Genre-defying South Korean band SE SO NEON have just released their debut album, <NOW>. A mix of new wave, all kinds of rock, and a little bit of blues, <NOW> focuses on nature and is rooted in the present. The band currently has one member: So-yoon Hwang (also known as So!YoON!), a multi-instrumentalist songwriter known for her guitar skills, vocals, and lyricism. So-yoon took the time to talk to Local Wolves about her resolution to live in the present, songwriting process for this album, and recent move to Los Angeles.

Congratulations on your album release. 

Yeah, finally! Thank you. 

How was your listening party? 

I didn’t really expect that many people to come. But, yeah, it was really nice. And it was my first time meeting fans since I moved to LA. So I felt, “Oh, I am a musician. People know me!” It was so much fun. And this was the first time I celebrated my album and [had] a party for that. So yeah, it was really fun.

I watched a bit of it on Instagram. It looked like you were really happy. 

Yeah, always. I’m always so happy when I’m on stage and get to meet people. 

So, for the album <NOW>, the title is about living in the present. You mentioned that you had some difficulty getting back into music for a while and you decided that, okay, I need to focus less on the past and future and focus more on the present. How did you implement that mindset while working on the album? 

Honestly, it was hard to live my life, [beyond] just making music. Since I had to make this SE SO NEON album, I felt like, “I’m so empty, what should I do? How can I connect with this world again? What is whispering from my soul’s spirit?”

So I just decided to make music in different circumstances and different backgrounds. I realized I feel more happy when I make my music in nature, more freely, have more time, and relax. Think about music, about life, or just hanging out with other people. I have to live my life before I make [music]. So then, yeah, I went to New York and scratched all the demos I had and went back to Korea. Then finally I decided to go to LA. Then I met [my current] management and just decided to move here and finish my album. In the end I released my album in LA. 

Was it a hard decision to move to Los Angeles or you’re just like, it’s time? 

Not really, because my whole life is from my gut. It’s all about my intuition. So, when I came here my gut feeling just said, “So-yoon, just move.” The weather, all the nature…And I need to live with nature. It’s a new experience in my life, so why would I not move?

Have you enjoyed it so far? 

Yeah, of course. You know, I call my band a pirate ship. It means we have to adventure. I think [on] any adventure you need to feel fear sometimes. [Feel] anger, sadness, happiness. This adventure is a new thing in my life. Definitely, yes, it’s hard to live here. But at the same time, I feel that now I’m following my heart. I feel free. I don’t know about my future, if I will move to another country later, but at least this decision was right.

I’m happy for you. That’s a lot of change. With all of the different changes, do you feel like it’s changed how you see yourself as an artist or how you approach your creative work?

I still don’t know because technically I finished my sketch and songwriting process in Korea and New York, so work in LA was more like production things. But I believe my music is going to change more. I always change. Every circumstance and every stage where I stand, it influences my music.

So if somebody knows about my past work, they know it was more strong, more charismatic. But for this album, I’ve really tried to be more naked, be myself. LA, helped me to be that.

So yeah, my life and my music—everything—needed this. 

When you’re writing your music, how do you choose what’s made for your band versus what is for you as a solo artist So-yoon? 

It’s so obvious for me because SE SO NEON is basically about my life. SE SO NEON equals So-yoon. It’s really, really personal. I don’t know about my future, but I’ve been putting all my journey in SE SO NEON. And it’s a band, so I’m always thinking, how can I perform with this music? How can I connect with, communicate with other players on the stage? That’s really important to me.

My solo project is also me, but it’s more like I’m a movie director. I can write scenarios, I can make characters. It’s funny because my personal work is more like fiction. Like a novel, right? And my band stuff is more of a poem. The genre is kind of the same, but the process is really different in my head. 

So when you go to work on something for either one of those, you go into it knowing what you’re writing for.

Yeah, of course. The writing process is different. Every time I write for SE SO NEON, it comes from here [gestures at chest] but the solo project, I think, is from here [gestures towards head].

Out of this album, I think my favorite song is “Twit Winter.” Listening to it made me tear up a little bit because it feels like both nostalgia and hope. Which, for me, feel like two opposite things, since I associate nostalgia with the past and hope with the future. I saw you mentioned that the song is kind of like a letter from your past to your future self, but also from your future self to your past self. I think you really captured that in the sound of the song. I’d love to hear you talk a little about the process of writing “Twit Winter.”  

