GIRL I LOVE YOU: Guinneissik talks about confessional new album
Written by Ethan Kim (@count.kim)
Pictures by Christian 이수 Mata (@chris_isu_m)
With his superb new album GIRL I LOVE YOU, Guinneissik's 2026 is back in full speed. He has already built a reputation with two full-length albums, but his output has never really been about albums, but silence: concerts, singles and sudden appearances across stages have kept his name in circulation. Even in the constant flux of the underground, he occupies a peculiar position – visible everywhere, yet still somehow an outsider, slipping between electronic music and the edges of rock, hardcore and club culture.
GIRL I LOVE YOU is full of twists and turns, where digital hardcore pressure meets trance euphoria, only to shift again. The core, however, is emotional. Gender, admiration that turns into jealousy, conflicts that refuse to resolve themselves neatly, it's all there, revealed in fragments, much like the unpredictable rhythm of singeli.
"I'm Guinneissik," he says, introducing himself simply: "a Seoul-based musician making euphoria that's honestly a bit too full-on." He adds a detail that feels less like a joke and more like a mission statement – he's the type to throw a ten-metre cable and a MIDI controller into a crowd mid-set, then dive in after it.
Digital hardcore, trance, screamo, deconstructed club – the words circle, but he doesn't seem interested in living inside any one of them. His earlier works were more instrumental, but over time melodies and dance-floor structures came to the fore. A 2024 compilation track, London Hammer, and last year's SADASPOUSE are closer to the form he is in now. Hardcore, he says, came through the people around him: friends, scenes, venues.
But if he had to summarise the emotional thread, he would put it this way: it is "music that starts in longing and ends in longing." One obvious change on the new record is the vocals – this time he's holding a mic, with certain tracks built entirely around them.
Lately, it's rhythm that catches his attention, especially unique patterns. Latin American, African and Caribbean rhythmic ideas appeal to him, and he has tried to incorporate these languages of movement into the intensity of hardcore. But he's not someone who forces output on schedule. If the initial idea doesn't feel fun, he can't work. A synth tone, a genre reference, a hook that feels funny in the right way – he needs a spark first. Once that's there, everything else can run.
Ask about instruments, and he quickly makes one sound less like a tool and more like a long-term companion: Operator, Ableton Live's built-in synth. He's used it for years. On tracks like Charlieputhunreleaseddemo, he treats Operator like a whole circus. On GIRL I LOVE YOU, he points to Hrutal Buggs as proof that density doesn't always mean a hundred layers. Beside the vocals, he says, the track is only about ten channels – yet constant variation still comes from Operator's internal changes.
If the first two albums laid the foundation, GIRL I LOVE YOU explores the inner world. He calls it "a love letter to beings I love, things that dance, move, boil over." But the love letter is also a sword. The album, he says, "borrows the shape of romance to dismantle the self." It is full of attachment and complexity, sexuality, fixation – the messier layers of desire.
Looking back, he says his first album was released before he fully understood why he needed to make one. The second had a clearer intention, but still felt like he was "keeping his mouth shut". The third is the most direct he's ever been, emotionally and technically.
Part of this openness came from hardcore – not just the sound, but the way people talk within these environments. He cites Palecistus as an example: close to hardcore, but with lyrics so simple they become fearless. "Love you forever." Memories expressed without embellishment. A sincerity that does not protect itself. "It can be embarrassing," he admits, but he wanted to show he has that weakness inside him.
Making the album became a process of observing himself, watching his own reactions and impulses. He describes sincerity as layered, "like paper stacked up." Under honesty, there are deeper essences you don't want to believe are there. Digging down to those layers produced a kind of truth that, in his words, can feel humiliating.
That tension is planted from the first track. Oct 25th, Explain Birth opens the album and was released as a pre-release single on 25 October – a date chosen deliberately. He remembers that day in 2024 as one when friends' releases seemed to pour out all at once. He thought of the image of blessing someone when they first show themselves to the world: what it means to witness an emergence and feel awe.
