expression.

When it comes to my instrumental music, I think it's less influenced by traditional Korean cultural heritage. Instead, it’s more affected by the current Korean social atmosphere—not just culture as in genres or traditions, but the broader phenomena we observe today in Korean society: the hustle, the accelerating pace of life, anxiety, intense competition, environmental degradation, and so on. In this sense, I sometimes try to call out social issues through my work. For example, my ambient tracks “Fledgelings” and “Mater Dolorosa” were created using field recordings of heavy-duty machines digging the ground and uprooting trees. If we still understand “culture” as a reflection of society, maybe this is where my music finds its place.

-Why did you feel like this residency is something you need to experience?

YUN: I saw that there are a lot of interesting instruments you have, also some instruments that are very old, and I could hardly find them in Korea. So I was curious. Because, okay, Moog Matriarch - you could buy that. Or Prophet - maybe you could find a used one. But those Buchla systems, maybe it would be impossible, or Serge, it would be impossible to find one in Korea! So I just wanted to visit and see, and if I could, I wanted to try and find a way to incorporate those new instruments into my music. So it was just a curiosity for me.

-Explain what was happening in your performance and did everything go as planned?

YUN: Actually, I played guitar for the first time in a performance. Before, I hadn't tried playing guitar like that. I played in a band like 20 years ago. This time, I played just one note and made something with it. Everything happened spontaneously. When I came into the studio, I saw the guitar and thought, okay, what if I try that one? What if I try this one? It just went like that, without any tight control. I don't know how people felt about it, but for me, I would say it was not bad. Of course, it wasn’t a 100% perfect sound condition for me, because this is a new place and I don’t have all of my setup.

-Were you also able to experience the local music scene?

YUN: My schedule was quite tight, but my impression is really calm, and the atmosphere is very friendly. I cannot really explain it in words, but you know, when you visit a certain city, you can feel something with your body that cannot be explained. In some places, you just like it - you feel more attached. And in some cities, without any clear reason, you don't like it that much. But Riga is very good for me in that sense. I don't know why. But my impression is very warm. I don't know where the warmth comes from - maybe the atmosphere, maybe the people, maybe both.

Watch his performance at the Erica Synths Garage -