It has been 10 years since introduced her singular vision to the world. Since then, the Korea-based artist has become a distinctive voice in electronic music, weaving together pop, electronic production, and performance into an expansive visual and sonic universe.

Now, she returns with her latest EP, ‘Old Fantasy’. For the first time, CIFIKA takes full control of the production process, resulting in a deeply personal record shaped by haunting vocals, mesmerising melodies, and transformative lyricism.

Throughout ‘Old Fantasy’, her signature layered vocals remain at the forefront, grounding a record that feels both intimate and otherworldly.

You’ve described ‘Old Fantasy’ as a kind of re-debut. Why did this moment feel like the right time to redefine your artistic identity?

2026 is my ten-year mark as CIFIKA, and I’ve been asking myself what I lost over those ten years. The answer is Yousun — my given name, the person underneath the project. For years I made every decision based on what would be good for CIFIKA’s career, and Yousun kept getting smaller. What she wanted was to go back to the SoundCloud days, before I thought of this as a job.

I’d been compromising for a long time without admitting that’s what it was. I kept telling myself I had to make easy-listening music, something nice enough that people would hit replay on Spotify. I got so conscious of streaming numbers and how much I earned in a year that I couldn’t experiment any more. Underneath it I was scared of being ignored and scared of ending up broke.

So I put myself back into 2016 Yousun, who had no fear and no shame about whatever came out of her. What came out surprised me. Overlapping vocals and synths, crisp snares that sound like waves crashing into each other, a bass line like a dorky elephant walking through the jungle. It feels like music from Yousun, not CIFIKA.

This is the first EP you’ve produced entirely on your own. How did taking complete control of the production change the way you wrote and finished these songs?

It was lonelier and scarier than I expected. I went in thinking I could put a few songs together on my own, no big deal, and then found out how much technique and agonising it takes to make a sound come out the way it already sounds in your head. Mixing gut feeling and reason in the right balance, over and over, on every small decision. That was a challenge.

Finishing was different too. I put in every idea I had and then spent days taking things out. Drums, vocals, synths, I stripped out as much as I could. Right after you remove something it sounds so empty and you can’t trust that feeling, so I’d leave it for two days, and when I came back I usually couldn’t tell what I’d taken out. I only put something back if I noticed it was missing.

It’s been ten years since ‘INTELLIGENTSIA’ introduced many listeners to your music. When you look back at that version of yourself, what feels the most different about the artist you’ve become today?

I went back and listened to it recently. What surprises me isn’t how it sounds, it’s the state I was in. I’d just come back to Korea from the US and I was renting a room in a tiny studio building near Hongdae. Producers call that place the rabbit hole — small rooms packed side by side, and not one window in any of them. I had to go outside every hour just for air. No analogue gear at all, everything was VST, a MIDI keyboard and an RME interface. But it was the first room of my own where I could listen to my own music on speakers instead of headphones, and that felt enormous.

What I lost is speed. In 2016 I’d finish a track and put it out without looking back. That’s gone, and I think it had to go — back then I only cared about the parts that hit your ear immediately, and now I care about how the whole thing balances.

Listening now, I miss how pure and naive it is. Not because I’m embarrassed by it. I’m not. I miss not knowing there was anything to be embarrassed about.

After years of collaborating with other producers, what gave you the confidence to trust your own instincts throughout the entire creative process?

I stopped taking other people’s advice as seriously as I used to. For years I asked musicians with longer careers than mine, and most of the time it didn’t help. What I eventually noticed is that nobody giving advice carries any responsibility for it. They say a thing and leave, and you’re the one who has to live inside the record for the next two years.

So now I follow my instinct and my first thought. Not because I think I’m right more often. I just know the cost of being wrong lands on me either way, so it may as well be my own mistake.

‘Who’ opens the EP and feels deeply tied to a specific moment in South Korea’s recent history. Can you tell us about the events that inspired the song and why you chose to begin the record with it?

I wrote the words in December 2024, right after martial law was declared in Korea. I was living in Hannam-dong then, close to the former president’s residence, so the protests went on outside my window all night. Some nights I went out and joined them, other nights I lay in bed and listened. It genuinely sounded like hell. Out of that I wanted to write a revolutionary song, something like ‘Bella Ciao’ from the Money Heist soundtrack, which I love. The title used to be “Who let the fire.” I cut it down to ‘Who’. I like simple titles.

For a long time it sat at the very end of the tracklist, and then I realised the record made more sense if it began here. It opens with nothing but my own voices stacked on top of each other, and that felt like the right way in.

‘Passing a gossip’ is a song you’ve been performing live for quite some time before its official release. What was it like living with that song on stage before people could hear the recorded version, and did performing it change the way it evolved?

The first time I played it was in August last year, a demo version at Seendosi, a club in Euljiro. That version had a lot more layers than the one on the record. Everything except the bass synth and the vocal came off eventually. I tested it three more times at other shows after that.

Standing up there singing it, I didn’t feel much about the song itself. What I felt was that I needed to get home and record the bass again. That synth bass runs from the first bar to the last and it bothered me for months. I must have recorded it over a hundred times. I did it on an OB-6 because I wanted to force myself to learn that instrument properly. It’s thick and full of harmonics, and it took a long time to get a version that takes up the right amount of room instead of swallowing everything. TE RIM placed it properly in the mix at the end.

The vocal was the opposite problem. I wanted to keep the intimacy of the demo, so I went into the booth in that state and sang it almost as a whisper. Controlling something that quiet is much harder than singing out loud.

‘HEX’ has so many different layers, from the looping piano and strings to the stacked vocals that make it sound like a full chorus. Can you break down how that song came together and walk us through your production process behind it?

It started with the piano loop. Once that was running I was resting my ears, googling gemstones. I do that a lot, partly because I find it funny that these things trading for enormous money are, in the end, rocks. Beautiful rocks. There’s a demo of mine called “Opal,” which is my favourite stone and will come out later. I was looking through what else was out there and found the phrase pigeon blood, the name for the finest grade of ruby. The lyrics came from there.

Rubies have an asterism effect. When light hits them, six white lines open out like a star. The love I had when I was young was mostly pain and conflict, and the scar it left is set into the stone as those six lines. Adobe has an official colour called Ruby and the code is HEX#E0115F. I don’t own the ring, real pigeon blood is far beyond what I could afford. But the colour is in the video, and I’ll be wearing HEX#E0115F on my index finger through this whole campaign-(with nail color instead of real Ruby Ring!) Not the finger you put a wedding ring on. The one you point and accuse with.

The vocals went the other way from what you’d expect. The first version had a huge amount of harmony and ad-libs, but the piano loop and the orchestration were already taking up all the space, so I stripped most of it out and kept the main melody and the repeating chant. The strings are all virtual instruments. If I get the chance I’d like to play it live with real ones.

I didn’t make this to be loved. But if it gives someone room to pull out their own old fantasy, the version of their life they once pictured and then quietly put away, then I’ve done my job. I’d want them alone when they hear it. Not in a room with other people. Walking somewhere on their own, reading, or working. That’s the listening I made it for.

‘Old Fantasy’ is out now.