Dive EP

SEO JOHN, a Seoul-based producer orbiting the outer edge of the Korean underground, releases his debut EP Dive today on GODDEZZ (GDZ006), the label’s sixth outing. It’s a record that takes the raw materials of ’90s house and trance—acid lines, chip-tune melodies, cavernous drum rooms—and treats them as though they were excavated from a fictional future city: gleaming, weightless and slightly out of time.

Opening track Dimension Walking (Original Mix) sets the tone across its eight-plus minutes, a metallic 303 melody skipping over a dry four-to-the-floor kick, the whole thing wrapped in reverb so deep the snare sounds like it’s being thrown down a stairwell. Progressor leans harder into the record’s retro-futurist streak, its trance-rooted arpeggios cycling patiently whilst a sub bass swells beneath—the kind of track engineered for a midnight drive through somewhere that doesn’t exist yet. The title track Dive is the EP’s emotional centre, a slow-burning chord wash with its melody lines left deliberately out of focus, whilst Escape tightens the percussion and lets the drums do the talking, all clipped hats and rolling toms.

The remix pair bookends the record neatly. Bliss Inc.’s take on Dimension Walking strips the acid away and rebuilds the groove around a rubbery bassline and skeletal percussion, giving the original’s futurism a dancefloor-ready shove. Omformer’s Deep Dive Mix of the title track is the longest thing here at over nine minutes, extending the original’s haze into a patient, dub-flavoured descent that rewards close listening.

Dive doesn’t sound like any particular era, which is precisely its charm. SEO JOHN has pulled a handful of familiar ingredients—303 lines, trance stabs, cavernous drums—and assembled them into something that feels both warmly nostalgic and genuinely new. For a debut, it’s remarkably assured, and it marks him out as one of the more interesting producers to emerge from the Korean underground in some time.