On putting seventeen songs out at once — ONEWE's '面 : Unknown Atlas'

An atlas is not the same thing as a single map.

One sheet shows you one place and that's the end of it. An atlas binds many sheets together, and each turn of the page gives you somewhere else. It's an object made for someone who hasn't decided where they're going.

What lands tonight

Item	Detail
Band	ONEWE
Album	3rd full album '面 : Unknown Atlas'
Release	August 19, 6 p.m.
Tracks	17
Career	Twelfth year since debut
Already out	Highlight medley

In interviews the members described the album as "past the universe, into a fairy tale", and said all seventeen tracks are title-track calibre. A show at KBS Arena is set for September.

Seventeen, as a number

A full album these days tends to run around ten tracks. Seventeen is close to double that.

More songs means asking more of a listener's time. It's hard to take in at one sitting, which makes it hard for the album to be remembered as one object. Commercially it isn't the advantageous choice.

For a band the arithmetic differs. Bands play live, and live, more songs means more freedom in building a set. The album is the repertoire.

Saying every track is title calibre

"All seventeen are title-track calibre" is a statement of confidence, and also a risky thing to say. It reads just as easily as "there is no title track".

A title track's job on an album is to be a door. In a house with seventeen rooms it tells you which door to come in by. If all of them are title calibre it becomes a house with seventeen doors, and that isn't an easy house to enter.

For someone who stays a while, though, it's different. A house you can enter by any door is free from the second visit onward. A band in its twelfth year choosing this on a third full album is looking at the people who come back rather than the ones arriving for the first time.

Tonight, try it like this

Start with the highlight medley. It compresses all seventeen, so whatever catches your ear there becomes your own way in.

Then at six, play the whole thing in order. If the album's title is an atlas, the track order is likely a route. How different it feels in order versus on shuffle will tell you what kind of album this is.

Last, look again at the single Chinese character in the title. '面' is a face, and a surface, and a direction. It sits in front of an atlas that hasn't been charted.

A direction settled on, with no idea where it leads. That can be called this. '面 : Unknown Atlas'.