“This album started from a single, pure thought: to create something that truly belongs to me, a complete expression,” KUN tells Apple Music. “To get back to music itself in a more thorough, authentic way.” Although the idea entered his mind in 2023 while on a Los Angeles beach, bringing his self-titled album to completion took more than two years. “The melodies and lyrics are like shards of a mirror, reflecting different aspects of myself and illuminating my past and my dreams,” the soulful singer-songwriter says. “Time has made me clearer about who I am and what I want to say. It’s given me the courage to tell stories using this unadorned, authentic name.” Reflecting the icy atmosphere of the cover—as well as the artist’s well-known love of snow—the synth lament “Colder” typifies the album’s earnest introspection. “The song is the flint of humanity that chisels through the extreme cold,” KUN says. “From writing to performance, it’s an inward polar trek that portrays a world at absolute zero, devoid of warmth, colour and direction.” While his 2021 solo debut album 迷 [Lost] offered glimpses of the artist’s inner world and the weight of fame and idoldom, KUN’s self-examination is more pronounced, the emotions rawer and more vulnerable. And while his work has always moved between and across genres, from pop and R&B to electronic and rock, this album reveals a mature, personalised stylistic fusion—the raw, fragile, bluesy longing of “Deadman” shares space with the retro show tune positivity of “What a Day”. “For me, music-making is a journey. If you remain in one landscape, however beautiful it may be, it’ll eventually lose its lustre,” he says. “The music industry today is adept at standardisation. But I wanted to get back to an irreplaceable voice, one with breath and emotion.” The singer sums up his accumulated experience in the industry with a pair of guiding questions: “In the past, I’d often ask myself, ‘What do they want to hear?’ This time, my question was, ‘What do I want to sing?’” On this album, his answers take the form of the minimalist neo-soul encomium “Honour”, the falsetto-driven infatuation jam “Jasmine” and the dream-pop reverie “Don’t Call”. On that track, a collaboration with American R&B band Free Nationals, a carefree sound masks a deeper emotional struggle. But hope is another facet of KUN’s sonic self-portrait—and on “Back in Time”, a slow-groove evocation of the romance of a bygone era, his expressive delivery of reassuring words makes a convincing case that everything will work out in the end.