It Cuts Dead at 3:18 and Comes Back 0.25 Seconds Later

A new song has arrived at the playground today. This time it's Seul.

Seul's self-introduction reads "a singer-songwriter who sings the many stories inside a life." The singer has been working mainly live since the debut album [Hometown House], and came here to play "four songs I hold dear."

It Starts Very Small and Fills In Over Two Seconds

The first song, 'Place', begins at 0:21.8. But the level is only −41dB. Almost too quiet to hear.

From there it rises to −14dB across two seconds. If Kim Nana's session opened by slamming in after four seconds of silence, this is the opposite. It slips in.

Seul wrote what 'Place' is about: "a song I wrote down to remember what I looked like when a slump or burnout arrived. I think a lot of people are comforted at the moment they realise 'it isn't only me.'"

A slipping-in opening suits that. Burnout doesn't arrive all at once either.

3:18.05

This is the biggest event in the song.

It runs around −17dB until 3:17.7, then at 3:18.05 it drops dead to −28.2dB. And 0.25 seconds later, at 3:18.30, it's back at −8.6dB. A 20dB swing.

Cut once and hit immediately. In a song of 4 minutes 20 it happens exactly here, once.

All Four Songs Are Here

Song	Starts at
Opening	0:00
Place	0:21
How Much More Must We Grow	5:47
A Piece of Blue Heart	10:06
White Moon	14:29

The note on the second song is especially good: "It was born from the thought — when I realised I'm still a child, unlike the version of me I dreamed of as a kid, then when on earth will I get to be an adult?"

'A Piece of Blue Heart' comes from the idiom 일편단심, 'a piece of red heart'. Seul turned the red one blue. "Not all that hot — a heart like a still lake, held together maybe by a thin thread of faith."

'White Moon' is about a moon seen in daylight. "One day I saw a moon hanging in a blue sky, a white moon quietly decorating it. I felt I'd been living without really noticing it, so I wrote from the moon's point of view."

When to Listen

After work, before you turn out the light. The first song is about burnout and the second asks when you get to be an adult, so it fits the end of a day.

If 18 minutes 35 feels like a lot, take the first song's five and a half minutes. And 3:18. That's the one to remember.