The NONOL VOL. Series: How a Stage Stays as a Recording

Wednesday, 5 p.m. That hour when the day starts winding down. Today I want to pull out one rather unusual habit NONOL has when it comes to its stages.

NONOL is a playground with no judging, no rankings, no elimination. It's a place where skilled musicians get to sing their hearts out without minding anyone's eyes. But there's one little device that keeps those stages from ending on the same night they happen. That's the NONOL VOL. series.

What it means to keep a stage as a recording

NONOL has this one distinctive habit. Instead of letting a song from the stage just drift away, it releases it as a proper record in the NONOL VOL. series. Like CLAVE's 'Sign' on VOL. 76, suits and slippers' 'Motungi (모퉁이)' on VOL. 77, or the NONOL Festa Compilation on VOL. 78. The numbers climb one at a time, and by now they've passed 89.

Skim the numbers alone and it looks like a long list. But open them one by one and you'll find the air of a certain Wednesday, the voices of that day, the mood of the people watching that stage, all tucked inside. It has a different grain from an album polished for months in a studio. It's closer to a record kept before the warmth of the stage has cooled. There are compilations too, like VOL. 78, that gather several stages into one, so there's the pleasure of rewinding a whole past season at once. As the voices from NONOL STAGE and LIVE get carried over into records one by one, the playground's timetable is quietly turning into a music archive all its own.

The stage that stays close

Why is that such a nice thing? Because the playground stage doesn't end that day. It stays close by. In the past, meeting a live set you loved again meant rewinding the video from the start. Now you can just press play on the record anytime. On the way to work, before falling asleep, whenever that stage suddenly comes to mind. One play button is all it takes.

A stage, once it passes, is hard to catch again. Same goes for the moments you watched from beyond the screen. The VOL. series takes that feeling, 'I want to remember this stage for a long time,' and turns it into an actual system. A way of holding on to one scene of a live set, so easily forgotten once it drifts by, before it disappears.

Just leaving behind a song sung with no evaluation and no competition. Not lining anyone up by who did better, but keeping a record of nothing more than the fact that, on that day, in that place, there was a song. That's how the playground called NONOL treats music.

Discovery Note

• The NONOL VOL. series = an archive that releases songs sung on stage as proper records
• A few of the numbered volumes: CLAVE's 'Sign' on VOL. 76, suits and slippers' 'Motungi (모퉁이)' on VOL. 77, the NONOL Festa Compilation on VOL. 78
• The numbering has now passed 89, and it keeps stacking up even in this very moment

Wednesday, 5 p.m. A new song has arrived at the playground today. I wonder whose voice the next VOL. will hold. Shall we wait for it together?