Crash Course Dummy is the debut album from Korean actor and singer, Dae Ho Park. Released by Studio60 Records on May 4th, 2017, the highly anticipated album comes after over a 3 year wait for fans. Dae Ho Park was signed to Studio60 Records near the end of 2013 but has been mostly focused on his acting career, landing roles in hit series like
Consequences,
Alistair: The City Of Secrets and
Vampire Knight. During this time, he released a collaborational mixtape with his producer, rapper and good friend Drew Westbrook and collaborated with his other good friend, Austin Nimmo on the album track
Superhero, keeping his name circulating in the music industry and developing a cult following. Though it features 3 collaborations, the album is exclusively Dae Ho Park.
Crash Course Dummy contains 15 personal tracks where the singer opens up about his adventurous love life.
In earlier years, Dae Ho Park had been known only as the twin brother of Mi Sun Kim, lead member of the popular girl group Mi•Mi. While singing was a passion both of the twins held, Dae Ho Park had found that it was easier for him to land acting gigs than recording contracts so he made a plan to embark an acting career and then depart when the time was right. In 2014, Dae Ho Park had hit the jackpot and landed his first huge acting gig and recording contract in the same year. However, it was hard trying to act and make music at the same time so he planned on putting music to the side until he could finally be one hundred percent dedicated. In 2015, he released a collaborative mixtape with his good friend Drew Westbrook to hold fans over as he took time putting together an album that would make the wait worth it. Though his schedule was still busy, Dae Ho Park decided 2016 was the year he finally started getting some music for his debut album together. Out of the numerous studio sessions, Park came out on the other side with a range of different tracks and sounds. Ignore was a personal favorite of his, which is why he released it as soon as possible. "I never expected it to go number one." Dae commented on it's success. His team never even promoted the single, as he was still tied down to a very busy schedule. "2017 is my year." He declared in a tweet early December of 2016. On 2017 New Year's, Dae Ho Park released
CRASH!. The song turned out to be his biggest single yet, managing to stay in the Top 20 for 10 whole weeks. In February, Dae Ho Park took to Instagram to officially announce the arrival of
Crash Course Dummy, the pre-order going up only hours later. Another single was supposed to be released before the end of March but after fans' harsh reaction to the title of the song being "For Medina", it was pushed back to April 30th, 2017. Instead, Dae Ho Park leaked an earlier version of the tracklist and the release date of his album at the beginning of April.
Nina "Rum" Tarantino, who produces under the name FancyN, is the executive producer of
Crash Course Dummy. Other producers of the album include Flame 1&2, DrewWB, and inZane. They all have a hand in the multiple sounds of this project, which varies from K-Pop to K-R&B to Alternative Dance music. Overall, the project brings a darker more urban sound to the table of K-Pop, Dae's sensual vocals creating quite the contrast to his detached lyrics and moody production. One of the best things about his sound is his amazing vocals, his wide vocal range giving him the ability to create distinct atmospheres for his songs alongside the dense electronic production full of synths and beat machines. This really shows in hard-hitting songs like
Hand Over Hand and
We Don't Have To Go Back where the vocals are just as dramatic as the production. Dae's voice shines even more when the instrumentation is much more tamed which is shown in songs like
Sip On This,
Let Go and
IgnoreLyrically,
Crash Course Dummy is an album about the volatile nature of love, the title representing the ongoing metaphor of the album that compares Dae's love life to a wild ride. While Dae Ho Park leads in writing credits, the album features in plenty of songwriting from Airemese "Coke" Smith, his twin sister Mi Sun Kim and the executive producer of the record, Nina "Rum" Tarantino. Topics range from cautionary tales like
CRASH!,
BURN! and
YELL!, to intimate songs about sex like
Cotton Candy Kisses,
Let Go and
Wanderlust. Dae expands on the concept below:
Dae Ho Park wrote: With this album, I wanted to write about modern day love. Love is kinda like life, it's always evolving and finding new ways to express itself, how we loved years ago is much different from how we love now. The songs on this record aren't just written about my experiences, they're written about my perspective. I believe that when young, most people sort of look at their love lives as some sort of experiment. We all hope we'll be settled down with the person we love by 40 and so everybody we come in contact with between now and..40 is practice. It's like a crash course to them and since I'm not the kind of person who feels that way, I always end up feeling like the dummy. I'm a selfless person but it's just something about people tossing you around and playing with your emotions as a way to figure out what works for them. And even though I always end up getting wrecked, I continue to love recklessly like a dumb ass [laughs]. I really wanted to capture that side of myself in my debut. Before anything, I am a lover. This is the perfect introduction to me.
