An Accidental Traveller, Rainbow99 — Rainbow99’s Chance Journeys

Once a month, Rainbow99 plays alone and unhurried, on a rock at Gongsanseong Fortress in Gongju, on a roadside avenue in Dangjin, aboard the Ocean Grand off the coast of Yangyang. Where does a musician find the strength to keep to his own way for more than ten years? After a frank, open-hearted interview, we look for the answer to the question we never asked along the journey itself.

Interview and text Hur Taewoo
Photos Park Shinwoo
Interviewee Rainbow99

Tell us about a first trip you remember.
I have two memories. One is from when I was little and went to Yeongdeok with my parents. We couldn’t find a place to stay near Yeongdeok Beach, so we ended up in a homestay in some out-of-the-way village. There was a small beach in front of the village, and suddenly anchovies started washing up onto the shore. When the villagers saw it, they all ran out and started scooping them up. That scene really stuck with me. I was very young, so I don’t remember exactly, but I think I wondered, “Why are these anchovies coming up onto the beach?”
The second is the first trip I took alone. My maternal grandmother lived in Buyeo. I think I was around middle school age, maybe even younger. I wanted to go somewhere by myself, but unfamiliar places scared me, so I went to Buyeo. It was such a good memory.

What made it so good?
I think it stayed with me so vividly because it was the first time I’d ever done something like that on my own. I got off at the Buyeo bus terminal and wanted to bring something with me to my grandmother’s. I wandered around the town, which was just a block or two, by myself, and bought about half a geun of beef for soup. Walking through an unfamiliar town alone is a memory I really love. My grandmother’s house is in the countryside, even by Buyeo standards. It’s a place called Guryong, where as a kid I’d catch rabbits in winter, and there was only one shop. It’s exactly the same now as it was then.

Have you always liked to travel? We’d love to know what led you to start your “Monthly Travel” project.
I’ve ended up traveling around a lot without really meaning to. As a session guitarist, I followed performance teams to the United States, Europe, Singapore, and on nationwide tours. Even as a child, I loved going to places I didn’t know. I rarely took the same road twice, and I’d get scolded for riding my bike off to some random place. If you call that traveling, then I’ve always been interested in it and loved it.
Actually, before I started the travel project, something big (?) happened in my personal life. Around Chuseok, after all that, I was left alone in an empty house, and I simply couldn’t stand it. I felt I had to go somewhere, anywhere, and that’s how the project began. Since I was going anyway, I thought I might as well document it. You could say I left as if I were running away.

Did you have in mind to build those records up into an album?
At first I didn’t intend to make an album. I’m a musician, so it was natural to document things through music. I also wanted to leave a record of the state I was in at the time. The music I made then is generally bright, and I think in a way I was making music I wanted to give to myself, something that soothed and healed me. That’s also why all the footage from that project is in the first person. I carried the camera myself.
I also took my first trip with my dad then. He was seventy at the time. When he was young, he played the saxophone. So I put his saxophone playing on the album, and there’s video too. He’s getting on in years and can’t keep the beat very well, so I’m there pointing at him with my finger.

Had you ever heard your father play when you were a child?
Never once. I think it was in my last year of high school, looking through old photos, when I saw my dad holding a saxophone. That’s when I first found out. Honestly, I’m closer to my dad now. Sometimes he tells me, “The music you make now is all a lie.” In the old days, he says, you put up one microphone and finished it in a single live take, but now you record, and then record again. What kind of music is that? I don’t know if it’s because of his influence, but lately I’ve been trying to work that way myself.

In your recent videos, you play live.
Yes, in many cases what I record live comes out directly as the finished track.

Do the places that inspire your music have a special atmosphere?
Wherever you go in Korea, there’s something strange about it, a place that makes you think, “What is this?” When I went to Cheongpyeong, I thought, “I’d like to film somewhere like a cave,” and someone told me about a place called Homyeong Tunnel. When I got there, it really did look like a cave. I planned to film there and then just have a coffee, but on the way back I spotted a huge factory complex with banners hanging on it. Naturally, I was curious. It turned out that it used to be a silk-reeling factory, a state-run operation that raised silkworms and spun thread. Then the factory closed and was left abandoned. When I actually went inside, it was incredibly cool. I think I like spaces and places that are a bit wrecked, ones that seem about to disappear.

Do you ever play live on the spot, as ideas come to you?
For the album ‘Calendar’, I traveled alone, so I came up with ideas on site and then worked on them after I got back. After that, my approach changed to working on site. Starting with the album ‘Come Back Home’, I’ve been working with Director Wang Mincheol, who made the documentary film ‘Animal, Won’. I ended up composing the film’s score, which is how we connected, and as we were chatting about this and that, he suddenly asked whether I wasn’t going traveling again next year, and said, “Let’s go!” It was the end of December. We started the very next January.
I hesitated at first, but on the other hand, I felt my earlier music was packed too full. I wondered whether that had actually made me hide my emotions even more. When we talked about our working method and came up with, “Let’s not make it hard on each other, let’s just shoot it as it is, in one take,” I thought, well, shall I let myself be stripped bare? Once I tried it, it felt better than I’d expected. I look at the site first, work in a nearby café or somewhere like that, then go back and play it in one go, and that’s it. I also don’t like playing the same song twice. Outdoors especially, it’s really hard. Filming at Daecheongho Lake in February was hopeless. It was so cold my hands wouldn’t open up. And then the director said, “Let’s do one more…” (laughs).

