C-CLOWN’s music shines even brighter…
Debuting July 2012, in less than a year C-CLOWN has already released three albums. With their analogous and relatable dance music (instead of the normal electronic sounds used by other existing groups), C-CLOWN has set foot in the ‘idol battlefield’ with their own distinctively different colors. Because of this, they are able to gain a larger variety of fans through their music. Their first goal is to communicate with a greater number of generations and their second goal is start off as idols but eventually end up as beloved musicians. They have chosen to pursue music and believe in the path they have chosen. Last April 29th, at Hongdae Studios, we met with C-CLOWN.
“Our music,
We trust our path”
It’s already your third album. How do you feel about promoting lately? I think you’ve removed a lot of your more rookie-like qualities.
Rome We still think we’re lacking in many areas. I mean, we’ve definitely improved since before but we’re still nervous in front of cameras and whatnot. We still see a lot of shortcomings as well. Watching our past performances, we thought ‘Why did I do that?’ and watching our current stages now, the same thought still comes up. Currently, we’re in the process of fixing all those little errors.
How did you all come to debut?
Rome I used to dance back in Australia. It’s been about three years since I’ve moved to Korea. As I was dancing, I felt that dance in Korea was more developed and that there was more for me to learn. As a result, I decided to expand my knowledge and came to Korea. Coincidentally, I got casted on the street, which is how I then came to debut.
Kang Jun I was an art major for design and sculpture. I definitely did not have a dream to become a singer initially, but by chance I sang at a competition and the judges seemed to like what they saw. One of the judges back then was a music academy director who suggested I try becoming a singer. Even though I was worried, in the end with four months left for my art major, I prepared for the Yedang Entertainment auditions with the goal of becoming a singer like the music academy director had advised.
T.K As a child I was impressed by N’SYNC’s ‘Pop’ and from then on I wanted to become a singer. In 2009, I auditioned with Cube Entertainment and was going to debut as member of BTOB but due to health problems I was unable to. Afterwards, I was encouraged by the president of Yedang Entertainment to join his company and eventually debuted as a part of C-CLOWN.
Siwoo Because I enjoyed dancing, I diligently focused on it. While attending Hanlim School of Practical Music I had the fortunate chance to catch the attention of a Yedang representative. After just over two years of training I was able to debut.
Maru I really like RAIN-sunbaenim. I wanted to be like him and become a singer, so I prepared a lot to become one. The company has watched over me well and I was able to debut.
Ray My hometown is Pohang and when I was young, I was in a band. After that, I went to Hanlim School of Practical Music in Seoul and at an arts festival there, I was picked up by a company representative.
All the other songs on the album seem very good as well.
Rome Hearing stuff like that often makes us feel good. The idea behind the concept of our music is to not only appeal to one age group alone, but to everyone. We hope that everyone likes our songs and can enjoy them.
Rome (24, rap, leader)
Siwoo (21, vocal)
Kang Jun (20, vocal)
Ray (20, sub-vocal)
T.K (19, rap)
Maru (17, vocal)
It seems that you work with singer-songwriter RADO a lot.
Rome We worked with RADO-sunbaenim since our debut album. At first, we had him work on it for the sake of making the album but he’s watched over us well and has worked with us ever since. Now, he’s a really comfortable and great hyung to us. I think that before we are able to fill up our albums with our own self-produced songs, we’ll be working with RADO-sunbaenim.
Your songs have a lot of relatable feelings to it. It somewhat reminds me of T-ARA’s debut era.
Ray That’s right. The music we’re pursuing is music that escapes the confines of stereotypical idol music and leans more towards music everyone enjoys. Another name they call it is ‘easy listening’ but the music’s atmosphere has hints of the emotions expressed in trot music. A good thing about our songs is that older people can listen to it without it feeling so burdensome. When other idol groups boast stronger and more hard-hitting concepts, we want to boast our own musical color.
Up until now, you’ve released three albums. When you look closely at the title tracks, there’s seems to a certain uniqueness that is already established. It seems that as opposed to transformations, you’re just going deeper and deeper into that genre. Is this C-CLOWN’s musical color?
