The singer-songwriter Shin Hae Gyeong is back with his new album ‘In Dreams, In Dreams’. We’re excited because he has this brilliant timbre to his voice that makes us all want to fall into a puddle and cry mostly. Let’s dive in!
In Dreams, In Dreams
We start the album off with ‘Reminisce’. The first couple of seconds are the perfect way to introduce the album. It’s very echoey and opens the way for this indie track. The synths are lovely and it creates a very broad soundscape that fits with the idea of reminiscing about something/someone. The little laugh at the end will probably haunt my dreams though.
The track ‘And Then’ is next and the music video for this one was released last week. Take a look. There are subtitles, so turn those on for the full experience. I really enjoyed the electric guitar in ‘And Then’. It’s all rather heartbreaking really. So I’m sorry for the feels in advance.
‘Someday’ follows that and it feels a little bit more upbeat, again with some great guitar. I love a good guitar solo.
Next up is ‘Colors of you’ which also came with a music video. This is one out of two title tracks. The MV is a little over seven minutes long, but the song itself is only four and a half minutes. There’s a lot of storytelling going on and I think it’s really interesting how they played with the dream world and the real world. It’s all very much layered in a sad wistfulness.
Next up
‘Monologue’ comes after and it’s so, so soft. It kind of feels like a divider between the two halves of the album. It’s a little breather from the emotional rollercoaster Shin Hae Gyeong has been taking us on.
With an intense intro we slide into ‘Butterfly Dream’. This is an interesting song in the sense that there’s almost no lyrics, there’s only ‘aaahs’ and somehow it makes perfect sense. The focus I feel is more on the instrumentals and the overall tone of the song than meaning in the lyrics. The little outro with the bird chatter is very cute.
The seventh song on the album is ‘Dreaming of you’. This song was released a couple of years ago with a feature by Kim Sawol. In this version of the song there’s no feature and it’s all Shin Hae Gyeong. I’ve dropped the MV of the first version, so you can compare.
‘Crocus’ is next and we’re back with the softness. It’s a song that kind of reminds me of drifting on the water. It goes up and down in a very organic way. It’s absolutely lovely.
The last track of the album is ‘Like a blooming season’ and it is also the second title track. It starts off rather gentle, but halfway through we get this little sound effect and it ramps up the intensity. It’s a great way to close of the album.
Overall
The album ‘In Dreams, In Dreams’ by Shin Hae Gyeong is a very coherent piece of work. It’s very smooth to listen to because of some great transitions and overall I would really recommend taking the time to listen to the full thing.
You can find the album here on YouTube Music.
If you’d like, you can find Shin Hae Gyeong on Instagram here. Go give him some love.
