DKB’s latest EP “HIP” gets a perfect score from its members, even though the boy band is down by one person.

“I said that we were at about 95 percent during our last stage, but we are now at 100 percent; We’ve fixed that lacking 5 percent,” Heechan said during a press showcase held Thursday at Konkuk University's Millennium Hall in Gwangjin District, eastern Seoul.

DKB’s seventh EP “HIP” comes only four months after the band’s repackaged sixth EP “We Love You” in August, but a lot has changed, from the color of the music to the member composition. Member Teo left the band in early November after being caught by the police for driving under the influence, and DKB was left having to re-record its album and re-structure its choreography within a short period of time.

The band now consists of eight members: Harry June, GK, E-Chan, D1, Lune, Heechan, Yuku and Junseo.

“We were very surprised to see the sudden member change, if we're being honest,” D1 said.

“But we were so busy, busy to the extent where we really didn’t have time to feel the feelings. We had an album release coming up, we had ‘Peak Time’ concerts, scheduled performances and more. We also had to change the choreography and the songs to accommodate the new member structure."

In fact, the eight members of the band flew back to Korea on the day of the album release, as their Yokohama "Peak Time" concert was held on Tuesday and Wednesday.

“HIP,” as the title of the album suggests, focuses more on the hip-hop genre than the band’s previous releases.

“We always pursued hip-hop, but we focused on moody, sentimental hip-hop until now. Now we're here to show a darker, ‘born to be’ hip with ‘HIP,'” E-Chan said.

“It’s a very hip song that features an addictive chorus,” Harry June said.

The EP features five tracks: lead track “What The Hell,” “Ghost Ridah (Wow Wow),” “Me, Me & You,” “Slush” and “Fireworks,” the latter of which is a song composed and written by E-Chan and GK alongside producer RedCookie and is DKB’s fan song dedicated to their fans, BB.

On the other hand, lead track “What The Hell” is a hip-hop dance score that features synth bass and glitch hop. Glitch hop combines electronic hip-hop with glitch sounds, like from malfunctioning electronics. It was composed and written by producer Brave Brothers — who is also the founder of Brave Entertainment.

“When [Brave Brothers] sent us the guide track for ‘What The Hell,’ all our members unanimously supported it as soon as we listened to it,” D1 said.

“We were just praising the song for the next 30 minutes — the song had the atmosphere that we wanted to pull off, and we were confident that we could make it work.”

Members also added that Brave Brothers’ constant praise and encouragement had helped the members to do their very best in their latest album.

“I’m very confident to say that the album best captures the color and the personality of our band,” Lune said. “It really shows what kind of a team DKB is. We put our own ideas into the album production, we designed the choreography […] and we tried hard to show our freestyle nature and how much we’ve grown as a band.”

“We received a draft version of the choreography from the Japanese dance team King of Swag, but we thought we need to have our style of choreography in it to really show DKB’s own colors,” D1 explained.

“Harry June, Junseo and I took key roles in designing our own choreography […] and thankfully we had overwhelming support from our company.”

DKB members also shared that the band hopes to meet more overseas fans of the band in the days to come.

“We will be holding a fan meeting in Japan in January, and we wish to go meet as many of our fans overseas as possible,” D1 said.

“You know, it was quite challenging for us to communicate with our fans” due to the language barrier, Heechan said.

“So we are also studying hard to better communicate with our fans, so I think you can look forward to that.”

“We’ve had incidents [recently], but we’ve also been relentlessly [preparing for a comeback and performing on stage],” E-Chan said. “We are ready with our latest album and we will be ready with our future albums as well. We will never forget our rookie days, so I hope people keep an eye on us.”

“My father told me to dream big, so I want DKB to win No. 1 trophies on weekly music shows,” Heechan said.


To find out more about DKB, visit Celeb Confirmed!

BY CHO YONG-JUN [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]