AN INTERVIEW WITH LUCY LIYOU

Lucy LiYou is a Korean-American musician whose music draws on elements such piano, text-to-speech vocalization, and pansori. Their most recent album, Practice, was released on February 1, 2021 and was recorded, produced, and composed by Lucy in Washington. Lucy talks to Teresa and Sam about the process of making Practice chronologically, their classical piano background, and their love for Mariah Carey.

Sam: We love the album so much, and I think it's really impacted both of us in various different ways, and we just wanted to ask you some questions about the process of putting it together and what a lot of it meant to you.

Lucy: Well, yeah!

Sam: We saw that you moved back to Seattle to record a lot of the album, and the album feels very personal. So, how did that move back impact your creative process and your thought about this album?

Lucy: Yeah, so like I just graduated college and came back home, and, you know, I made my first album and released it in March. It was called Welfare. And I was already thinking about like, ‘hmm I need to do something to follow this up in what way.’ And then I had a few life events that happened. And so this kind of came about pretty naturally, if that makes sense.

So my grandma fell ill—she fell really ill—not from COVID, but from unknown reasons. Like she was going in and out of the hospital a lot. So, she fell ill and she’s in Korea, so my mom went to Korea as like, a last minute decision. And I was actually supposed to come back to Philadelphia to go to school for grad school because I'm in like a one-year grad program there right now. And I made the decision to just stay in Seattle so I could help things out at home with my sister, my dad, and whatnot. 

So, the album was personal because there were so many things going on and there were so many personal decisions that I had to make to remain in Seattle. And I think—I was telling this to my friend actually—I feel like geography actually has a lot to do with how you make things and how you create. *Laughs* 

I made all of Welfare in Philadelphia, and Welfare is like, very emotionally detached and is so different from the music I was making while here. So, yeah. I would say mainly just, like, life events definitely pushed this album to be a lot more personal. I always say I want my music to be documentation more than anything, so it was just me documenting a lot of the experiences I was going through.

Teresa: Yeah, and kind of on that note: you dropped this album in February, but when did you, I guess, start creating the album, what was that process like?

Lucy: Yeah, so I made this album in, and I want to say, like three weeks. So my mom left towards the end of August, which is when I made the first song. So every song we made kind of pretty much in order. And, yeah. I started it in August and pretty much finished it towards the middle of September. And then, I'm sure you all know this, but there are wait times for labels and stuff, so we had to wait a little bit before it came out. But um, yeah, it was like last year.

Sam: Yeah, and you just brought up how you basically recorded the songs in the order that they appear in the album. And I think this kind of corresponds with an idea of world-building that you've talked about a little bit. So, how do you think the sequencing affected the world-building and what is your approach to world-building and music in general?

Lucy: The world-building in my music has a lot to do with one of my major musical influences, which is pansori. Pansori is Korean folk opera, and Korean folk opera is within itself world-building through the usage of voice, vocal manipulations, like literal physical vocal manipulations and rhythm. So like the drum, they use the buk, typically, which is like a traditional Korean drum. And that has always been my biggest musical inspiration, personally and which is why Welfare within itself is also world-building and storytelling. 

I guess this world-building was a little bit different though. I described this in my Bandcamp interview a little bit, but I was also extremely inspired by Korean drama soundtracks. I don't know if you guys watch Korean drama. I'm obsessed with Korean dramas, but… *Laughs* You know I just had like really interesting experiences listening to Korean drama soundtracks when I was growing up.

I remember like my parents, my grandparents, would tell me this is the sound of han, which is like an emotion concept - emotion/concept that's kind of hard to explain, I guess, in English but, you know, if you look on Wikipedia or whatever, they'll tell you it's something related to like grievance but like historical, the post-colonial identity of grievance.

And it was so interesting to me when they said that about Korean dramas soundtracks because Korean dramas soundtracks are very westernized. They're extremely like pop level. And it just made me think about how transient han was to me and it also had a lot to do with just like what I was going through that time. Because han once again, is like the post-colonial identity of grief and grief management, I guess in English terms, very vaguely.

And what I was going through, when I was going through all these life events back in the end of August, beginning of September, I had to have a lot of these conversations with my dad, and my sister, and my mom about, like, the potential loss that we might be experiencing or like the potential grievance, or the grief that we might have to face. 

And so this world-building, I think, kind of happened very naturally, in the sense that I was experiencing the events linearly, in a linear way, and I was therefore making the music with a sense of linearity. And same with my music inspirations: like, I was watching a lot of Korean dramas at the time, so everything kind of happened pretty unilaterally.

Teresa: Yeah, no, that was very beautifully said. I feel like you do have, like, a PR person. *Laughs*

Lucy: Oh God no. *Laughs*

Teresa: That really made a lot of sense. So, when I was listening to your music I was thinking like, how do all these pieces come together? It feels to me, like, so experimental, and I would never be able to put all these different piano parts and text to speech. So, can you talk to us a little bit about your composition process? Do you look for certain sounds or feelings, or do you sort of come across them and want to incorporate them?

