If you have Tik Tok…even if you DON’T have Tik Tok, you’ve heard a snippet of DPR Ian’s song, Don’t Go Insane. The upbeat, pop sound has a breakdown in the middle lots of dancers on the social media platform have turned into viral choreography. The man behind the music has a long history of experimenting with different sounds and has been very successful. It might seem like he came out of nowhere, but Ian has been around for years.
Born in Australia, Christian Yu and his family loved going to circuses, which would play a role in his music choices down the road. First, he attended a performing arts school and started a heavy metal band. Here’s where the circus aspect comes into play, after the metal experiment, Yu created a K-pop group called C-Clown. The 6 member boy band started off in 2012 but disbanded by 2015. They didn’t have a lot of charting success, but lots of plays on YouTube. Yu knew he wanted to do something big and different in the industry, but the boy band life was not for him. Even though he had a hard time with it all, it set him up with some useful connections.
From here, Yu, Live, Cream and REM from C-Clown formed Dream Perfect Regime. According to their website, DPR is a
“multi-genre music and video group. We create, direct, produce, and edit all types of visual work as well as curate artists that derive from various musical backgrounds and influences. Based in Seoul, our collective’s man focus is to engage all audiences by actualizing a distinctive audiovisual experience.”
This collective unit does it all! They are their own label and production company with Yu directing most of the videos. In the beginning, the group did a lot of work for other artists, creating videos and images. This was how they raised enough money to buy the materials and equipment they needed.
Finally, they could dedicate their time to their own projects. Their first track, Till I Die, was released on SoundCloud on July 27th, 2015. Getting their feet wet with their vision, DPR would release three more projects which got them enough notoriety to land a Nike ad. After that, things just snow balled.
Now, DPR Ian works closely with another member, Live, to feed their need to be visually creative as well as musically successful. The history of DPR and all its members is incredibly fascinating. The logistics of how they use each person to become this unstoppable conglomerate is pretty incredible. Now that they’ve broken into the US and become global, it’s only a matter of time before we see DPR everywhere.
Photo courtesy of DPR’s social media.