Music Monday #254: xikers - Bittersweet

[hitokage]

You know my health has been horrid when not even ATEEZ was able to bring me back to this series, but Halloween is almost upon us and I really, really wanted to get back into this series. And even better, xikers released two new spooky videos last month, Witch and Bittersweet.

Song: Bittersweet
Artist: xikers
Release: September 2024
Genre: Kpop, dance rock
cw: supernatural elements (magic, powers), flashing lights, implied monster spider-creature, eyeballs, an anatomically correct heart

Watch on YouTube

[note: official English translation available in CC]

I went back and forth on this a few times, and if we're very lucky, I might come back to do a special post on WITCH soon, but in the end I went with Bittersweet as the less intensely horror/creepy of the two. Yes, even with all those content warnings, this is the lower horror level video. XD

A primary strand in xikers' discography is title tracks with a more rock sound to them and Bittersweet, as B-title, continues that trend. Overdriven guitar and solid bass beats combine with lyrics that float effortlessly between sharply delivered raps and then sung lines that alternate nearly-shouted and then sweetly sung passages. The story of the song itself continues to build the dokkaebi lore that is Tricky House - combined with Witch, it's a dual warning to stay away if you value your life/sanity, oops, too late.

As a performance video, about half of the runtime focuses on the boys actually doing the full choreography for this track in a wide open industrial space, with all sorts of effects added in post. Smoke and fire, video surveillance overlays, that spider creature... It's a Halloween-filled fest fit for the wildest of wild dokkaebi. At first blush, the choreography looks fairly simple. And then one notices the lifts and the sync and how close together they're dancing and oh that's not so simple actually.

Of course it's a KQ performance video, so it doesn't shy away from taking this time to further dole out lore crumbs. That said, the lore of xikers is ten dokkaebi (yes, ten; Junghoon is still a member) getting up to all the shit, having the times of their lives messing around with stupid humans. The only human in this video is the viewer, which means nothing we see can be taken for granted - it could all be really happening (unlikely) or it could all be magic (slightly more likely) or any level of a mix of the two (most likely). That said, the overlays in Sumin's early rap (starting around 0:58) definitely remind me of ATEEZ's Deja Vu and while the lores of the two groups have been quietly kept separate up to now, a crossover would be amazing, I'm sure. And pure chaos, too.

HOUSE OF TRICKY : WATCH OUT, the fourth installment in the series, is available now (along with the rest of House of Tricky) wherever you do your Kpop listening and/or physical album purchasing. And if you'd like to watch strictly performances of this and Witch, allow me to suggest this wall.live, 위치 (WITCH) + Bittersweet (cw: flashing lights, camera motion), which manages to still be a bit creepy even in a bare soundstage.


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