What is your usual travel style?
I usually go without thinking much or planning. Sometimes I even pick my destination at the bus terminal. It’s not as if I’m going to do any sightseeing at the destination anyway. Just wandering around is all there is to it.

What if you get there and there’s nothing?
Then I go back to the terminal and think again. (laughs) I like traveling to cities too. Korean cities. Daejeon is great, Daegu is great, Gwangju is great, Mokpo is great.

Do you bring music equipment when you travel?
I always bring my laptop. These days I also buy small battery-powered gear and carry it around. You can even work on a phone, right? Things have gotten so much better. (laughs)

Has there been a moment while traveling when you felt a thrill?
There are many moments when I feel something is beautiful. The scenery counts, but more so when coincidences pile up. You’re sitting in a park, a train passes in the distance, and the moon is out even though it’s daytime. That’s how it was when I went to Miryang. A moment of “Wow, this is unbelievable!” In Zadar, Croatia, I was sitting on the beach watching the sunset. Just then, someone came swimming toward the shore from over there. Moments like that are truly beautiful, because you can’t create them on purpose, however much you might want to. I feel like there was always a moment like that wherever I went.

In the video you shot at Hwaseong Fortress in Suwon, you play in a pavilion while a hot-air balloon rises behind you. I found that scene so much fun.
Actually, at first we were waiting for the balloon to go up. But since nobody was riding it, they didn’t send it up. We gave up and just played, and at some totally random moment, the balloon was in the air. We ourselves never saw it.

Why did you choose Europe as the destination for your second travel project?
After the ‘Calendar’ album was finished, I came back home, and it was still hard. So I thought I’d go even farther, and I left. Of all the places, I picked wherever the plane ticket was cheapest. I also had a friend in Berlin. I really did that trip on very little money. I traveled for two months, and including the plane ticket it was about 3 million won.

I understand you worked on a lot of music then too, and played on the street. Is there a scene that stays with you in particular?
Actually, another reason I took that trip is that one of my lifelong wishes was to go to Oktoberfest. Even without any money, I went to Munich. I stayed two nights in an absurd place, like a rooftop room in Korea, and I spent almost all my money on the first day. In the end, I went to Oktoberfest with only enough money for two beers. Just as I was finishing my second, I happened to meet a second-generation (or was it third?) Korean living in Germany, and he bought me all the drinks I could handle. After the festival, his group took me to a bar and let me taste all sorts of beers. Then they put me, drunk, into a taxi, and I had a terrible time, since I had no money and didn’t know my lodging’s address exactly. That was a fun memory too… But Zadar was the best. Prices were really cheap, too. If someone told me to live there, I could. A hill runs along the seaside, and at the end of the hill there’s a big supermarket. It’s incredibly cheap. I had a great time walking back and forth between the sea and the supermarket.

Besides travel, is there anything else that inspires you?
I think everything does. Everything that comes to me by chance. I made the album “Dongducheon” after watching a documentary on YouTube called ‘Now We Can Talk About It.’ After seeing it, I went to Dongducheon, and there were so many incredible places. This interview might influence me, too. I tend to make music without thinking, almost like playing a game. Maybe the music comes more easily because I don’t write lyrics. Lyrics are hard, aren’t they? And there’s a feeling that once you put something into words, that’s all it becomes. At some point, I also realized I had nothing left to say.

How did you start working on music for theater?
There used to be a club called Badabi near the Sanullim Small Theater. I was discharged from the military in 2004 and was in a band called Eoreunai (Adult Child), and we ended up auditioning at Badabi. After the rehearsal, we were all drinking with the club people, and I fell asleep first. Everyone turned off the lights and left. When I woke up, it was pitch black. I was alone in a completely empty basement club. I loved it. After that, I basically lived at Badabi. One of the people I met there started doing theater and joined a troupe, and then I started working with that troupe. One thing led to another, and I just kept going. And working on theater music gives me a lot of stimulation.

What kind of stimulation?
Theater people talk about the show they just finished even at the drinking party after the last performance. That shocked me. I have never once talked about music while drinking, and it made me realize I still have a long way to go. A lot of the music I made for theater also comes back around into my own music.

Can you define your own music?
It’s ambiguous. Critics say it’s ambiguous, too. It’s not pop, but it’s not exactly experimental either. I do work with gugak (Korean traditional music), but that’s lukewarm, too. It’s not crossover, and it’s not dance music.

