The Assembler: Chillmonday’s Experimental Music
“I’m not an artist who can create from 0 - 100,” Chillmonday says in this exclusive interview. “I’m an artist who’s inspired by other perspectives,
“I can be delusional,” Chillmonday said with a laugh one afternoon from his London apartment. “I’m not very realistic. I tend to dream really, really high.”
Chillmonday’s tendency to dream big, though, means that for the past five years he has carved a place for himself in the London DJ and house music scene. This is not an easy feat for a Korean musician who came to the city with no contacts and only a hope that he could succeed.
Chillmonday remembered once telling his friend that if he continued making the quality music he’s become known for, he could go to number one on the charts. She laughed at him, a little taken aback with how brazen his belief in himself. But Chillmonday was serious: He does believe he can go far; he knows he has something special that could catapult him into making this career a full time gig.
“She found it funny,” he said about his friend, “that I could be this delusional.”
But all great musicians start with an insane dream and then claw their way towards achieving it. For every musician who returns home in debt, others like Chillmonday, are finding success.
The producer didn’t think too deeply about the move to London in 2018 when he was 25. “My sister asked me, ‘What are you going to do there?’” he remembered. “And I said, ‘I don’t know, after three years, I’m gonna be something.’”
When he arrived, Chillmonday enrolled in a university in the UK before transferring to a school directly inside London. From there, he began to meet other musicians and students who shared the same dream as him.
Chillmonday’s music tastes are grounded in the electronic, house music that the UK is known for. That’s why he came – this kind of music isn’t found back home in Korea, where the music scene is largely homogenous in what becomes popular. “When I came to London for the first time, I was really shocked because there were really different types of music and the music market is so big,” he remembered. “I could go to the shows that I never imagined would happen for me.”
At it’s highest peaks, Chillmonday’s music resembles the euphoria of a damn good Disclosure track or the dirty bassline of a Deadmau5 album. He’s experimental and a risk taker; someone who is curious to try new sounds and work with anyone he finds appealing.
“I’m not an artist who can create from 0 - 100,” he said when I asked about his working style. “I’m an artist who’s inspired by other perspectives, whether it be music or movies. I recreate it in my style. I don’t mind using samples or working with writers.”
“I don’t mind letting other producers produce my music. As long as I can put those things into my brand, because I think as a producer that’s the main job,” he continued. His job is more akin to a director or a curator than simply being a musician.
“It’s about assembling things and putting them into one song,” he explained. “That’s how I really like to do it.”
For the first fifteen years of his life, Chillmonday grew up in Anyang, a city in Gyeonggi Province, situated outside of Seoul. “I have good memories with my friends and school there,” he said. After leaving Hanam, Chillmonday moved to Seoul where he began university and then enlisted in mandatory military service.
Chillmonday is grateful for his time in the military, even if it was challenging. “In military service, you have to put everything down that you have in society. You have to shave your head, get humiliated by trainers,” he said. “Everyone is pushed down to one single vision. That helps you exist as a person. That helped me too.” Outside of moving to London, this experience helped Chillmonday grow the most as a person.
When he finally moved to London at 25, Chillmonday had already spent nearly a decade working on his craft. “I was lucky to have parents who supported my musical ambitions,” he explained. I was able to go to a hagwon where I met a lot of bass teachers, which was helpful because I was playing bass at the time.” The musicians who trained Chillmonday were industry professionals. They worked in the K-Pop industry and gave him a foundation in several types of musical genres. “In that sense I was really, really lucky and I had mentors there,” he said.
Chillmonday was most familiar with jazz music in university, and he has ambitions to one day forge this genre with his brand of disco and house music. “Jazz was my fundamental music education,” he said.
The musician pulls from a wide range of genres, though. He cites f(x)’s experimental album “4 Walls” as an album that inspires him. “There were things that I could learn from K-Pop, especially the way they mix the genres influenced me,” he told me, citing UK music like Dnb and Garage. “So I’m now trying to mix genres, for example pop and house or drum and bass with hip-hop. I think that mixing of music influenced me.”
These influences are best heard on the tracks “On My Mind” and “Wish”, both of which feature the producer’s vocals for the first time. His deep, husky voice adds an edge to each song and their seductive lyrics. “How would you feel/ What would you do,” he asks his crush on “On My Mind”, “If we can do what lovers do?”
While Chillmonday admits the tracks were difficult to compose, the products are some of his strongest. “I’m proud of all the products I’ve made, but I’m proud I could release a song fully recorded by myself,” he said. “But it took too much time for me to create one song because I’m not a singer.”
Chillmonday knows that because he is Korean, many of his fans will have a hard time separating him from K-Culture, but “On My Mind” and “Wish” erases nearly any connection to K-Pop. Instead, they sound entrenched in the house music I would party to all throughout college. The music is diligent in Chillmonday’s study of what makes a compelling pop track. They’re electric, genuinely sexy songs that transmit feelings of desire and longing.
“As a Korean artist, it’s a double edge sword because what we do will always be associated with being Korean or Asian,” he said. “Most people who like me are also interested in Korea or K-Pop, but ultimately the kind of music I want to do is a bit far from what they usually like.”
Yet assembling these pieces to solve a puzzle, like how to make the music that feels most sincere and exciting to him, is something that Chillmonday chases after. Juggling a day job with DJ gigs can be maddening, but the producer is determined to see it through.
He’s recently been reading “The Law of Human Nature'' by Robert Green, which describes the concepts of denial and delusion. “Humans waste their time being delusional in the sense that they think they have unlimited time and resources not knowing that their life can be finished now or tomorrow,” he said. “When I fall into frustration,I try to remind myself that I have limited time. Whenever I do that, it reminds me to focus on what’s most important in life.”
Chillmonday is betting that his music can break through. Though living in London and being one of the few Asian producers working in the house music genre is challenging, he’s continuing to stay “delusional” and create with as much time as he has. “That’s how I bring myself back,” he said, “from frustration to motivation.”