Any instruments I put, I tried to make authentic. Really good ingredients, right? “Twit Winter,” especially that guitar part, I tried to make with my emotion. All the soundscape is what I feel in my brain, my heart. That was my key to making this album. 

“Twit Winter” was really complicated because it’s not only about sending a message to my future. It’s not only about questioning, asking, living life. At the time, I was struggling. I had to ask [my future self], “I kind of don’t know anything about my life. But hey, grandma So-yoon, do you know something now?” I was just frustrated.

It’s something I feel really deep in my heart. But at the same time, that makes me feel a really, really strong brightness. They both exist at the same time. I think “Twit Winter” especially feels both ways. It’s really deep but at the same time it’s really bright.

What was your process for coming up with the music video for “Twit Winter?” 

Actually, it was really easy to [come up with] this idea. I just wanted to make the video a time capsule. Because this music is also a time capsule to me. There’s a lot of metaphors in the video—that grey background and that plastic fire, it’s in my head. It’s always existed, that room. That fire is what I have to protect in my life. That’s my creativity, my really authentic part. I always have to fuel it, for it to not disappear.

In front of this So-yoon, future So-yoon will take one more video after twenty, thirty years, so that’s why it’s empty here, white and blank. The card I made is a random memo that I wrote before. From five years ago, ten years ago. So it’s also a letter, something to send to my future. Everything is a circle. When I burn this card and feed it to a pigeon, they’ll eat and make eggs, and come to the earth again. So it’ll do this and finally I can meet my future with all the notes, all the history, all the journey I had.

I also really like the video for “Remember,” especially the fact that you added animation to it. It was very hypnotizing. How did you decide to include the animation in that video? 

So the album design theme is squares, this window [shape]. A year ago when I decided to move here, I sold my house and then literally became homeless. And then I started hopping around. Sometimes I stayed at my friend’s house, a really tiny house. And sometimes I stayed at a really fancy huge house in LA on the hills. Some days I was in Paris, some days I slept on the street. So I feel now that all the world is like my home.

I had a really big question all the time: Where is your home? And in the end I felt like, “Oh, I am my home. I can call myself home.” Since I realized that, I feel like all the places are just [through] a small window, like on the plane. I can go anywhere through this window. [The design] is twelve windows, which means twelve tracks. In “Remember,” I wanted to express my journey a little bit, so I put animation to feel like it’s fantasy, but still real. I shot all the things in Seoul, but I put a lot of animation in the video.

Listening to “Kidd,” I noticed the original release is different from the final track on the album. What was the decision behind rerecording it for the album?

I like both versions. But I had to make this more with my natural voice. Since I wrote this song when I was 20, it was more…it wasn’t rock music. It’s more just guitar and my vocals. Even though I’m a guitar player, I think I’m more of a songwriter. “Kidd” is one of my favorites. I really cared about the lyrics and what I expressed. So I needed to rerecord [everything], and also match it with other tracks. I just spontaneously recorded it again, and that guitar riff I also just played, like a no brainer. It’s interesting, it feels so different, the other one and the current one.

I really liked “Oh” as an outro song. You wrote it in English, without using a translator like you usually do. What was your writing process for this one? 

So, for that track, I kind of wanted just humming or mumbling or something. But I know it’d be weird, so I needed lyrics. My lyrics are 80% Korean, right? But I believe language doesn’t matter, even if I think my lyrics are really important to show other audiences. I really believe that. Especially that song, I feel like it’s more about my emotion from the whole journey. So that was what I wanted to focus on more. 

I wrote those lyrics in the studio, just a notepad and pen. I usually use a lot of translators because I have to make sure it’s okay, I don’t want it to feel awkward when I use my second language. But for “Oh,” I just wrote down what I thought and didn’t really care about grammar. I don’t even know the lyrics, because I only wrote it on that notepad and I don’t know where that notepad is now. [laughs]

It’s more about my journey and my meditation, my pain, my hope, everything. I’d decided the last track would be “Oh” since I just started this project. 

Words: Uma Snow

Photos: Esther Kim

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