Glitch Mode

The record

Glitch Mode is NCT DREAM’s second full-length album, released on 28 March 2022 with eleven tracks. The title track is ‘Glitch Mode’. It follows the repackage Hello Future by nine months.

The album introduction on Bugs describes the title track as a hip-hop dance track marked by the contrast between an intro narration and a dynamic 808 bass, its lyric turning on the way someone freezes, as though buffering, in front of a person they like. The same text presents the opening ‘Fire Alarm’ as the intro that opens the record, and ‘Arcade’ as a hip-hop dance track built on an arcade-game motif.

Reviews

Idology (아이돌로지) ran the record in ‘Monthly’, its column on the albums of March 2022, as Quibi’s piece. The writer found what separates this unit from the others in its sense of play: even when it handles a harder sound, the piece says, “a distinctive mischief has always come through” in elements like “the bright, quirky melody and harmony that make active use of the chromatic scale” and “shouting that is lively rather than grave”.

The same writer saw construction as the new thing in the title track. “‘Glitch Mode’ is a title song in which the traits set out above are evenly dissolved,” the piece says, and: “What is interesting is the way it moves shamelessly between a simple chorus with catchy choreography, a pre-chorus that twists a run of firmness again and again to give it suspense, and a bridge that slams the brakes on the song and then races.” It closes by saying that, after the repackage before it, this album is where the group’s standing can be seen growing steadily firmer.

Jeff Benjamin of Billboard put the album on the outlet’s best K-pop albums of 2022, published on 30 December 2022. The entry, signed with the initials J.B. at its end, reads that Glitch Mode “delivers songs that always feel like a preview of what’s next in K-pop while bringing moments of youthful brightness and nostalgic memories”. The same entry says the group kept the momentum of the previous year’s first full-length going with this record, and names ‘Arcade’ and ‘Teddy Bear’ as songs that recall childhood.

Rhian Daly of NME, in a review published on 31 March 2022, spent longest on the make-up of the title track. It “mixes clashing sound effects (video game beeps and a revving motor) as it shifts through several gears within minutes”, the review says. “There’s an elastic beat that feels irresistibly cool, a polished pop pre-chorus, lively vocals and, to close, a rock guitar juggernaut of a climax.” With that many ideas in one song it would be easy for the whole thing to fall apart, the same piece adds, but “instead it feels surprisingly, impressively cohesive”.

Among the tracks

The opening track ‘Fire Alarm’ is on the 20 best K-pop b-sides of 2022 that Clash published on 20 December 2022. Chyenne Tatum’s entry says the song “has a particular je ne sais quoi that’s infectious and unlike anything, the group has done before”. The same piece traces the song’s siren motif to the Korean film Attack the Gas Station, and describes the track as “littered with heavy bass, rhythmic chants and claps, and harmonious synths that are all relentless and energetic throughout”.

The fifth track, ‘Teddy Bear’, is the one Daly singled out on the record. The review says it elicits “the intimate feeling of sharing whispered thoughts with the lights off and the world around you snoozing”, and that it comes to feel more like a lullaby as it goes on. Of the tenth track, ‘Never Goodbye’, the same piece says it takes a similar nocturnal spirit but “feels like a companion to the period when day turns to dusk and stars just begin to illuminate the sky”, with twinkling, ethereal melodies sprinkled over steady percussion.

Quibi read the b-sides as a familiar inheritance and a new attempt side by side. “‘Better Than Gold’ and ‘Rewind’, which lay a flowing composition out in innocent vocals, show the group’s familiar appeal, and ‘Fire Alarm’ and ‘Saturday Drip’, led by a forceful, swaggering rap, inject a new kind of vigour into the group,” the piece says. Billboard’s entry pointed at the video-game samples and old-school vocoder effects on ‘Saturday Drip’ and ‘Replay’.

Afterwards

The repackage Beatbox followed two months later, on 30 May 2022, carrying this album’s tracks with it.