DREAMSCAPE

The record

DREAMSCAPE is NCT DREAM’s fourth full-length album, released on 11 November 2024 with eleven tracks. The title track is ‘When I’m With You’. It is the next chapter of the story the mini-album DREAM( )SCAPE opened in March of the same year, and the English single ‘Rains in Heaven’, out in August, closes it as the last track.

The album introduction on Bugs, written by SM Entertainment, says that where the earlier mini-album dealt with the doubt and pain of the escape, this record holds the excitement and freedom found in the dreamed-of place, and glosses the album’s name as the dreamlike landscape met after a long wait. The same text describes the title track as house-based electronic pop with a rap part Mark helped write, and introduces ‘Flying Kiss’ as a song Haechan wrote alone.

Reviews

Shin Dong-gyu of IZM opened his album review, published on 4 December 2024, with the line: “Step back from it and the light starts to show in the whole outline.” He wrote that “the single sequence, plainly assembled out of ‘seven scenes’, is harmonious enough without any particular ending or lesson”, and put the record’s point in the fact that nothing on it sticks out. “The direction, which shuts out strong stimulus entirely, produces attraction instead,” he wrote, and, noting that the group has always put album-level craft first in a singles-driven market, added that “Dreamscape sits in the same line, adding weight to the light, cool mood of the past and smoothing the rough surface to offer a new colour.”

Jeff Benjamin of Billboard ranked the eleven songs in a piece published the day after the release, on 12 November 2024. He wrote that the record takes the introspective narrative of the earlier mini-album into “a generally lighter, more peaceful musical world”, seamlessly melding pop, house music, hyper-pop, R&B and throwback hip-hop to explore love, dreams and childlike wonder.

Among the tracks

The song both pieces stop at is ‘Flying Kiss’. Shin wrote, “The surprise is ‘Flying kiss’,” and described Haechan’s lyric, the song’s connection to the track before it and the clean switch of gears, with a chorus spat out one syllable at a time delivering a purely aural pleasure. Benjamin wrote that the track opens on a rhythmic pop production with a hint of Afrobeat “before soaring into what’s likely the most intricate chorus of NCT DREAM’s career”.

Of the opener, Shin wrote that “‘Intro: dreamscape’, which works as a trailer for the picture ahead or an invitation into ‘Dreamscape’, completes the job of an intro track without a gap.” On the title track, Benjamin wrote: “Pulsing with passion, ‘When I’m With You’ is the perfect single to center an album like DREAMSCAPE around with an upbeat production to stand out among slower, seasonal songs while delivering the accessible, nostalgic groove that much of the LP encapsulates.”

Of ‘i hate fruits’, written entirely by Mark, Benjamin wrote that it starts on an acoustic intro and builds to a hyper-pop-inspired chorus, and that “the song’s unique sound and confessional lyrics make it a standout to add layers of depth and introspection to DREAMSCAPE”. Of ‘Heavenly’ he wrote: “You’d be hard-pressed to find a moment more euphoric on DREAMSCAPE than on ‘Heavenly.’”

Around it

The next album is the fifth studio record, Go Back To The Future, released on 14 July 2025.