Song Exploder - TOKiMONSTA - Bibimbap

Episode Date: October 18, 2017

Los Angeles producer and beatmaker Jennifer Lee released her first album as TOKiMONSTA in 2010. She has released music on Flying Lotus's label Brainfeeder, and has collaborated with Kool Keith and Anderson .Paak, among others. Her newest album, Lune Rouge, was released in October 2017. In this episode, TOKiMONSTA breaks down her song "Bibimbap," which is named after a Korean dish. songexploder.net/tokimonsta

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway. Los Angeles producer and beatmaker Jennifer Lee released her first album as Toki Monster in 2010 on Flying Lotus's label, Brain Feeder. She's collaborated with Cool Keith and Anderson Pack, among others. Her newest album, Loon Rouge, was released in October 2017, and in this episode, Toki Monster breaks down her song, Bibimbop. Hey, I'm Jennifer Lee, and I also go by Toki Monsta. My parents were born in Korea. I was born in the States, but they had been in the U.S. for quite a while before I was born.

I wanted to create a song that pulls from my roots and my cultural heritage. I was going through and listening to a lot of traditional music. There's a style of music called Pan Sori, which is like some really old school Korean folk music. It involved a lot of women doing this crazy orchestrated drumming that was also very performance-based. And it tends to be quite sad sometimes as well. I was going through and listening to all this Pansori stuff and basically heard this woman wailing and singing over these drums. And in traditional Pansori, there's this drum, but it's on its side. And it has this cool stick.

So one side of the stick is flat. and the other side of the stick is rounded. The performer also uses their hand so they can create all sorts of really cool sounds and rhythms. I thought it was really cool, but since I don't have that instrument, I took the sounds I heard from that and just started banging on things in my room. That sounded similar.

I have a few little drums at home, so I just did my best to kind of mimic the rhythm and the sounds, but with what I had available. And then on top of the music, I started singing, so kind of mimicking the things that I hear in traditional pansori. You know, I tried my best to tap into my inner Voki Korean person. My goal for the song was not to sample but to do what I could to recreate the things that I heard, to reinterpret my culture.

There is a few different layers of vocals on this song. The vocals play so much into the percussion, and it's so rhythmic. in that style of traditional Korean music, it can become very operatic, but sometimes it's just making sounds with your voice. So I'm just using my voice to mimic what the drum sounds like. And basically saying tune. With the pre-language, there's a lot of onomatopoeia.

It's almost like if you said bang. Tung is kind of like the same sound that a drum makes when you hit it. Like if my mom was saying that the bass is too loud in my car, she would be like, Tung-dung-sohury too loud. That boom-boom sound is too loud. My mom would say it that way. So I'm just layering all these vocal rhythms on top of each other, almost like beatboxing.

The instrument you're hearing right now is called a kayakum. It's a stringed instrument in Korea. And I had a friend in Korea whose aunt was able to play the kayakum, so he just sent me a bunch of her stuff. But when I received it, I didn't really know how I would use it Because it works in a very specific key, the scale that a lot of Eastern instruments in general exist in, it's very different than the Western scale.

And it is very difficult to mix that sound in with a scale that I'm used to working in. So what it ended up doing is actually chopping and pitching all the notes in this song. So the original version sounds completely different. I didn't change the cadence of it at all. So the rhythm and all that, it was kept the same, because I think that's a really important element to this, stringed instrument. All I did is pitch the individual notes. So I took the Kaigam, I had it on loop and I started trying out different chord

progressions that would complement the kayogum, which initially proved to be a bit difficult, but then I just kind of landed on these magical chords. I really like bell tone, rosy sounds. So I tick the kaogam exists in the scale and then I'm putting it next to more soulful. R&B chords and drums. I was just so happy that I was able to find that marriage between my East and West influences. With this song, I just really wanted to tell a story in general.

I feel like there's a lot more storytelling in lots of traditional music from cultures all around the world. And there's a bit less of that in modern music. I definitely wanted to go in this linear storytelling path where you can follow the song and sort of meander with it as it turns a corner and turns into this big epic swell and then it slows down again to continue its journey. A lot of traditional Korean music can be kind of sad. And with this song, I wanted to try something different, like a song that was a bit more heroic. That's when I decided

to bring in the brass and create these big sounds and this big movement and to kind of change the mood. I made the brass using a patch in contact, so they're not real brass sounds, but they sound pretty good to me. A lot of times if I'm on the road or if I'm somewhere else, the easiest way to create is with what you have. And a lot of times I just have these sample packs. The main vocals are from me, but pitched up quite high. I'm not a very good singer, but I would say I am a decent producer

and I can work my voice into a direction that is complimentary to the music that I'm making. I just freestyled these weird, like ad-lives all over the song and some of it works, some of it didn't. But you can also create such a cool sound just from the editing process as well. I could take the vocals, I can pitch them up, I can pitch them down, I can pan them from left to right, and treat the vocals more or less like an instrument that creates this ethereal melody that exists throughout the song while you have the Korean vocals creating this movement that's more percussive and rhythmic. It's just having like two different ingredients in a recipe. I tend to make this correlation between food and music quite often.

They're all about layers and a lot of times it does take experimentation. Peebingbap, it is a Korean dish. It basically translates to mixed rice. It's sticky rice. And then you have spinach. bean sprouts, potato shoot things, shredded carrots. And then on top of that, a fried egg. And the way that you eat it is you have to just mash it all together.

So with this song, I named it peeping bup. But I didn't think I was going to keep it that name. I thought, you know, eventually I'd come up with a more profound and a more serious name for it. Because I thought the song might sound too silly. And I thought the song was a bit more serious. But when I really took a step back and listened to the entire song and the idea behind it, I realize the song very much is the dish itself, a bunch of different ingredients coming together to create this recipe.

And now here's Bibimbop by Toki Monster in its entirety. Visit SongExploder.net to learn more about Toki Monster. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own. music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists. And it made me completely rethink

my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabond, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting to be on tour, in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll

play with my band. The album is called In The Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikesh.co.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. Next time on Song Exploder, the theme to the hit Netflix show, Stranger Things. Song Exploder is produced by me, along with Christian Coons,

with help from intern Olivia Wood. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary cutting edge podcasts made possible by the Knight Foundation and listeners like you. Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. You can find every episode of SongExploder at SongExploder.net or wherever you download podcasts. You can follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Song Exploder. Let me know what you think of this episode. My name's Rishi K. Shureway. Thanks for listening.