My friend Tristen and I have the setlist playing in the car on our way to Festival Hall. There are a few songs on it that we’ve heard before, a couple more that we know and like, and the rest, we decide, will sound better live.
Standard protocol for a concert like this one is playing the ‘I wonder if they’re going the same place as we are’ game as you walk the streets surrounding the venue. Sure enough: the youngish-looking Asian boys in black hoodies and baggy jeans walking behind us, and the girls with rave tops and chunky silver jewellery walking in front of us are also beelining towards the queue which, by our 6:30 arrival, has wrapped itself neatly around the block.
After the box office manages to produce a guestlist and our tickets, Tristen and I are headed to the tail end of the line, situated in a dark spot under a bridge. On the way down, I survey the sea of grungy-but-also-church-appropriate black outfits. They seem to match the moody, dreamy genre salad that is the DPR style.
Before we know it, the line moves and we settle into the theatre’s audience, divided into three seated sections and standing General Admission (GA), which is where we go.
DPR, which stands for Dream Perfect Regime, is a multi-genre music and arts collective and production company based in Seoul. Known for their edgy branding and—it seems from the crowd’s excited pre-show murmurs— charming front man Christian Yu (DPR IAN). Tonight, the collective brings three of their acts: DPR ARTIC, DPR CREAM and DPR IAN.
ARTIC’s item is a clubby techno set to open up the show. The graphics behind him feature a collection of both abstract and urban graphics animations, actualising the spacey but grounded beats in the music. The lighting design is a highlight of the concert, but in this set it it’s especially impressive, synching so closely to every sound that your eyes and ears feel like a singular organ. It's perhaps worth mentioning, though, that the set feels more catered to the GA section, who get a more immersive experience. Even then, the crowd around us stands notably still. The guy standing on Tristen’s other side pulls out his phone to film clips of the stage, and then proceeds to open chess.com and play a couple of games. I personally enjoy ARTIC’s set, but techno non-believer Tristen muses that maybe people need a few more drinks in them to get into the show a bit more.
CREAM notices this lack of energy and does a bit more crowd-prompting to get the audience more engaged. His set is a rap and vocal one, characterized by that stylistic autotune frequented by many K-R&B and K-pop musicians. It's not so much my taste, but the people around me are starting to warm up and move around a bit more. Perhaps it's because of my lack of appreciation for this sound in particular that the songs seem to blend into one slightly monotonous playlist; perhaps it is the production itself. Though the crowd is more expressive at this point of the night, it seems to be equal parts restlessness—like the first two artists are openers for the next act.
IAN’s set is almost twice the duration of the previous two artists’ combined, and the production is markedly different in style. Traces of his K-pop background are evident in his performance, which include choreography and costume changes accompanying his vocals, as well as a four-piece band. However, his stage presence seems to have metamorphosed from this history of his, with a tongue-in-cheek rockstar-like quality that is distinctly his own. The backing dancers are truly incredible throughout this section, bringing diverse, personable and moving stories to the stage that made every song its own special world.
Unsurprisingly, the crowd consensus at this point of the night is that everybody is enamoured with IAN. Unsurprisingly because I was already vaguely aware of his spunky heartthrob reputation prior to the concert, but also because when I see him onstage, I get it. Hailing originally from Western Australia (which he explains between sets) he's able to connect with the audience on a far more personal level, sharing humorous anecdotes from his upbringing and moving stories about his personal growth and identity—themes explored in his music. Before singing an unreleased track from his upcoming album, he reassures the audience that ‘if you're feeling lost, I hope you're not scared’, which pulls a couple of tears and murmurs of ‘omg… I needed that’ out of the crowd.
It's especially during the later songs of IAN’s performances that the four piece band really shines, particularly in songs like the finale, ‘Ballroom Extravaganza’, which has even Tristen singing along to every single word.
We decide that we are DPR converts by the end of the night, and a week later I get in Tristen’s car to hear the second verse of IAN’s ‘Calico’.