Phoebe Rings Masters “Sleepy Disco” in Full-Length Record ‘Aseurai’
There’s a bit of magic intertwined in every Phoebe Rings song, with mystical dream-pop taking listeners on a transcendent journey into the atmosphere, floating amongst the stars. With moments of electronic flurry braided into poetic lyricism and dazed indie-rock musicality, there’s truly a sensation of mindful elevation within each Phoebe Rings track. Last June, the band released a 10-song album named Aseurai, meaning "around you in the atmosphere" in Korean. Given the dream-pop nature of their music, the band couldn’t have come up with a better title for the album.
“We are a dream pop band, like we had someone tell us once that our music was ‘sleepy disco.’” Crystal Choi, founder and front-woman of Phoebe Rings, told Pleaser in an interview over Zoom, “We liked it so much that we put it into our merch.”
PHOTOS BY EMMA FISCHER
As a recent graduate from jazz school in 2015, Choi was in an active pursuit to figure out what, exactly, she wanted to do with her music career. In the beginning, she wrote and composed songs that aligned with her background in jazz. Mulling around the music scene, Choi had a hard time finding musicians she felt clicked with the visions she had for her music. That was until she met Simeon Kavanagh, Benjamin Locke and A.C. Freazy– the musicians that would soon mesh to form the band Phoebe Rings.
“I think the really amazing and reassuring thing was when I brought in the demo of just a keyboard and a vocal part, the band played it and it was better than I had originally imagined,” Choi said. “It was such a surreal feeling, like ‘oh my god, this is actually something that could happen. This sounds good.’”
Now, the band is finding their footing, successfully touring with bands such as Lips and The Beths.Choi happened to be tuning into our interview from a tour bus stationed in Providence, Rhode Island, while on the road with another New Zealand rocker band,The Beths.
“We’re doing more extensive shows, like we just played a festival gig where we had an hour and a half to play, and we had enough songs to fill the set,” Choi told Pleaser. “It was called Festival of Lights, and it was behind a waterfall. It’s a very scenic festival.”
There’s a warped sense of perception inside each of the tracks on Aseurai, each song taking listeners on a journey to the outer orbit of the universe, a place that can only be unlocked in the transcendent nature of a dream state. The self-proclaimed “sleepy disco” indie band got its namesake from the outer rings of Saturn, a nod to the spacey world that Auseurai transports its listeners.
While there are several narratives throughout the album that are special to Choi, one of the most heartwarming and sturdy moments of anecdotal storytelling comes from a track on the album titled “Blue Butterfly,” which Choi described as an important song to her and her family.
“There’s this one called ‘Blue Butterfly,’ where I completely just use my childhood memory,” Choi explained to Pleaser. “It was after a 49th day event, which is like a funeral. It’s a Buddhist kind of ritual for my dad’s mom, my grandma. I saw a blue butterfly, and being a city girl and seeing a blue butterfly was a very interesting experience. I was a child, and I was like ‘wow.’ But when I thought about it later on, that 49-day ritual is quite related to reincarnation. It’s kind of like wishing them to be born into a nicer being. My grandma is of that generation, and being female, she probably didn’t have the freest life. The song came from a wish that maybe the blue butterfly was her.”
Aseurai is a truly remarkable record, with each song draped in dazzling imagery, poetic meaning and inspirational Korean culture. The album weaves color with sound to create moments of pure, natural beauty. Each moment from the record is laced with starlight, a beautiful escape from a mundane world.