Lucy: So, I guess I can start a little bit about my music background because maybe that'll help kind of facilitate this discussion, or I guess my answer. I grew up playing piano my whole life—classical piano my whole life. I played it like really competitively for a few years, or not a few years, for many years. I played classical piano very competitively for many years.

And so obviously piano is kind of the instrument I resort to to, I think, channel so many thoughts and emotions and ideas because it's like, what I'm most versed with, if that makes sense. It is the best channel for me to really process and to really create. 

So I think a lot of these pieces—a lot of my composition process like actually starts at the piano. All those like electronic manipulations that you hear all start at the piano too, and it's me either transmogrifying the sound into like, different shapes and whatnot. So it's like everything starts at the piano. I want to make that very clear, and frankly, like the whole text to speech part is very much so inspired by, once again, pansori. And so it’s my piano playing in a sense, actually. Not necessarily the piano playing that you hear like, on practice, like the very literal piano playing, but I guess more like the ersatz kind of electronic manipulations.

So I'm so interested in pansori. I don't know if you guys have ever listened to pansori. If you haven't, I truly recommend it, just as in an experience, because it's so beautiful, and it's so interesting, and I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm Korean, like, I just think it's beautiful on so many different levels, but you hear the kinds of vocal manipulations being made from the singer—from this vocalist—and it's like the rhythmic changes and also the very subtle tonal changes all the time, create new layers, new added layers of like different kinds of emotions, thoughts, experiences and that within itself, I think, is musical world building and I approach my composition process in a very similar way, but through the piano as like a very obvious mechanism. Because the piano is my voice, if that makes sense. It's like the easiest voice that I can have access to musically.

And then the actual text to speech is more of - like I described it as like a brutalization of pansori because it's like, I wanted to sing that way or like maybe create something that way but also I'm not a singer. *Laughs* I’m not a singer. You know, pansori is an art. It's an art form that takes years and years of practice and expertise and I'm a Korean. I'm a child of immigrants, and… I wanted to show my musical process and like my idea of text and text world building - because like pansori actually has words and I don't want to say lyrics but it is storytelling - I wanted to share like the brutalization of it that I have to always come in terms with as a Korean American.

Because as much as it is part of my culture, it really isn't really in many ways too. So, yeah. Does that make sense?

Teresa: Yeah. Also I wanted to say. So, I also played piano competitively until senior year of high school and then I would kind of like stopped after going to college. But also I was never really trained in theory that much, I just like played competitively. But most of the repertoire, at least, I learned competitively, was very Eurocentric, right? Like Bach, like Tchaikovsky, like all of those things. So I guess, how did you begin to use piano in a way that kind of meshes more with Eastern influences when I feel like most of my piano experience has been very Eurocentric like Western sounds, if that makes sense. 

Lucy: Yeah. I think you're getting at something really big and not just my music, necessarily, but I think a lot of how East Asian people approach classical music in the sense of like, you know, the Eurocentric classical music that you're talking about. I think inevitably my music will always have a Eurocentric backbone, as I am once again a Korean American and I grew up playing classical music that was Eurocentric. Do I think that limits me from, quote unquote, accessing or really like channeling quote unquote Eastern ideas and thoughts and music processes? Absolutely not. 

But I also think that dichotomy, as important as it is to acknowledge, I do think, you know, yes, the piano within itself is a Western instrument. And so I think it's just like there's so many different parts that are in play/ Like the piano is a Western instrument, I have western training, and I'm approaching something from that perspective.

And so of course like within itself, it's like colonialist in a way, but at the same time, it's like me doing my best to really understand and channel these very Korean specific understandings and ideas that I've always had to figure out on my own. And it kind of goes back to like the Korean dramas that I was talking about in the beginning. It reminds me how transient and how malleable is han in a musical context, you know I mean?

Like I have a friend - by the way, a really brilliant friend named Sunik Kim who makes incredible music and they have an album called Zero Chime and that is like their musical attack on the west - and that can be han. And they talk about how their music is han, but I think mine is like a very different understanding and approach to it. So that was a very long winded answer of saying I don't know.

Sam: That makes a lot of sense and it's super helpful for how I conceptualize your music as well. But moving from piano, I know experimental can be kind of a problematic term in itself. But what influenced you to move from that very kind of restrained classical piano to a more experimental sound. Was it specific artists’ influences, or was it just changes to how you saw your own music?

Lucy: I started music only knowing classical music. I didn't listen to classical music until I was in the middle of elementary school. And that's what I was introduced to, like, Rhianna, Ashanti, Mariah Carey, Keyshia Cole like all these different R&B artists that I didn't even know I was listening to at that time and it completely changed my understanding of what music could be. And it also, like hearing all of that music really birthed a new kind of ambition or an interest or curiosity to understand what other kinds of music is out there and existent. 