But the song is not just about blessing. It also contains jealousy – not towards those releases, but from a much earlier period in his life. Jealousy towards other artists, then guilt for feeling it, then self-hatred for not being "pure". In the song, these two experiences sit side by side: the awe of 2024 and the darker memory from long ago, held in the same hand. The structure moves from an intense opening through a calmer section, then a final passage where the speaker weighs blessing against jealousy. The lyric lands on a declaration: "I want to bless you, so I'll throw away jealousy and choose love." But even as he says it, he knows it won't be easily resolved. "It can be tragic to ignore the jealousy you feel in order to give your blessing," he says. Jealousy is useless, but it is also unconscious. He makes the choice to accept the feeling without denying it – to admit that he has both admiration and jealousy at once.
GIRL I LOVE YOU is filled with collaborations. Pishu is someone he's known for a long time; their track Topology came together in a week, maybe two. Won Jaeyeon from 64ksana entered his radar through a theatre project. He had long wanted a vocal texture with an Asian or Middle Eastern quality, so the session made immediate sense. The song they originally planned didn't make the final cut, but Jaeyeon's recorded sample was used in Super Polymerization.
Then there's Shared Diary (교환일기), a compilation project built with various musicians, born out of good timing. The idea surfaced last spring at ACS while hanging with friends. He already carried deep respect for artists like K Super Motel, noman's'lave, and Riff Fool, and around the same time, artists including Balancequeen69, Saiki Toshio and Chichikafo were becoming more active. The compilation arrived as a natural response, and those members also contributed to his album – helping with photos, attending the release party. "I wanted each of them to appear at least once," he says.
Even outside electronic music, Guinneissik's name keeps appearing. He is a member of shoegaze band FØG and plays sessions for Fin Fior. He calls his position interesting, but notes that bridges between scenes have always existed – electronic musicians in rock bands, band members doing DJ sets, venues like ACS and Infinity Club naturally accommodating different genres under one roof.
One title on the tracklist still stands out like a flare: Cate and Rooney Said I'll Forever Be a Man and I Tried to Withdraw All of My Pennies from the Urethra. It is the only song without lyrics and one of the most emotionally distorted points on the album. The title references Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, the leads in Todd Haynes' film Carol, and connects to a period when he intensely hated his own masculinity. Watching the film whilst mentally unwell, he says, felt like "almost mental self-harm." He considered shortening the title but decided to keep it long enough to better express that painful moment. Long titles, he notes, are not uncommon in screamo and subculture circles.
Some songs arrived immediately. Lampposting (Sada Spouse Mix) was written in a single night in September 2024 and remained virtually unchanged, save for a minor intro adjustment and a chaotic ending featuring voices from the Shared Diary members. Under the Four Letter Word was also made early and stayed largely intact. Other tracks demanded patience. The title track, GIRL I LOVE YOU, took a whole year. He started it in January and thought constantly about how to close the album, having built it from the start as a finale.
If the album is a confession, the live shows are more impactful. He brings up Cakeshop first, invited by the More Breaks collective: a one-hour set split between DJ and live performance. He grabbed the mic, climbed the booth, pushed his face into the speaker and screamed. Other memories include Hardcoresex at Chunhee in May, playing a Palestine solidarity show at Baby Doll, and opening for moreru.
He has realised that he tends to release full-length albums when he closes a chapter in his life. Music, for him, is not something he lives for above all else – it is more of a survival process, a way to expel internal waste so he can continue. When asked what comes next, one idea surfaces quietly: something like a children's programme. Not as a genre exercise, but for its intention. "I believe that I can contribute to conveying the expression and movement of free and responsible emotions to the next generation."
Ultimately, that is how GIRL I LOVE YOU feels – not just another release, but an act that moves forward through exposure. An album that doesn't pretend the heart is pure, that allows admiration and jealousy to exist in the same sentence, that admits shame and yet continues. Guinneissik chooses honesty, then chooses to run with it.