Lacuna recently made a comeback with their 4th EP “Summer Tales”, which highlights the group’s strength in profound yet quirky storytelling, unique melodies, and a healing after-effect. Kpopmap had the incredible opportunity of interviewing Lacuna and the conversation that followed took us on a wonderland ride of Lacuna’s musicality. Hello, Lacuna! It’s great to meet you. Please introduce your band and yourselves. Hello! We’re band Lacuna, delivering fairy-tale like music with a heartwarming touch. Lacuna You have finally made a comeback with your 4th EP “Summer Tales” after a year. How did you come up with the concept of “Summer Tales” and where did you get your inspiration from?
Summer seems like a season that brings special sentiments. When you think back on, say, summer vacations, it’s like you lived a short dream or a movie. We wanted to create music that could work as a medium for people bringing back their own summer memories. Naturally, the phrase ‘always summer’ came to mind. Eric Rohmer films are a personal favorite, lines and scenes from ‘The Green Ray’ and ‘A Summer’s Tale’ were big inspirations for “Summer Tales”. Lacuna The album art for “Summer Tales” is not only creative and unique but also tells a story. Despite its rosy appearance, there’s a dark undertone to it. There are pretty and cute illustrations with flowers, hearts, candy, etc., but the pretty flowers have their heart out and are bleeding as the heart falls on the floor and breaks. What message or story do you want to deliver through your album art? “Summer Tales” is basically a love story, but it also conveys a message that rejects love in the common or traditional sense. Love comes in so many shapes and colors in our world, to the point where it felt like the word ‘love’ wasn’t enough to describe them all. So the lyrics had to be very descriptive and explanatory, as well as the album artwork. To our surprise, our designer instantly understood our intentions and came up with a fantastic artwork! Lacuna In the teaser for ‘YOU’, you said, “On a crumpled paper, every word of my song of confession creaks of the reason why I like you”. It seems as though there must be some prior experience for you to write and compose a confession song like this. Have you ever confessed your love in the past? Haha, of course. No love story is as movie-like as one’s own, even though in reality it’s nowhere as cool. Lacuna There is an excellent synergy between the members, which makes your music even more magical and easy to connect with. What do you think is the secret to your amazing teamwork? We think of each other as family. We spend so much time making music together, even more than our actual family members. We’re practically brothers in the way we care for each other. Lacuna’s family motto is ‘No matter what, let’s have fun making music.” Lacuna This question is for Jang KyungMin. In the fairy tale book “Always Summer”, as a teaser, you said, “It’s always summer while we’re together.” What is the meaning of that phrase? Is there a summer story that came to mind while writing the book? For example, do you have any summer stories or memories? While I was writing the book, a story from a movie rather than my own came to mind. “Shape of Water” was constantly in the back of my head, especially the last part where the main characters disappear into the sea. It’s not a summer story, but the emotions shown in that scene particularly were exactly what I wanted to depict. A desire to always be there to salvage each other. That’s how I defined summer. Jang KyungMin You also participated in writing the lyrics for all the songs in this album. Were there any special moments when you wrote the lyrics? The lyrics to ‘Happy Puppy’ were written rather easily, without much revision. I was writing songs one day as usual, but it wasn’t working out. So, I resorted to just uttering random words along with my guitar, then suddenly “A million reasons why I have a dog~” seemed alright. Right away, I thought it’d be fun to write a song about dogs and wrote down the rest of the lyrics. Jang KyungMin What are your favorite songs on this album? Can each member please tell us your favorite song and lyrics? ‘Happy Puppy’ – “The truth is / I don’t actually have a dog” Jang KyungMin ‘Always Summer’ – When I listen to this song, it feels as if summer will go on and on. My favorite part from the song is “love is just a word.” Jung MinHyuk ‘Happy Puppy’ – “You might never know / but from day to night / I’m sending over my love / lots and lots of it” Kim Ho My favorite is definitely ‘You’! My favorite lyrics are “What we have is not just love / it’s just a feeling with a borrowed name / and it will never ever end.” Oh Isaac What is a song you want to recommend to K-Pop fans who don’t know Lacuna yet and why? The songs in this album are great, but you can also recommend any of your amazing songs that you’ve previously released. We aspire to create fairytale-like music, and in that sense our recommendation will be ‘Happily Ever After.’ It’s a tender, soothing song, with a distinct fairy-tale vibe. Lacuna
Who is your favorite artist or favorite song these days? We’re also curious about who Lacuna’s role model is. Recently I’ve been listening to a lot of Damien Rice. My role model would be Damon Albarn of Blur. Jang KyungMin My recent favorites are Royal Blood and Quincy Jones. I strongly recommend ‘Just Once’ by Quincy Jones. As for my role model, the band Queen! Each member’s talent and songwriting skills are outstanding individually, yet they harmonize so well to create an even more explosive synergy. Kim Ho I enjoy listening to Sting’s music. Of his songs, my favorite would be ‘Rushing Water.’ Oh Isaac The Korean band Nell is my favorite team these days. They have a longstanding career of more than 20 years without any member changes and continue to make even better music as time goes by. I hope Lacuna could follow in their footsteps! Jung MinHyuk If you could switch positions or instruments with a member of the band, which member would it be and why? I want to try the bass. The crowd tends to focus on me, as I’m the vocalist, but I want to give my place up to other members and play (the bass) quietly. Jang KyungMin I want to trade places with KyungMin. I’ve been singing my own songs to upload on Soundcloud, so someday I want to sing on stage too. Jung MinHyuk I want to take Isaac’s place. I actually do play the drums quite well. Kim Ho For me, it would be MinHyuk. I have to stay in my seat behind the drum set even when I get excited during live performances, but other members get to jump all around the stage. I’ve always been jealous of that. Oh Isaac Would you rather only be able to perform one song for the rest of your life or listen to one song for the rest of your life? To be honest, we would stop performing altogether if we had to perform only one song. Maybe it’s because we don’t have “that song” yet, haha. We’ll work hard to reach that level in the future. Lacuna Lastly, please say some words to Kpopmap readers as well as your thoughts on today’s interview!
I hope you enjoy “Summer Tales” and wish you nothing but happiness. We’ll keep on making cool music! Jang KyungMin We worked super hard on this album, so it’d be great if you showed lots of love and streamed “Summer Tales”. See you again sometime! Jung MinHyuk Hello, Kpopmap readers! How do you like our new album? We promise to keep on working hard to create a signature Lacuna sound. Much love and thanks. Kim Ho Hello everyone, please enjoy our new album and don’t forget to try our other albums as well. Thank you! Oh Isaac What is your favourite Lacuna song? Share your thoughts with Kpopmap in the comments section down below!
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