Lee Seung-yoon’s Fourth Album Took a Year to Complete, With 29 Songs

A making film documenting the intensive thought and work behind Lee Seung-yoon’s fourth full-length album, Album Zero, has been released. The process involved close coordination between the artist and production team, from sequencing the songs to waiting to bring the arrangements to completion.

Lee said the title “The Twenty-Thirty-Second Resolution” refers to the cycle of making a resolution every day and breaking it every day. The song reflects resolutions made hundreds of times and the will to start again despite that repetition. The album work included 29 songs, and Lee said he repeatedly questioned whether he was doing the work properly as he worked on them.

Some arrangements remained undecided until the end. Lee said there had been times when waiting made a song or performance better. To serve the album’s overall context, songs were held back rather than released immediately. He also recounted deciding on a song’s direction after hearing its introduction at a colleague’s suggestion. From the first recording, “Individualism,” to the final recording, the process took about a year.

Lee also described technical concerns and disappointments from recording. He recorded a drum solo he wanted listeners to hear, but felt the recorded track did not capture the full feeling of hearing it in person. He is considering presenting the solo on a future live stage rather than on the recording. To balance a song’s sense of space with vocal clarity, the team adjusted strumming rhythms and fine-tuned the sound, including distortion and delay during mixing.

Source: original video (YouTube)