You collaborate a lot. Maybe other artists find that quality appealing?
I’m usually the one proposing the collaborations. When I collaborate, I try as much as possible not to touch the other person’s territory. Sometimes I think that if this is how we’re going to do it, we might as well work separately, but when I listen to the album later, I think, ‘Ah, this is good.’

I think video is also a very important element in Rainbow99’s music. The early videos were centered on a first-person view, then shifted to a third-person perspective, and now they seem like a single audiovisual work that can’t be separated from the music.
I’ve always been interested in video, so I make quite a lot of it myself. I love movies, too. If I hadn’t made music, I might have made films. I once read an interview with director Hong Sang-soo from when he was working on “Our Sunhi,” and what stayed with me was his idea of ‘doing what you can do now and sharing it as much as possible with the staff you work with.’ He said he doesn’t decide on locations in advance; they just go and say, ‘Shall we shoot here?’ and the script also comes together as everyone talks. Reading that made me feel that the direction I’m heading in isn’t totally wrong.

I heard you have a home on Jeju Island, too.
It’s at 656 Hahyo-dong, near Soesokkak. I worked on Jeju for the whole of last year. The year before that, I climbed an oreum (a small volcanic cone) on Jeju and thought for the first time that I wanted to make techno there. Music set in Jeju always has a similar mood, and I wanted to try something different. A friend who took photos while I was working on Dongducheon had already moved to Jeju, so we ended up doing a project together. After a year of that project, I thought I could actually live there, so I signed a lease on a house last December. When I don’t have work, I’m almost always on Jeju. My favorite thing is just sitting quietly in the yard.

And that’s how the album “Oreum Now” came about?
Yes. It wasn’t what I originally intended, but it ended up becoming a project related to the Jeju April 3 Incident. I couldn’t help it. Wherever you go on Jeju, there are traces of April 3. For the final stage, I built a website and held the exhibition and performance remotely. Later, I’ve been thinking I might do a live show on Jeju. There’s a field and a storage shed, so I could project video in the shed and play a live set in the vegetable garden.

Was there anything you wanted to express differently in “The Water Cycle” compared with your earlier albums?
When I’m on Jeju, all I see is water. It’s humid, too. After spending two or three months there without thinking about anything, I naturally started thinking about water. When I looked it up, I found the definition of ‘the water cycle.’ The album is built on that definition.

Are there any places on Jeju you’d recommend in connection with the water cycle?
Sanbangsan, Songaksan, and the Moseulpo area are good. Especially during a typhoon. When one comes, a huge number of people stand there to watch the waves. Whether it’s the sea or anywhere else, I think the best time to go is around sunset, because that’s when the crowds start to thin out.

We’re a publication that covers sustainable travel with an eye to the environment and local communities, and it felt like “The Water Cycle” touches on some of the same ideas.
I try not to release albums on CD anymore if I can help it. They’re trash. These days it’s hard to even listen to them, and they can’t be recycled. It’s meaningless. Honestly, even if I made CDs, my albums wouldn’t sell out. But if I make cups, they all sell. Because they’re useful and tangible.

Do you plan to keep doing travel-related projects?
I probably will. There was a project I wanted to try this year. I wanted to work in an area slated for redevelopment, so I applied for related grants, but I was turned down for every one… Someday I really want to work in a space that’s been completely emptied ahead of redevelopment, a place that’s about to disappear. And if the chance comes, I’d like to play the blues with a jazz musician. I’ve even picked out a band name in advance: ‘Long Live the Blues.’

Is there a way of traveling you’d recommend?
Decide once you get to the terminal. When I started my first travel project, I packed a small digital camera and went to the express bus terminal. I zoomed the camera lens in, and the first region I spotted was where I went. For the second destination, I drew lots. I think it’s good to go somewhere you’ve never been, out of the blue, like that. It doesn’t have to be far away. You can take a bus to a neighborhood you’ve never visited. It’s not hard. Everywhere has something good, something delicious. Even in a really small town there’s at least one restaurant. And in a truly rural place, there’s an atmosphere that belongs only to that place. Once I went to Cheongyang and arrived in the morning. There wasn’t a single person on the street. Not a car on the road. I was shocked. I thought, ‘Did I walk onto a film set?’ It felt both poignant and strange.

Lastly, what does the name Rainbow99 mean?
When I first started performing solo in Hongdae, my name was ‘Rainbow Pig.’ Every time the owner of the Badabi club, an older guy I knew, booked me, he’d call me a pun on that name that sounded like calling me a ‘dumb pig-dog,’ a term of contempt. That made me so angry that I made the first part sound more sophisticated with ‘Rainbow,’ and since I like repeating numbers, and also wanted to make sure I never went over 99 kilograms, I added 99. People close to me call me ‘Ruru,’ because my family name is Ryu.

So what’s your real name?
It’s Ryu Seunghyeon.