DREAM( )SCAPE

The record

DREAM( )SCAPE is NCT DREAM’s mini-album, released on 25 March 2024 with six tracks. The title track is the second of them, ‘Smoothie’. Billboard notes that the title is pronounced “Dream Escape”.

The album introduction on Bugs, written by SM Entertainment, describes the record as a first journey away from a numbed reality in search of an ideal dream, and says all seven members took part from the planning stage onward. The same text introduces the title track as a hip-hop dance track whose message is to blend up the world’s cold looks and one’s own negative feelings and drink them down; the opener ‘icantfeelanything’ as a pop song built on a Jersey club rhythm; and ‘BOX’ as a hip-hop dance track about breaking out of the frame the world puts you in.

Reviews

NME published Tássia Assis’s review on 4 April 2024. She read the group, known for bright and optimistic records, as leaning into the marks left by growing up under the spotlight, and wrote of ‘BOX’: “The LDN Noise-arranged and Mark co-penned track is a thrilling highlight – and the one that best encapsulates this concept.”

Jeff Benjamin of Billboard placed the record in the outlet’s 20 best K-pop albums of 2024 so far, published on 8 July 2024. After quoting what Mark told Billboard ahead of the release, he wrote that “the EP marks the outfit’s most experimental yet, as NCT DREAM tweaked its signature idealism for tracks that also recognize hardship and offer an empowering message”, adding: “The septet tackles topics of anxiety, fear and confinement, with the single ‘Smoothie’ acting as a clever way to blend up all those worries and make something deliciously healing for a sweet final product.”

Son Min-hyun of IZM took the title track in the outlet’s April 2024 single review. He wrote that the song strengthens its wildness by taking the making of a smoothie, rather than the image of a fresh cold drink, as its material, and added: “Always preparing a new concept idea and dissolving it into each team with a fitting character is clearly a strength of the NCT camp.”

Among the tracks

Assis read the opener ‘icantfeelanything’ as translating anxiety and distress into a chaotic soundscape, with the croons of Chenle and Haechan set against stabbing beats. She wrote that the two closing mid-tempos, ‘Unknown’ and ‘Breathing’, encourage the listener to dive into those doubts rather than hunt for answers, and that in the first “the septet’s sublime vocals inspire listeners – and themselves”. Of ‘Carat Cake’ she wrote that its quirky, videogame-y synths fit seamlessly into the collection, and that “it’s a track for kicks and giggles and addictive singalongs”.

Around it

The English single ‘Rains in Heaven’ followed in August of the same year, and the fourth full-length album DREAMSCAPE, which continues from this record, arrived on 11 November 2024.