Rome That’s right. The music we’re pursuing is one that can be listened to and enjoyed by the public as a whole. Even as our group was set up, we wanted to become a group that people would love for a long time instead of just being an idol group and being popular. We’re trying to eliminate artificial/electronic sounds as much as possible and creating our music with as many Korean qualities as possible. What makes our musical color so special is how appealing and relatable it is to a wider variety of listeners.
As an idol group, it’s surprising that your target audience isn’t only teenagers.
Ray It’s because we’re not just planning on only doing music for a short time and then stopping. You can say that we’re looking ahead. We’re doing music that’s different from other idol groups and that’s why we can show a greater variety of stages. Our advantage is being able to draw in not only teenagers but also people in their 30’s and 40’s with our songs.
T.K Even though the company president has said to us ‘C-CLOWN has extraordinary visuals’. (laughs) I think it’s our own distinct personalities and color that sets us apart. It’s because of our distinct musical color that we’ll be able to receive a great amount of love someday.
Are there thoughts of challenging other genres?
Ray I think that right now, we should focus on getting our name out there before trying out new genres. When our music rises to a certain level and when a lot more people know about us, we’d like to try out subunits. Whether it’s hip hop or emotional ballads, we want to show the public a variety of appearances.
If, someday you get the chance to, what kind of music would you like to try?
Rome Personally, I like hip-hop. I like underground hip-hop, so for a while, I listened to BEENZINO-sunbaenim a lot.
Kang Jun I enjoy rock music. Heavy metal and dance metal my favorite types of music. In the future, I will definitely want to try either of them out at least once.
T.K I also enjoy BEENZINO-sunbaenim’s music. I have a lot of interest in hip-hop. I’ve also been steadily practicing rap.
Siwoo I want to try the acoustic-ballad genre. In order to have the smooth ballad sound with the guitar, I am consistently practicing. I would also like to learn how to play the guitar.
Ray I have a lot of interest in R&B hip-hop, as well as mid-tempo dance music.
Maru I want to try dance hip-hop. I like Chris Brown and I listen to his music often. I think it’d be fun to try something along the lines of that kind of music.
I think in the future, it’ll be interesting to have Rome and T.K come out with a hip-hop unit.
Rome Actually, we’ve heard a lot of people say that. Seeing as how we both like hip-hop, we practiced a lot together. At some point, we want to show our fans what we’ve been practicing up until now.
The feeling that the song ‘Far, Far’ gives from your current album is nice. In the future, it would be great if there was a title track with a similar atmosphere.
Rome To be honest, it was the song that we wanted our title track to be. When we first heard ‘Far, Far,’ we all thought it was really good. We had it down as our title track and we were practicing for it when the company representative received ‘Shaking Heart’ and wanted us to do that instead. I think he thought that it would better appeal to people.
Ray ‘Far, Far’ is a song our fans really love too. When we look at music sites or our fan-cafe, everyone said that they love the song. There was some regret in that we wanted ‘Far, Far’ to be better known to the public but we think that as time goes on, we can gradually fill up those shortcomings.
Rome We were regretful that it didn’t end up becoming our title song and that it wasn’t able to reach as far out into the public as we would’ve liked. But the good thing is that people who are interested in us have listened to the album and think ‘C-CLOWN has a lot of good songs,’ which in turn makes us feel good. We’re glad that many people enjoy ‘Shaking Heart’ and we want to keep on releasing good music.
What are your thoughts about appearing halfway through the season on the idol reality program, MTV <Diary>?
Rome We shot it for about a month. Since it was our first reality show, it was really nerve-wracking. We weren’t comfortable with cameras in the first place but through the reality show, we were able to become more natural in front of cameras in general. Now, when there’s a camera, we want to appeal to others and jump into the shot. Another good point about that was that people could see how we were like offstage and we gained a number of fans that way. Now fans of the other groups who participated have watched and enjoyed our show. (laughs) There’s a lot of videos on YouTube and the number of international fans have grown a lot as well. We look and read each of the comments in English, and it’s really interesting.
Ray We thought the fans would enjoy the show and think, ‘So this is how C-CLOWN lives,’ which is why we did the show. Thanks to that, our fandom grew a lot.
It seems you have a diverse fan-base.
