Drift Away In The Otherworldly Atmospheres of Jung Jinwoo's Album ATOM
A reflection on the universe, and the lives of us humans in the midst of it all: this is the core theme of Jung Jinwoo’s latest album ATOM, released along with the music video for the song “where is god?” on August 19.
Jung Jinwoo (정진우), also known as P.ODD (it stands for “perfectly odd,” the nickname he also chose for his Instagram handle) is a singer, producer, and composer born in 1996 who broke on the Korean music scene thanks to his participation to the TV show K-Pop Star 5 (SBS, 2015-2016) where he finished in the Top 8. He debuted with the mini-album in my room on September 22, 2016, under Planetarium Records, the label he stayed with until 2022.
Out of the 13 songs that make up the tracklist of ATOM, the first one to gain traction was “dear a.i”, published a week before the album. It was already a perfect teaser of the meditative atmosphere that expands to the other tracks, presenting the blend of strings, pipe organ, and synthesizer that is further developed in the rest of the album. Listening to “dear a.i” feels a bit like floating through stars, and some sounds might remind you of the Interstellar movie O.S.T. “S.T.A.Y.” by Hans Zimmer.
The allusion to a cosmic, meditative scenery, the singer revealed upon the release of ATOM in a post on his Instagram profile, was precisely his intention: “I began to question the things in my life that I had taken for granted based on the notion that humans emanate from the beginnings of the universe, and at the end of our lives, break down into atoms and return to the universe.” Hence the album's title, all the music videos' imagery, and the whole ethereal soundscape.
“where is god?” is probably our favorite of the lot, with the pipe organ setting the scene and the question of the title repeated twice and soon followed by other pressing inquiries: a composition that evokes a sense of urgency of someone straying away from their faith in search for answers.
ATOM has a quite unique taste: the album is rich in textures, with layers of shimmering synths, distant vocal echoes, and ambient noise that together create a soundscape that's both immersive and expansive. It all fits the theme of exploration and discovery that Jung Jinwoo expressed in the aforementioned post, where he further mused: “Today’s society has evolved to become extremely complex and even chaotic at times, which unfortunately has made most people, including myself, to create a tendency to simplify interconnected problems and try to confirm truths above all else.
This phenomenon, which has sparked various social problems, hate crimes, and even war, ignited something inside of me to try and think of ways to alleviate this situation.”
He finally concluded: “I‘ve come to the conclusion that the approach that we need to take should be rooted in scientific thinking and also that we need to practice love in the broadest sense of the word. With this in mind, I aim to analyze myself more deeply, examine the problems that I face, and ask questions that can lead me to the right path.”
Are you up for the cosmic journey into Jung Jinwoo’s ATOM?