Dreamcatcher’s New Uni(We)verse, Return To V Live Chaos, And New Horizons

K-Pop — Dreamcatcher Recall

Post-Seven Spirits concert week saw Dreamcatcher settling into old habits and new possibilities.

Like the rest of us, Dreamcatcher was no doubt coming off of an emotional high after their second online concert, Dystopia: Seven Spirits, which drew an estimated 12,000+ ticket sales between 120 countries and gave fans around the world a treat by having Dreamcatcher finally return with all seven members for a full concert set (the first since just over a year ago). Be sure to check out my full write-up on Dystopia: Seven Spirits if you’re looking to relive the memories there! A bit of a break would have been well within bounds for them to take, especially considering the sheer effort it took to put the show together.

If Dreamcatcher fans have learned anything, though, it’s that the group rarely goes very long without offering up some new content to consume — and the vast majority of that content would come in the form of their move to a brand new platform for fan interaction — Weverse.

Weverse, a platform for K-Pop artist interaction with fans, is a subsidiary of Big Hit Entertainment, these days best known as the company behind current global megastar K-Pop group BTS and domestic powerhouse girl group GFriend. After Dreamcatcher Company’s struggles with an app that often frustrated fans with a lack of stability, including loading issues for new posts and frequent crashes, having Dreamcatcher move to Weverse was like a breath of fresh air.

That air, by the way, would quickly be filled with a clearly excited Dreamcatcher looking to prop up their new platform with tons of interactions and posts. Normally when someone uses the word “tons”, they’re likely exaggerating — but in Dreamcatcher’s case, it is a literal truth.

This past week it hasn’t been uncommon to open the app and see close to a hundred new notifications from the group making new artist posts, commenting on each others’ posts like they were in their group chat, and delighting fans with replies to comments. There are way too many posts to spotlight in one weekly recap, but the highlights included JiU gathering the group all at once (minus Handong, who was eating) for a mass chat session, Yoohyeon clearly enjoying a ton of Dreamcatcher meme posts, and Gahyeon recognizing and boosting someone who’d said Gahyeon had helped them through some tough times. Fan communities such as the Dreamcatcher Weverse Twitter account and Dreamcatcher subreddit were kept plenty busy with new content posts from the group. As someone who works in an industry where engagement is king, Dreamcatcher definitely met their obligations and then some, all while having chaotic fun doing so.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5kSjakrikg[/embed]

Speaking of chaos, having everyone together again meant that loud and boisterous multi-member V Lives were back on the menu, and Dreamcatcher didn’t disappoint, with two multi-member sessions that featured cute doggos, stylish outfits, and of course signature Dreamcatcher loudness. Once again, it was nice to see a newly confident Handong participating a bit more visibly in these group broadcasts, signaling a bit more that she succeeded in finding out more of who she wanted to be during her time away in China, but other highlights included Dami bringing out her soft side in playing with both dogs, everyone roasting each other about how they act when they’re angry, and Yoohyeon seemingly being trained by her dog Pie instead of the other way around.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXjnX-CWDLM[/embed]

But for all the old habits Dreamcatcher fans celebrated coming back to the fold, there was plenty of new stuff to celebrate, too. Dreamcatcher Company came out with two Dreamcatcher’s Notes this week, both highlighting the new horizons that Dreamcatcher had reached during their recent work. One of these was Dreamcatcher’s work with digital magazine e.L.e, who has featured the likes of fellow artists ATEEZ and LOONA in the past in absolutely stunning photoshoots.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAmu6MQLjbk[/embed][embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWxFDAOneDg[/embed][embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geW70FdeK-M[/embed]

Dreamcatcher got the full treatment here from the magazine, getting to explore a visual concept they may have teased before but never got to show on-screen. The result was what I thought to be two takes on witch-like fashion — one in long flowing white dresses with dark, gothic lipstick styles and the other as more of a darker Renaissance-style. Aside from Yoohyeon finally achieving her goal of having half and half colored hair, you got to see SuA get to see what it was like to actually be as tall as her fellow members, everyone talking about what inner beauty means to them, and a little bit of a tease for the third album in the Dystopia series (as we have heard many a time, “Utopia” appears to be what’s being aimed for). In short, e.L.e’s photoshoot was just another addition to a growing list of new things that Dreamcatcher has done this year.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPsnmCU52oU[/embed]

Of course, Dreamcatcher Company couldn’t let Dystopia: Seven Spirits go by without a Note on that as well, and fans were given a nearly twenty-four minute peek behind the scenes into what it took to put the two-and-a-half hour concert together.

I’ve had the fortunate experience of working and planning concerts on a variety of levels, so I had a general idea of the sheer effort and hours of work it takes to put an event of this scale together — especially when it involves new elements like a live rock band (itself something that creates many more layers of complexity), revised choreography to accommodate Handong’s return, the need to keep older content fresh, and some other surprises (like every special stage being a solo stage). But for those who didn’t have concert work experience, seeing everyone work so hard to bring entertainment to their fans was certainly another page to add to Dreamcatcher’s book of “Reasons why you should get into them”.

Seeing Siyeon get so emotional at the end of this video was a bonus, to be honest. Those in the know understand that Siyeon, with her previous history of being in a rock band before debut, her general musical preferences, and her honesty about how hard MINX’s failure hit her, had probably dreamed of performing a concert set with a real live rock band. In many ways, she’s the closest to Dreamcatcher’s rock concept, and for her (as well as the whole group) this had to have been a career milestone for her, another thing to check off the K-Pop artist bucket list, and a validation of the choices she’s made along with the rest of the group to pave their own, new path in the K-Pop industry.

That new path, by the way, continues with the sudden announcement that Dreamcatcher would be releasing another Japanese single on November 20th, called “No More”. The song will supposedly talk about fighting back against social media abuse online, something that would be on-brand for Dreamcatcher’s music this year talking about the hazards of verbal abuse in the industry via the Dystopia series. While the song won’t feature Handong due to it likely being recorded before she was able to return from China, it should nevertheless be a worthy addition to the Dreamcatcher discography — and if earlier single “Endless Night” is any indication, it will certainly be a banger, leaning much harder into their rock identity than their recent rock/pop hybrid releases on the Korean front. After an appearance this past week alongside other artists for the “K-Pop In The Emirates” festival that turned out to be a replay of abbreviated footage of the Korea Music Drive-In Festival, brand new music will certainly be welcome.

I’ll certainly have something to say about that song for next week’s recap, but until then, enjoy the buildup to the new single, and try not to get buried under all that Dreamcatcher Weverse content!