CLOSE YOUR EYES Refuse to Play It Safe With '256th Note' Saying "We Want to Keep Challenging Ourselves"

Rookie boy group CLOSE YOUR EYES is making a comeback after five months with their fourth mini-album, "256th Note."

Ahead of the album's release on September 30, the group held a press conference at The Riverside Hotel in eastern Seoul, where they spoke about their new music and the changes they have undergone since their last comeback.

CLOSE YOUR EYES, consisting of Jeon Minwook, Ma Jingxiang, Jang Yeojun, Kim Sungmin, Song Seungho, Kenshin and Seo Kyungbae, debuted in April 2025 after being formed through JTBC survival program "PROJECT 7."

Five months after the two-track single "OVEREXPOSED," the group returns with a considerably broader project. "256th Note" stretches across seven tracks and moves between jazz, hip-hop, R&B, bossa nova and pop, building on the genre experimentation CLOSE YOUR EYES has gradually taken on since debut.

"Since this is an album inspired by jazz, we worked really hard because we wanted to show a lot of new sides of ourselves," leader Minwook said.

The title "256th Note" refers to an extremely brief musical note, which the album uses as a metaphor for fleeting emotions and experiences. Just as individual notes eventually come together to form a complete song, the record brings together different moments in the group's development into a single project.

Jazz provides much of that connection as rather than adopting the genre in its most conventional form, CLOSE YOUR EYES drew particularly from its freedom and improvisation qualities. The members felt that these allowed them to experiment without completely abandoning the lyrical and melodic sensibility associated with their earlier music.

"One reason we chose jazz-funk this time is because jazz has so many improvisational elements, and we thought that suited us well," Minwook explained. "We wanted to challenge ourselves with something different, and that led us to jazz-funk."

The choice reflects a question that has followed CLOSE YOUR EYES as their discography has expanded which is how far can the group move between concepts without losing the musical identity it established during their debut?

For the members, the answer appears to lie less in committing to a particular genre and more in maintaining a consistent standard across them as Yeojun said, "We prepared with the mindset that rather than being confined to any particular genre, we wanted to make a variety of good music."

That variety is immediately apparent across the track list. Alongside pre-release track "Open Your Eyes" and title track "Drop That!," the album moves from the urban piano and groovy drums of "Vibe Check" and electro-pop and alternative R&B of "Slowly Bleed" to the vintage R&B of "Fool For You," bossa nova-inspired "Baby Bossa Nova" and acoustic piano-led "Eternity."

Yet the genre changes are not intended to function as seven separate experiments. Yeojun said the members see their own experiences and stories as the element that should remain consistent even when the sound surrounding them changes. "We think we're still in the process of moving forward," he said.

"Rather than limiting ourselves to one genre, we want to keep trying and challenging ourselves in different ways and we're very grateful that we've often heard people say, ‘Their music is good,'" Yeo-jun added. "I think that gives us more courage to keep trying different things, make good music and continue growing."

The members themselves are also becoming increasingly involved in determining what that music looks like. Minwook participated in writing four tracks, including "Open Your Eyes" and "Drop That!," while Seung-ho, Kenshin and Sung-min earned writing credits across the record. All seven members contributed lyrics to the closing track "Eternity," which centers on their friendship and relationship with fandom CLOSER.

For Kenshin, the process also reflected his own development since debut. The Japanese member previously approached Korean songwriting by first writing his ideas in Japanese and translating them afterward. This time, he wanted the Korean itself to become part of the creative process.

"There were some things I wasn't completely satisfied with when I worked that way, so while preparing this album, I studied Korean harder and tried to write the lyrics in Korean from the beginning." He mentioned before admitting that he still received some help, but said more of the language now came naturally to him rather than through translation.

The title track, "Drop That!" samples Yoon Si-nae's "Enjoy This Night," considered an early example of Korean jazz-funk, before reframing it through the language of 1990s street hip-hop. Strings and upright bass sit alongside a heavier rhythmic foundation, creating a noticeably different atmosphere from the more jazz-forward "Open Your Eyes."

The contrast between the two tracks is clear, but so is their connection. Strings and bass carry traces of the jazz sensibility established through "Open Your Eyes" into the heavier "Drop That!," while recurring imagery and an old-film aesthetic create a similar link visually. The two songs ultimately approach the album's jazz foundation from different directions rather than existing as completely separate concepts.

For a group whose members were born long after both Yoon's original release and the 1990s hip-hop culture they were being asked to interpret, however, recreating the surface characteristics of those eras alone risked feeling detached from their own experience.

Their solution was to study them first as Minwook explained, "we spent time watching older music programs and studying 1990s hip-hop and jazz first. And the members also listened to music together, talked about it a lot and gave each other advice. We first tried to understand the music itself."

That understanding also informed how they approached the performance. Rather than treating the gestures and expressions associated with the track as separate additions, Yeojun said they focused on its underlying rhythm and swing so those elements could emerge more naturally.

"We studied other jazz music and focused more on the swing and rhythm within our own track so that the expressions and gestures could come out naturally," he said.

Although Yoon gave permission for "Enjoy This Night" to be sampled, the members have yet to hear her thoughts on their reinterpretation. For Minwook, the response he hopes to receive speaks to an ambition beyond simply doing justice to the original.

"If she listens to our song, I would be really happy if she told us that, just like her song, ours is music that represents its generation and is ahead of its time," he said.

The experimentation surrounding the comeback has not been limited to music. The "Open Your Eyes" interlude film marked the first time all seven members acted together, with the group receiving acting lessons ahead of filming.

For Sungmin, one of the more memorable parts of the process was seeing how the group's foreign members changed when performing in their native languages. "Kenshin and Jingxiang are foreign members, and when they acted in their native languages, their whole atmosphere changed," he said. "I thought that was really cool."

Yeojun, meanwhile, found himself interested in taking the experience further. "I've always been interested in acting, so I found it really interesting that I was able to try it and it made me think I'd like to try it more seriously if I get another opportunity in the future."

The comeback also arrives while CLOSE YOUR EYES are carrying out their first tour, giving the members another point of comparison with where they stood five months ago. Yeojun said repeatedly performing has helped them develop their ability to communicate with audiences and control their energy onstage, while the members also pointed to improved chemistry within the group as their shared experience has grown.

Taken together, those changes make "256th Note" less about CLOSE YOUR EYES exchanging one musical identity for another than testing how elastic that identity can become.

The group has previously been described with the "literary boys" label for its lyrical and melodic sensibility. With jazz-funk now joining the growing list of genres in their discography, the members are reluctant to simply exchange that descriptor for another genre-specific one. Instead, they said they would like CLOSE YOUR EYES to become known as a group listeners can trust to deliver good music regardless of where their experimentation takes them next.

For Minwook, that process does not necessarily require one release to provide a definitive answer about what CLOSE YOUR EYES should sound like. "Like with every album we release, our biggest goal is to let more people know our music and give the fans who waited for us good memories," he said.

"As our albums continue to build up, I hope more people will listen to them, that they'll be streamed more and that our music can be heard in more places."

CLOSE YOUR EYES' fourth mini-album "256th Note" will be released September 30 at 6 p.m. KST through online music platforms.