Rainbow99 on how nature has shaped his work.

Interview by Sam Choi (@semi_holic)
Written by Ella Kaill (@ellakaill)
Photography by Karina (@karinakonju)

Ryu, who goes by the stage name Rainbow99, released his tenth album, Winter1, in February 2022, and he proudly proclaims it to be a significant endeavour. "It felt a bit different than when I worked on other albums," he tells us. "It feels like I have gone full circle with my art and returned to where I started. Something about making this album has really moved me." Rainbow99 doesn't plan his work. Instead, he prefers to make music about things on his mind when making it. As a result, listening to his work often feels intimate and personal. "I was touched because a lot of people thanked me for making Winter1, rather than just saying it was good. It felt like they had connected with it in a whole different way."

Rainbow99 has been making music for over 15 years, his works spanning a multitude of genres and themes. In addition to making his own music, he's recorded, mixed, and mastered for other artists on 20 different albums. The work he finds most memorable in his hefty back catalogue is his song Love Is No Tomorrow. "If it weren't for that song, I wouldn't have been able to create music alone like this. Somehow, it filled me with confidence. It's precious," he says. He made his first album, Dream Pop, entirely without a computer, using a 1998 Roland MC-505 Groovebox to produce it - a small machine combining simple MIDI, synth, and drum-machine features.

“Music doesn’t disappear; it stays in the world. Especially these days with streaming sites. I hope that, with my album, the story of Dongducheon won’t disappear, either.”

Since then, he's increasingly introduced modern tech into his setup, and as he did, an integral part of his early music faded away; the lyrics. "At first, I wrote about myself and my thoughts. But at some point, I had nothing new that I wanted to say. I started to make music that wasn't about me anymore." He began travelling and producing music that reflected his experiences in new environments. In 2015, he went somewhere different in Korea every month to make his album Calendar. "The first time I travelled for that album, I went to Gangbyeon Bus Terminal and zoomed in on the signs with my camera. I saw Damyang, so I went there."

Similarly, in 2018, he went on a year-long trip around Korea to make the album Come Back Home. "Calendar was actually recorded at home. I just had the ideas while travelling. Come Back was different; I recorded and mixed it while on the road." He released live videos on YouTube of him making and recording some of those songs in one take. "I thought those videos might be too difficult to pull off. I felt naked because when you work live like that, you can't fix it later. But when I tried it, it was really enjoyable. It feels more honest."

Of all the places Rainbow99 has travelled to make music, he remains most haunted by his time in Dongducheon. Considered to be one of the most strategically important areas of Korea's military defence, Dongducheon is also remembered as where American GIs would meet Korean sex workers in the 1960s and 1970s. Even today, a facility still exists in the city where sex workers can receive treatment for STDs. Rainbow99 wrote some songs while camping there, hoping to capture the sad history of the city in his work. "It was really scary. In my song Monkeyhouse Night there's a scream. It's real. It's the sound of a deer crying out." The ominous sounds of the city echo throughout Dongducheon, the album Rainbow99 says he worked hardest and longest on. To him, it feels like an archive record. "Music doesn't disappear; it stays in the world. Especially these days with streaming sites. I hope that, with my album, the story of Dongducheon won't disappear, either."

After living in Seoul for a long time, Rainbow99 struggled to see beauty in the city, and he made the decision to leave the capital in 2020, moving to Jeju in search of fresh air and scenic beaches. But his longing to be closer to nature came at a price. "I barely knew anyone in Jeju. It took me a while to settle there, even though I was very ready to leave the piled-up cigarette ash of Seoul behind."

"For a while, nothing happened in Jeju because I didn't know anyone. But thankfully, people just happened to contact me. That's how I started working with OMONG." Rainbow99 collaborated with OMONG, an art brand promoting Jeju, to release his album Gujwa. The entire album is focused on expressing the beauty of Gujwa-eup, the easternmost village on the island.

Moving to Jeju was when the musician's obsession with water began. "Every day, all I could see was water. It's always humid or raining." His 2021 album, Water Cycle, was inspired by his new habitat. "The idea came from seeing the water all the time, and I suddenly thought, 'I'm water, too.' So, I read a lot about the water cycle." On the last song on the album, you can hear the robotic voice of Google Translate's AI reading the definition of the water cycle.

"I don't know how the album will turn out, but I want to work on it somewhere in Seoul under redevelopment. Maybe in Jeonnong-dong next to Cheongnyangni." The redevelopment of older areas in and around Seoul is currently one of many sensitive topics in South Korea. Many see the government's aggressive efforts to redevelop Seoul as a heartless exercise, with a growing number of long-standing businesses forced out of neighbourhoods they helped build. "I have moved around a lot since I was young. All the places I lived in were redeveloped, so now there are no traces of them. I feel down about that. So I had this idea about capturing the scenery of areas in redevelopment somehow through my art."

While the majority of Rainbow99's work is undercut with activism and heart, he finds time to have fun through his band, Janchi Janchi. "We're a punk band. It's my oldest friends and me from when I was young. To be honest, we started the band as an excuse to meet up and drink together…"

Janchi Janchi's sound is more confrontational than much of his other work, but Rainbow99 hopes people will enjoy all of his music as a way to let go of their thoughts, even if it was born out of his own introspection. "Just relax and listen. You don't have to think about anything while listening to my songs. You can escape."

For more information on Rainbow99, follow him here.