Ray There’s one fan in particular that I remember. It was the first comeback stage for this round of promotions and an older person came to see the open broadcast. She seemed to be over 50 years old so we thought she was a family member of one of the younger fans. But later we found out that she was a Japanese fan. She came to us in person and told us that she was a strong supporter of C-CLOWN. We were very thankful.
What are the current interests of each member nowadays?
Kang Jun I’m interested in singing and acting. Since I’m in charge of vocals for our team, for our next album I want to be able to show off even more of my singing ability. In order to hear others say ‘Of course C-CLOWN’s vocalist sings well’, I will have to work even harder. I would also like to try acting.
Rome I want to perform in places like Hongdae. I’m really interested in the rap culture. Before SOUL COMPANY disbanded, I would always go see their small performances down in Hongdae. I know some hyungs in that neighborhood too and with that interest in mind, I’ve been practicing in my personal practice time. I really want to feature in an underground production.
T.K Rap-making. I’m continuously practicing writing raps. Rome-hyung and I try to personally do all the raps for all of our songs.
Siwoo Even though I still have not played the guitar before, I have interest in learning how to play the guitar. I also practice dancing every day.
Maru If I can do it, I want to do everything. Since I have a lot of interest in dance, I’m always either practicing choreography or sharpening and refining my dance skills.
Ray I’m really interested in song-making. I produce songs for fun for now but our company representative is always saying, ‘From now on, you’ll gradually be making your own albums so keep working hard.’ If I try hard enough, maybe I’ll make one good enough to be in our next album, even if it’s not our title track. (laughs) Our goal is to keep practicing and make albums by ourselves. Although we’re still a rookie idol group, we want to become better musicians. Even when C-CLOWN was first established, that sentiment was very strong among all of us.
Nowadays, it seems the likelihood of success in the competition between idols is based solely on winning number 1.
Rome We hear that a lot but lately, we haven’t seen the teams who were promoting when we promoted with our first album anymore. The fact we were even able to release a third album shows how strong that competition is. We have trust in our company and as C-CLOWN, we’ll work hard to boast our music color in all the albums we release. If we just do that, I think that we’ll become better known to the public.
Relay Messages
Ray to Maru “You’ve been doing very well so far. Even though sometimes you lose your focus because you’re still an adolescent (laughs) I know I don’t have to worry because you’re a good-natured younger brother. So now as long as you put your mind to it, we are sure to do even better!”
Maru to Siwoo “Hyung is kind. There is no one else like you. But it would be nice if you kept your usual 4-dimensional voice just between us.(laughs)”
Siwoo to T.K “T.K. You have a lot of interest in many things like exercising, clothes, rap, etc. Because you are young, there are many things you want to do for yourself. But you should pay more attention in dancing. I hope that if you put just a little more interest into dancing you would dance better.”
T.K to Rome “Hyung, you know how during breaks between promotions, we focused more on dance than rap? (laughs) It’s only because we practice 18 hours a day that it’s been like that. Now that we’re promoting, it’s been great seeing your determination towards rap become so passionate. I hope you keep that determination. I want to keep rapping with you, hyung.
Rome to Kang Jun “When I first looked at Jun, he didn’t seem like the type but because he’s the most playful member, it’s always fun to be around him. I hope your interest in acting gets stronger. I’m only worried because you’re the type who can’t stick to one thing for a long period of time (laughs) I hope you find one thing that you’re really firm about and go with it for a long time. Also, when I look at you, you remind me of a younger me. There are a lot of similarities you and I share, which is why I want to tell you a lot of things. Once you find something that you stick with for a long time, with that passion of yours, I think you’ll do great things. Fighting!”
Kang Jun to Ray “I think for our fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh album, you’re going to have to take charge of them all. Just because you’re a member of my group doesn’t mean I won’t be hard on you. (laughs) Since I’ll judge your music impartially and coldly, make lots of good music for us~~ It’d be nice if you put in a lot of parts for me. Oh, and I mean it when I say this. I wish you would stop being so handsome. Haha.”
CREDIT: montazzang @ Naver Blogs (source); @CClown120719 / Crown the Clowns (translation & reupload)
Crown the Clowns 
thank you for translating ^^
this blog is awesome 🙂