On the Rise
CIFIKA

“HEX”, the lead single of CIFIKA’s new EP, Old Fantasy, feels like a glimpse into the Korean producer’s mind. It starts clean, led by a soft vocal melody, then gradually builds through an echo of strings and thundering piano chords. The repeat of the lyric “old fantasy” adds tension as the chords grow punchier, before the track abruptly breaks into itself, paving way for a riddle of piano keys cut with the chant of the titular HEX colour: “#e0115f”, again and again.

“Simply it’s a love song, but it’s not a lovey-dovey story,” explains CIFIKA from her immaculate Seoul-based studio. “It’s about the past relationships throughout my life. I look back and I had very toxic relationships.. and I want to embrace those memories, as that’s also part of my life.”

She took all her experiences - the good, the bad - and polished them until they became something of value, symbolised in the ruby; the colour of the aforementioned HEX: “I'm ready to accept the fact of all the events that happened to me before, even though it's a bad memory. I wanted to keep it, and those are my accessories now. That’s the story of the song,” she explains.

It’s telling that “HEX” marks the central thesis of Old Fantasy. CIFIKA is not a new artist - her first EP came out ten years ago, but she describes this project as a re-birth. She is looking back to the past, compressing its multitude of emotions, and creating something beautiful within this cerebral, intimate, mind-warping 7-track journey.

“Before Old Fantasy, I used to make lyrics first and put it on the chords. This time, I made the chords and then the idea - a visual scenery in my head and then lyrics. [For “HEX”] I was searching for rubies, and found out the finest grade is called ‘Pigeon Blood’. The Adobe colour code for that is HEX #e0115f. I really liked colours transforming into numbers on the internet”

If it sounds like a complex thought-process to follow, it’s because it is. Old Fantasy is layers and layers of her explorations - connections of seemingly disparate threads - made cohesive through song. She is remarkably assured of her expansive creative vision and driven by a desire to channel it, but needed to change her entire recording process to get there: by taking the decision to record completely alone.

“I always loved to work with other producers, but this marks my tenth year of debut as CIFIKA,” she says. “I took time to actually discover what's missing in my music. If I really want to make music that's really pure, with no filter or no unnecessary embellishments, I should make music from scratch on my own without help from outside.”

When she first broke out in 2016, she was inspired by producers like Flume, she made groove-based tracks with pop hooks, as heard on her ear-pleasing early single, ‘Oozoo’. In her releases since, she’s veered from heavy, thumping tracks (“Heart Piece Collector”) to left-field electronic minimalism (‘My Ego’), her voice moves with Björk-like dexterity, able to howl with gruelling power before muting to soft whispers.

But she grew dissatisfied with her recording approach - and increasingly the input of others on it. “I’d always change my kicks, bass lines, vocal lines, based on my producer's feedback. Afterwards, I always had this small regret in my heart. I wanted to believe in myself and give myself a chance.” 

This phase of unblemished creation began two years ago. She shuttered herself in her studio without any outside interruption - the very place she is calling from today. Bare walls are marked with squares of insulation pads, and there’s stacks of electronic equipment that surrounds her. She points to the UB6 synth where she wrote the “HEX” bass lines: “I recorded that around 300 times,” she says of her meticulous, solitary approach. “I lock the door, even if there’s no one at home, I put my i-phone on No Disturb. Completely alone, very quiet, focused.”

One of her first tracks she had written under such isolation is the first on the Old Fantasy: “Who”. It marks her sense of unease experiencing Korea under martial law in December 2024, when the then-president, Yoon Suk Yeol, attempted to shut down civil liberties by granting power to the military. Martial law lasted briefly, for only six hours, with protesters taking to the street to defend their democratic right. Tensions were high, and the country was left reeling.

“It was two months after I released my previous album, and I was thinking about starting the next project. Martial law happened, my live shows got cancelled. I was devastated, shocked, worried,” she recalls. She lived near to the central protest point, witnessing the soldiers and protesters on the street. “It was intense. No one was harmed, but we almost lost our freedom. I wanted to record that moment.”

She wrote down letters and diary entries, but took time to form a song, trying to process her feelings while the country regained stability. After a few months, she took the words and searched for a suitable sonic palette. “I wanted to make a revolutionary song,” she says. One of her references was the Italian anti-fascist track ‘Bella Ciao’. ‘Who’ starts with the marching rhythm, as her voice is layered, harmonising with herself, as she sings: "Sometimes, I believe it’s the rapture / That breaks me solely / Break free”, with the drums kicking in to defiant effect.

Elsewhere, ‘All because of’ begins with menacingly paced synths, gurgling under her spoken verse until they rise up to explode. The tension in the track is riveting and uneasy. She sings sentences that never end, “We came to this end all because of—” repeats, disorientates, leaving you wondering where you're going, and how you came to be here.

CIFIKA didn’t want Old Fantasy to have that overly-produced polish of someone tidying up the loose ends - she wants you to feel that roughness, that working of her inner mind. It must have been hard to stay focused on one path, I tell her, without getting lost in your thoughts. How did she make decisions without someone else to bring her back on course? “It was a lot of pressure on myself. It was overwhelming to think about,” she replies. Over two years, she recorded 40 demos, whittled them down to 20 songs, but only 7 made the final cut.

One of her guiding principals was never to repeat the same four chords or arpeggio patterns. “That’s boring and I’ve done that already so much,” she deadpans. She played around with her chord patterns, looking to evolve each loop pattern into a non-loop, never identical. “It’s like a lego,” she explains. The result is songs that twist and change unexpectedly, without you even realising what hit you.

After such an intense period of inward creation, CIFIKA is now taking the album out on the stage, bringing an electric drummer and piano player into the fold. “I was worried as this production is highly focused on electronic music elements, but live I wanted to sound very full acoustically. There’s a lot of piano, and even though it's VST, there’s a lot of orchestral sounds. Live, it will sound more warm and organic, it feels very wholesome.”

Old Fantasy acts as a cornerstone for CIFIKA’s next chapter. She wants to practice the piano (“I love Hania Rani”), and bring the instrument into the fore of her work, but the wider project also serves as a confirmation of her own ability. “I gained confidence and learned so much,” she says.

Next time, she’ll once again go it alone, free from anyone else’s commentary. And, once again, she’ll have no regrets.