One of her first tracks she had written under such isolation is the first on the : “Who”. It marks her sense of unease experiencing Korea under martial law in December 2024, when the then-president, Yoon Suk Yeol, attempted to shut down civil liberties by granting power to the military. Martial law lasted briefly, for only six hours, with protesters taking to the street to defend their democratic right. Tensions were high, and the country was left reeling.
“It was two months after I released my previous album, and I was thinking about starting the next project. Martial law happened, my live shows got cancelled. I was devastated, shocked, worried,” she recalls. She lived near to the central protest point, witnessing the soldiers and protesters on the street. “It was intense. No one was harmed, but we almost lost our freedom. I wanted to record that moment.”
She wrote down letters and diary entries, but took time to form a song, trying to process her feelings while the country regained stability. After a few months, she took the words and searched for a suitable sonic palette. “I wanted to make a revolutionary song,” she says. One of her references was the Italian anti-fascist track ‘Bella Ciao’. ‘Who’ starts with the marching rhythm, as her voice is layered, harmonising with herself, as she sings: "Sometimes, I believe it’s the rapture / That breaks me solely / Break free”, with the drums kicking in to defiant effect.
Elsewhere, ‘All because of’ begins with menacingly paced synths, gurgling under her spoken verse until they rise up to explode. The tension in the track is riveting and uneasy. She sings sentences that never end, “We came to this end all because of—” repeats, disorientates, leaving you wondering where you're going, and how you came to be here.
CIFIKA didn’t want to have that overly-produced polish of someone tidying up the loose ends - she wants you to feel that roughness, that working of her inner mind. It must have been hard to stay focused on one path, I tell her, without getting lost in your thoughts. How did she make decisions without someone else to bring her back on course? “It was a lot of pressure on myself. It was overwhelming to think about,” she replies. Over two years, she recorded 40 demos, whittled them down to 20 songs, but only 7 made the final cut.