Today on Gazeinmyshoes, We’re going to be taking a deep dive into one of the most inventive and forward thinking shoegaze albums of the 2010’s, Parannoul’s To See The Next Part Of The Dream. This is a personal favorite of mine since it first released in 2021, and I still find it to be a challenging and rewarding listen to this day. To See the Next Part of the Dream is more than a shoegaze record; it is a profound digital-age testament to adolescent anxiety, hope, and isolation. Parannoul uses the chaos of lo-fi shoegaze as the primary language to articulate the internal struggle and the fleeting beauty of dreaming from a lonely bedroom.

Who is Parannoul?

Parannoul at the time of this album’s release, was a completely unknown anonymous person uploading music from his bedroom in Seoul, South Korea. According to his own press release on Bandcamp, they’re an “active loser” , “below average in height, appearance and everything else,” with “singing skills [that] are f***ing awful” , which does not neccesarily exude the confidence we usually expect from someone making music. Even in an interview after the album’s release with Woove, a student magazine based out of Virginia Tech, when asked to describe his music, Parannoul said “Trash disguised as amateurism”. 

Those negative feelings and self-hatred seep into the album and into the listener themselves as they go through this auditory journey. He’s connected to the Korean Indie scene, specifically to other artists such as Asian Glow. Before rebranding to Parannoul, He released music for 3 years under the name laststar. It’s a bit of a departure from his later work by being more post-rock in nature but it’s an interesting tidbit I thought would be worth mentioning. 

What makes To See The Next Part Of The Dream Unique? 

To See The Next Part of The Dream is shoegaze at it’s most raw and pushed to its most logical extreme. There’s nothing clean about the sounds on this album, everything is distorted and compressed to the point where it sounds like you’re hearing the album through someone’s bedroom wall or a payphone (which makes sense, as most of this album’s vocals were recorded on a Samsung Galaxy 5 smartphone). The guitars and drums are so distorted they become almost unrecognizable, especially on songs like the title track and Age of Fluctuation.

It has all the “Wall of Sound” heaviness that’s expected with a shoegaze album, but uses it in a completely different way. Compared to other shoegaze classics like Loveless by My Bloody Valentine, Loveless is much more polished yet feels colder. The tracks are loud, and have those distorted guitars and hazy vocals, but Parannoul uses those foundations in a completely new way. These tracks are frenetic, slowly building with droning hazy vocals over oppressive instrumentals before reaching a fever pitch that seems impossible to engineer with destroying someone’s computer.  

That raw and wild energy seen in the instrumentals comes through on the lyrics as well. The lyrics are devastating and downright miserable, with constant mentions of anxiety and regrets over adolescence,  escapism through art, crushing self-hatred, and hope for the future. Just looking at the first track, Beautiful World, and it’s lyrics translated to English we can see just how dark of a place Parannoul is in: 

(What are you listening to?)
(Lily Chou-Chou)

If this whole world were someone else’s dream
Will I be different from now when I wake up someday

Trapped in my own delusion, unable to see reality properly
I walk around looking pathetic, cover my eyes and ears again

“It’s gonna be okay someday. You’re gonna shine someday.”

I’m so disgusted with myself getting farther away from the world
I’m afraid of the future, I make the same mistakes again and again

“It’s gonna bе okay someday. You’re gonna shine somеday.”

(I need you to protect me)

I wish no one had seen my miserable self
I wish no one had seen my numerous failures
I wish my young and stupid days to disappear forever
My precious relationships, now they’re just in the memories.

These themes of self-loathing and regret appear throughout the album, with some messages of hope sprinkling, showing that things are not as bleak as they seem for Parannoul. Some more standout positive lyrics include “No matter what anyone says, my story won’t die, No matter what anyone says, my song won’t die” on Youth Rebellion and “I don’t have to be scared anymore
I’m not running away anymore, Far away” on the final track of the album “I Can Feel My Heart Touching You”.

Album Story and Final Ideas

There are multiple fans theories online about the story of the album and while some things are still left up to listener interpretation, Parannoul himself confirmed the story of the album in an interview with RateYourMusic in 2021. He states “Yes, this is a concept album. There’s a story to be exact. As you can see in the album introduction section of Bandcamp, it is an album about the future of an adult who only dreams about the past while denying reality. This album is full of contradictions. The contradiction of longing for the nostalgia that doesn’t exist, denying reality while living in reality, and wanting to love oneself while hating oneself. For those who have seen the lyrics, the end of the album can end with the narrator’s suicide, or hopefully moving on to reality without running away. Both interpretations are intended, depending on the listener’s point of view. When making a tracklist, I wanted to organize the album as if I were listening to a live album. That’s why all the songs except for one song are so intense, like a live concert.” 

To See The Next Part Of The Dream succeeds because it is able to turn the limitations of a bedroom project into a raw and unfiltered look into some of the most intense feelings a person can have. In our internet age, where we are more connected than ever yet our culture becomes more homogenized, having an album that tackles these difficult feelings with such visceral clarity is an accomplishment in it of itself. It flips traditional shoegaze on it’s head through the album’s overwhelming sonic atmosphere. It is abrasive and tough for the average listener to get through, but a rewarding one for people who are able to sink into what Parannoul is really talking about. This album proves that in the digital age, a piece of art from a single, anonymous bedroom can connect with countless others in their own isolated bedrooms, creating a community all looking to see the next part of the dream.

-Psuedo