One Person Played Five Parts, and Cut the Gaps Between Tracks Nine Times

Out three days ago: Gonghyun's album 'Obituary'. Ten tracks, 34 minutes 31.

Start with the credits.

Drums, Gonghyun. Acoustic guitar, Gonghyun. Electric guitar, Gonghyun. Bass, Gonghyun. Vocals, Gonghyun. Five parts, all the same person.

Production is by Gonghyun and Gongeun, the mix by Gongeun and Gonghyun, mastering by Jeon Hun at Sonic Korea, and recording by Moon Jung-hwan, Lee Sang-cheol and Choi Min-seong at TONESTUDIO (assisted by Min Ji-hwan). The music video is directed, produced and edited by Gonghyun, with filming and design by Gongeun.

There's no agency. It's self-organised, with RouteNote handling distribution only. It is the first release issued under the name Gonghyun.

A 35:16 Video Holding a 34:31 Album

The music video runs 35 minutes 16 while the album is 34 minutes 31. A 45-second difference.

I measured where those 45 seconds are. The gaps between tracks cut to complete digital silence (−240dB) nine times. Their lengths: 3.00, 4.50, 4.50, 4.50, 5.75, 4.50, 4.75, 5.00 and 4.00 seconds. That's 40.5 seconds, plus another 0.75 at the head, for 41.25.

Slicing at those boundaries gives ten sections that all match the individual track lengths to within a second — 'Regret' 2:35.0 (listed 2:36), 'Confession' 4:15.5 (4:16), 'A Futile Road' 5:17.5 (5:18), 'Elegy' 3:40.2 (3:40), 'My Sunlight' 3:09.5 (3:10).

So the video holds the album's ten tracks in order, untouched. The 45 seconds are blackouts left empty between songs. The title track is the first, 'Regret'.

43dB in Four Seconds — Track 3, 'Confession'

The fiercest entry is the third track.

It starts at 6:10.50 with −93.6dB of silence. The first hit lands at −30.4dB at 6:11.25, and by 6:12.75 it has climbed into the −14dB range. From 6:13.50 to 6:16.25 it locks between −12 and −15dB.

43.0dB rises across four seconds.

But there are frames dropping to −37~−40dB mixed in. The numbers show a riff played in breaks rather than a band playing continuously.

1 Minute 27 Inside 13dB — Track 5

The fifth track is the opposite.

From 13:24.5, across 87.5 seconds, the two-second average never leaves the range −31.5 to −18.3dB. One minute twenty-seven held inside 13dB.

That stillness breaks at 14:52.0, and 52 seconds later, at 15:44.25, it hits −2.60dB — the album's highest point. Against the intro average, that's about 22dB.

Within a single track: hold for 1:27, then climb 22dB across the next 52 seconds.

The Top End Is a Sixth of a Commercial Rock Master

The band balance is unusually dark.

Averaged across the audible frames, 20~150Hz takes 29.9%, 150~500Hz takes 49.5% and 500~3000Hz takes 19.0%. But 6000~11000Hz is 0.36%, and 11000~16000Hz just 0.06%. The cumulative 99% rolloff lands at 3,840Hz.

I compared it against one commercial rock master measured the same way. Pichulin's 'Party Rock Rock' (official, HYBE LABELS) reads 2.29% at 6000~11000Hz with a 99% rolloff of 10,216Hz. The top-end share is about a sixth, and the rolloff is more than 6kHz lower.

Cymbals and air are stripped away and everything is massed into the 150~500Hz low-mids. The very person who played the drums erased the drums' most brilliant band.

The album's overall RMS is −13.20dB, with an audible-frame median of −16.25dB.

Where You Can Hear It

Bugs, Melon, Genie and YouTube. It isn't on Apple Music yet — I queried iTunes for 'Gonghyun', 'Obituary' and the Korean spelling, and got zero results each time.

If 35 minutes in one sitting is a lot, just the ten seconds from 6:10 to 6:20. That's where 43dB rises out of silence. If that makes you curious, skip to 13:24 — holding still for 1:27 is closer to this album's real character.

With a master whose top end is 0.36%, the drums barely register on small speakers. If you have headphones, use them.