Clé 1 : MIROH

The record

Clé 1 : MIROH is the fourth mini album Stray Kids released on 25 March 2019. ‘MIROH’ is the title track, and the record opens the three-part Clé series. It is where the group starts a new series five months after closing the ‘I am’ one with I am YOU.

The album introduction on Bugs presents the record as the story of boys standing on the edge of adulthood, and says that the ones who spent the previous series questioning their own existence now “leave the space that was only ours behind and head for MIROH, a city as bleak as a jungle” — miroh being the Korean word for maze. It annotates the tracks too: the intro ‘Entrance’ announces an entry into a maze there is no walking back out of; ‘Victory Song’ is “a song of support for everyone struggling in their own MIROH today”; and ‘Maze of Memories’ is about the brief silence between one tunnel and the next, when the dust of everything you had been thinking scatters and falls on you. The same text says DANK, who produced the title track, is a DJ who has officially remixed records by artists around the world, and that the three-time Grammy-winning mix engineer Phil Tan built the join between hip-hop and EDM at the mix.

Reviews

Kwibi of Idology (아이돌로지) heard the record catch something the earlier ones had not. He started with the structure of the title track: “‘Miroh’ effectively has a structure that repeats a single motif without stopping.” The vocal loop, the dance break and the chorus topline share one melody, he wrote, so “the whole song is the hook, and while it pushes that shamelessly it also varies and crosses each part, and never leaves you a gap to be bored in.” He called the record “perhaps a debut album in the true sense, one that gave Stray Kids the arena called the maze and with it, at last, the identity of stray and kids”, and closed: “relieved that the previous year’s over-eager activity became a good source of nourishment rather than a war of attrition, I look forward to what comes next all the more.”

Billboard placed the record eighth on its 25 best K-pop albums of 2019. “Stray Kids produce and write their own music, but Clé 1 : Miroh was their clearest musical vision yet as a multidimensional, genre-less group”, Jeff Benjamin wrote. The mini album “has honest songs about navigating life”, he added, naming ‘Boxer’, ‘Maze of Memories’ and ‘19’, then ‘Victory Song’ and the title track, and pointing at ‘Chronosaurus’ as a title that joins Chronos, the Greek god of time, to Kronosaurus, a crocodile-like dinosaur, to make time a monster. On the same outlet’s 25 best K-pop songs of 2019 the title track came tenth. The entry is signed with the initials L.S. only, and it opens: “If Stray Kids are the forerunners of a new generation that channels disillusionment into creativity, ‘Miroh’ is their crowning jewel.” The critic read the song as restless in both its lyrics and its structure, and closed: “By the time you get to the end of this massive high, however, Stray Kids have made it into your bloodstream and you want to go back for seconds.”

Among the tracks

Idology picked songs from the record twice in its year-end pages. Seukwip put the title track seventeenth in the best songs of 2019, writing that “the sheer nerve of pushing through a structure this demanding without minding it at all could fairly be called recklessness rather than mere audacity.” Mano chose a line from ‘Victory Song’ for the year’s most striking lyrics, calling it “a punchline that joins English and Korean exquisitely and compresses the audacity of saying, everyone listen to this victory song anyway”, and adding that “it has the kind of hook that anyone who hears it once cannot help repeating.”

Clash put two songs from this record on its 2023 list. Taylor Glasby chose ‘Chronosaurus’, a song on which time threatens to engulf the group and everything ticks ominously, from finger snaps to synth notes stepping up and down. “Minimal, atmospheric verses segue into a rock-centric chorus that muscles its way into the spotlight, the soaring vocals anchored by gruff spoken lines”, she wrote. The song is “created entirely without bombast or risk”, she added, “but the restraint reveals the band’s truest tones and colours, and it’s a beautifully emotive palette.”

Abbie Aitken chose ‘Boxer’. “The track bounces around toying with its opponent, before causing mayhem in the ring”, she wrote, describing an unsuspecting beat that bops around after Lee Know’s almost friendly introduction until the song climaxes at the pre-chorus. “Felix’s prominent voice exclaims ‘Smash it up’ before questioning his declaration”, she wrote, and then the bell rings and punches are thrown “as the rest of the group overtly call out ‘jab, jab, Stray Kids!’”

Sara Conway of Clash put ‘Maze of Memories’ among the group’s eight essential deep cuts in 2025. “‘Clé 1: MIROH’ marked a significant shift in Stray Kids’ trajectory as rising K-pop stars”, she wrote, and the song “is the midpoint of ‘Clé 1: MIROH’, and this is where the group makes a leap towards more experimentation.” She described the sound: “Looping piano notes compete with a rewinding sound effect, creating a push-and-pull moment from the first second. Mid-track time signature switch ups and sirens inserted into the production also underscore Stray Kids’ growing feelings of uncertainty and instability.” Her closing lines are these: “Listeners can feel the eight members pushing forward in ‘Maze of Memories’ despite the walls they crash into, despite running directionless through the never-ending maze. They just know they have to keep moving forward.”