Dreamcatcher Marches Forward Into Whirlwind “VISION” Promotions With A Storm Of Content
K-Pop — Dreamcatcher Recall
K-Pop’s resident rock/pop girl group rolls through another week of their comeback with a plethora of variety appearances, music show performances, and other fun moments.
Fans of Dreamcatcher are used to a generous amount of content from the group, regardless of the time of the year. There’s a reason why InSomnia sometimes call themselves one of K-Pop’s “best fed” fandoms, as Dreamcatcher’s constant stream of vlogs, notes, livestreams, and performances mean that fans never wonder what the group is up to. During comeback periods, this is, not surprisingly, accelerated to an event higher rate, as music show performances and variety appearances to promote the album fill the Dreamcatcher timeline.
This past week, however, has been on a whole other level, with a veritable whirlwind of content releases interspersed with the usual high-quality performances that we’ve come to expect from the veteran group five years in. We have so much to go over and summarize this week, so let’s get right into it!
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Another week of promotions means another week of music shows, and Dreamcatcher didn’t disappoint with every stage that they had the opportunity to perform. Styling this comeback has once again been on-point, with the military-style uniforms and fighting fatigues alternating with some really nice color combinations. And of course, Dreamcatcher’s high-energy title track, “VISION”, never failed to get fans going. With audiences now back in the studio as pandemic restrictions lift, Dreamcatcher finally got a chance to hear just how much bigger their fanbase had gotten with a strong set of cheers and fanchants from what was a nice increase in allocation of music show audience spots from the shows and Dreamcatcher Company.
In the midst of these performances, we learned that Dreamcatcher would shorten their music show promotion period, with last Friday’s KBS Music Bank being the last music show appearance of this comeback era. Though this might seem discouraging or even concerning to some fans, from my perspective there are easy explanations for this. The most prominent of these is simply timing. Dreamcatcher has a two-night Halloween Concert, a festival appearance, and a European tour to prepare for. Music show appearances are a time-consuming affair (filled with styling/makeup prep, transport, setup, rehearsal, performance, and a lot of waiting) and if Dreamcatcher is choosing to forgo being at shows for most of a few days for more time to better prep for future work, then so be it.
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Fansigns continued through the week, with plenty of fun moments from Dreamcatcher as they met with fans. We heard both “VISION” and “Fairytale”, and Dreamcatcher seemed to draw off the fans’ energy as they celebrated yet another music release.
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Several offline benefits local to Korea were also seen this week, one of which was the last days of last week’s Everline X Dreamcatcher collaboration. Dreamcatcher Company also picked up food trucks for fans during music show broadcast participation and fan meetings, while Whosfan opened up an official themed cafe complete with themed drinks and items for Dreamcatcher fans in Korea (while also offering online benefits to global fans). Between all of these plus the upcoming two-day concert, domestic fans and those visiting Korea had quite a few things to pick from to support the group.
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The official channels for Dreamcatcher didn’t take a rest either, releasing the first video for “VISION” MV’s Behind The Scenes. Aside from this, Dami checked in on Weverse to see how fans were feeling about her solo activity with eclectic YouTube channel MUSHROOM COMPANY and their season 2 set of artists, of which Dreamcatcher’s Main Rapper was a part. Dami picked to cover SNSD member Hyoyeon’s “Dessert”, a hip hop tune that Dami layered with a rock edge. We’re seeing subtle hints of individual activity from the members and it’s nice to see some of them get a chance to shine on their own in opportunities such as this one.
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For all what I’ve said so far, however, the meat and potatoes of this past week’s “VISION” promotions content was variety. We saw appearances on what has now become a mainstay of every Dreamcatcher comeback with Idol Radio (this time featuring members of ATEEZ as MCs), Weekly Idol, and TongTong Culture’s Thrilling Interview making returns on Dreamcatcher’s variety list.
To finally see ATEEZ and Dreamcatcher, who share producers with LEEZ and Ollounder, get to interact on Idol Radio was great and the challenges (such as 1.8x speed title track and trying not to use English words during the broadcast) felt fresh and fun for Dreamcatcher. Weekly Idol, as always, was a pleasure with new segment “Fans Who Rank” creating a ton of humor as the members discovered surprising things about who was set to be the craziest shopper or the scariest mother-in-law. Thriling Interview finally saw Handong get into the lie detector mix after having to watch it the past couple comebacks, with hilarious results, and MNet’s Visual Cam allowed Dreamcatcher to showcase both their visuals and their ability to goof off when having fun with challenges. Reliable yet still noteworthy, Dreamcatcher’s path on the variety trail was assured to be successful just by these appearances alone.
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But Dreamcatcher and Dreamcatcher Company, for this comeback, appear to not be satisfied with just the status quo. Following last week’s set of new appearances for the group, a truckload more of them dropped, including a new episode for Kim Gura’s Latte 9 for Dreamcatcher’s JiU and SuA to attend to react to news bits, an interview with CeCi Korea to accompany their stylish “VISION” performance from last week, a two hour fun and entertaining time on IdolLive School with Dreamcatcher answering questions, doing fun covers, and generally having a lot of laugh-out-loud moments, an appearance on YouTube channel POPKORN’s “Guess The Idol Behind You” game, and a funny yet also touching appearance by Dreamcatcher’s JiU on Hey News’s Hi There, which connects idols with their fans’ relatives in a close conversation setting.
The sheer number and amount of brand new things that Dreamcatcher are able to do this comeback has been vast, and is a testament to their company’s ability to find and take advantage of new channels for the group. Once again, I’m real excited to look back at this comeback through the Retrospective lens as with the others, and hope you can see why — there’s just so much more the group has been able to do this comeback from a variety standpoint, and with more new appearances such as a first-time sit-down with (G)I-DLE’s Miyeon next week, they’re not done.
It’s an exciting time, and even if music show promotions are over, we have so much more content to look forward to, whether that is events, more fansigns, and variety appearances. Next week you can expect a report on Dreamcatcher’s Apocalypse: Broken Halloween concert, as well as all the rest of Dreamcatcher’s activities from the week. Be sure to tune in here and clap, subscribe and signal boost if you like what you’re reading! We’ll see you here next week!