And once again on that layer above like…  Once again like black women like FKA twigs and like Klein and, like Crystal Mess and all these other incredible, and Moor Mother -  these incredible black women in quote unquote experimental music, pop music, and anywhere in between, and, like hip hop and r&b anywhere in between.

I mean, it completely changed my understanding of what music could be. It was always like these crazy epiphanies, like one in elementary school and one in middle school and then one in high school and one in college. These epiphanies kept happening because I was just listening and being exposed to like what these incredible like black women were making in music.

And I want to make that super clear that my music would not be where it is or even receive the kind of recognition it's receiving without the help and work of black women. Because even from the very beginning, like I only ever got attention in the first place because Klein, a musician and artist I absolutely worship, said hey, let me help you release this. 

I know it's very far fetched to say black women have been incredibly integral to my musical understanding of how to transmogrify sounds and really shift things in different ways, but I really think black women in music have really pushed and generated new thought of what is limitless in music? Whether it's voice, composition - I think they are always changing the game.

I mean for example, I think Klein is like one of my biggest influences of all time and so is Mariah Carey, and both vocalists and both producers have changed and showed how limitless music and voice can be in so many different contexts. Yes, I have this classical background and yes I’m extremely influenced and interested in like Korean music. But that interest would probably have never been birthed unless I got that incredibly important introductions to different kinds of music at a very young age.

With Mariah Carey and Ashanti and like all these different incredible artists that, you know, believe it or not, make up a lot of the childhoods of a lot of Korean immigrants. I mean like this is the music of a lot of immigrants, it really is. 

Sam: Yeah, that's awesome. And that definitely traces like a bit of a lineage. And following your twitter, I -  

Lucy: Oh, you follow me? I’m sorry. *Laughs* I’m so crazy on there.

Sam: I knew you liked Mariah Carey because you talked about Mariah Carey a lot. And I was wondering, what are some of your favorite Mariah Carey songs and also in the Bandcamp profile, we saw the Mariah Carey covers album possibility? Is that a thing that could happen?

Lucy: Oh my god, she's the most important artist to me. Like, literally the most important artist to me, both musically and both, I guess, ideologically, or like, theoretically, she is the most important artist to me. 

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Lucy: God, there's so many. I love - my favorite album of all time is The Emancipation of Mimi, that's my favorite album of all time. So obviously, I love every single song from that. But I also love Honey. I love all the classics, for sure. I love songs like Bliss, Fourth of July. Love some of her new quote unquote newer stuff too that like no one listens to anymore which makes me super upset.

She did a song with Miguel called Beautiful. And she did a song with Wale called…  What is it called? You Don't Know, or something like that. And so many…  Obsessed, Touch My Body, H.A.T.E.U, Candy Bling, I could go on and on like I know everything. And the Mariah Carey covers album, yeah I'm hoping to make a reality. We'll see.

Teresa: I love how you just listed her whole discography.

Lucy: Basically.

Teresa:  But yeah going back to when you were talking about limitlessness. When I was telling Sam about how I was feeling when I was listening to Practice, it felt like I was being put in some infinite space. So, I guess, when you talk about limitlessness, does that include what you want listeners to sort of feel when they listen to your music? Or do you talk about limitlessness more as a practice rather than the feeling of engaging with your music.

Lucy: I think it's both. Definitely. Yeah, I want to remind people that music is both everything and nothing at all. You know, rests are music. Having silence is music and having all sorts of sound is also music. And they don't have to compartmentalize music into such like oppressive degrees, especially in such a westernized, capitalist, and colonialist context.

It's like a huge part of my practice in music, which is why I think I inherently hope that people feel that way, or people perceive my music in that way. Yeah, I feel like every artist should hopefully feel that way about their music or for like whichever direction that they want to go into. There aren't really any limits. There are limits but you know what I mean.

Sam: That's a beautiful way to put it. I think those are the questions we had for you today, but what should people be looking out for you coming up next?

Lucy: I have a number of projects coming, but also nothing is finished, so I'm also like, I don't know what I can say. I don’t know. I feel like if I can tell people anything it's like, A) obviously listen to Mariah Carey but also listen to a lot of the music my friends are making - people in your community. I want to make that super clear, music is also community.

Sam: You want to shout out some of your friends?

Lucy: Oh yeah, for sure. Like my friends in New York like Sunik Kim, Oh Young, Nick Zenka, I think like, Motion Graphics is technically in New York too. Love Motion Graphics, those are my friends in New York. I also love Claire Rashi, Maurice, Andrew Weathers, CC Sorensen, and then like my one friend and I want to say like, I actually don't even know where they are, I think they're in like Europe.*Laughs* Like my friend [unintelligible] like are super, super important. So, yeah, support the people in your area.