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어떤날 II

Korean Music / 1980s · 1989

어떤날 II

어떤날

Why listen

Two writers build eight songs with changing combinations of guitars, bass, programming, keyboards and acoustic instruments.

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English editorial edition

Album story

The personnel change is striking. Start opens with guitars, bass, drums, drum programming and keyboard synthesizer in its credits. The closing Evening On November lists classical guitar and oboe. Eotteonnal II is a duo album, but its eight songs do not share one fixed accompaniment.

Released in 1989, it was the second album made by Jo Dong-ik and Lee Byung-woo as Eotteonnal. Their familiar association with bass and guitar is only a starting point. The original sleeve also documents electronic percussion, computer programming and synthesizers, alongside contributions from other musicians. Looking at the credits song by song reveals individual arrangements within the partnership.

Changing the combination

Start credits both Bae Su-yeon on drums and Kim Young-seok for digital drum programming. Neither an entirely acoustic nor an entirely programmed description will do. Crescent Moon brings a different drummer and keyboard player into the picture. Compare these adjacent songs as changes of arrangement as well as changes of writer. The sleeve does not tell us the exact order in which the parts were recorded, but it makes their deliberate combination visible.

Two substantial endings

Drunk Monologue closes the first side with a span exceeding eight minutes in the current edition. Its credited resources include fretless bass, piano and double reeds alongside guitar and drums. The second side restarts with A Fleeting Season, then moves through Girl and On Those Days. Evening On November supplies another long ending, with much smaller instrumental resources. These two destinations invite a useful comparison: how does a song sustain its scale when the number of credited instruments changes so markedly?

A record before it became a memory

In a 2010 interview, Lee described Eotteonnal as a picture of his twenties. That later recollection need not make the album depend on a listener’s own nostalgia. Its carefully differentiated arrangements remain available to someone encountering it for the first time. Follow the contrast between the programmed elements credited on Day and the small closing combination. The record offers specific musical decisions through which youthful experience takes a lasting shape.

The album through its tracks

Compare the first two arrangements, then follow the different instrumental resources at the ends of the two sides.

  1. 출발 / Start

    Lee Byung-woo wrote both words and music for the opening song. His credited resources include guitar synthesizer, electric guitar and classical guitar, alongside Jo Dong-ik’s electric bass. Drums, digital drum programming and keyboard synthesizer complete a more varied arrangement than the label guitar duo suggests. Listen across the passages with singing and those where the instruments become more prominent. Which parts maintain continuity, and which change the emphasis? The credits identify resources without proving that everything was played simultaneously. This selection is the original opening studio track in the current digital programme, not an unrelated song with the same translated title or a later solo performance.

    Reference · Original Seoul Records SPDR-169 back sleeve: track-by-track writers, instruments and printed times

  2. 초생달 / Crescent Moon

    Jo Dong-ik wrote the second song. Its original credits list his bass and digital percussion, Lee’s electric guitar, Kim Jong-hyeon’s drums and percussion, and Kim Hyo-guk’s keyboard synthesizer. Several resources therefore change immediately after Start. Follow the length of the sung phrases and the shorter instrumental responses around them, using those credited changes as a route into the arrangement. Continue to Day: Jo wrote that song too, so the album does not simply alternate its two writers every track. The selection preserves the original second position and its Korean title spelling. The current delivery uses Crescent Moon as its English title, within the same eight-song sequence.

    Reference · Original Seoul Records SPDR-169 back sleeve: track-by-track writers, instruments and printed times

Listen next

Return to Eotteonnal I 1960·1965 and compare how the same two musicians organise voices and instruments across their two albums.

어떤날 I 1960·1965 ↗
References & editorial note

Written for English readers. Album facts are referenced below; listening suggestions are editorial interpretations. AI-assisted editorial review; not independently human-reviewed.