We always reminisce about the past but also want something new. First of all, if you look at what the word Y2K means, it is the same. In the 00s, retro music boomed, led by Wonder Girls. In terms of genre, bossa nova and samba have been coming up frequently lately. This is a genre that many artists such as Light and Salt, Lee So-ra, and Kim Hyeon-cheol showed frequently in the 90s.
Trends come and go, but if you look at the way genres are interpreted, something interesting can be observed. Rather than following past interpretation methods, we are looking for something different. For example, in the past, there was no team that interpreted Central and South American music like Rakunerama. There is no other musician who showed it like Jenny. So, if you really want to be specific, the shape in which the trend circulates is not circular, but spring-shaped. Even though it spins, it moves forward.
I don’t know exactly what it means to “move forward” in music, but I can be sure of one thing. It’s about taking elements from various genres and adding them to them. For example, in terms of sound, things like shoegaze with ambient influences, or techno with the four-beat kick of house. In that sense, if musicians who have been active in different fields for a long time come together to form a band, the band will become a testing ground where various genres mix together to create something new. Like a flat shop.
The regular album [toast recipe] released by Flat Shop is full of songs that make genre distinction meaningless. At one point, it sounds like rock, but then electronic music elements suddenly pop out, and the instruments are completely removed, leaving only the rhythm to highlight the rapper, before passing the baton to the R&B vocalist. Even though the colors are mixed like this, there is no focus on just one person. Everyone shares the spotlight evenly.
It is also impressive that the title reminds me of the ex-boyfriend toast meme. After someone shared a past incident like “My ex-boyfriend’s toast was delicious” to the Internet, it sparked curiosity and asked “How good would it be, so I’d ask my ex-boyfriend for the recipe?” People who recreated this shared reviews saying that it was really delicious, leading to the launch of a convenience store PB product.
Flat Shop also reassembled the music they had heard and tried in the past to fit the current context of Flat Shop and released it to the world. So, if someone later becomes curious about this music and tries to follow it, they will become the toast of the genre music world. Are you looking for music that is experimental but popular for some reason? Try listening to Flat Shop’s [toast recipe].