CLOSE YOUR EYES channels jazz-fueled swagger on '256th Note'

By Pyo Kyung-min

• Published Sep 30, 2026 8:38 PM KST

Multinational K-pop boy band CLOSE YOUR EYES has released its fourth EP, "256th Note," a jazz-inflected record that comes just five months after the group's last release.

The seven-member act — Jeon Min-wook, Ma Jingxiang, Jang Yeo-jun, Kim Sung-min, Song Seung-ho, Kenshin and Seo Kyoung-bae — debuted in April 2025 through JTBC's audition show "Project 7." In the year and a half since, the group has steadily raised its international profile, collecting awards at home and abroad and taking its "BEYOND YOUR EYES" world tour on the road since January.

Hours before the album dropped on Wednesday, the members sat down with reporters at a hotel in Seocho District, southern Seoul, to walk through how the record came together.

"We wanted to make good memories with our fans, so we went into this with a lot of excitement," Jeon said. "Because the album draws on jazz, we set out to show a side of us people haven't seen before."

The album takes its spirit from jazz improvisation, the members explained, where each instrument's spontaneous turns produce split-second moments that pull both players and listeners deeper into the music.

That idea comes into sharpest focus on the track "Drop That!" which samples "Enjoy This Night" (1979) by Yoon Si-nae, widely credited as a pioneer of Korean jazz funk, and recasts it as 1990s street hip-hop.

"Jazz funk isn't a genre we'd come across much, so it felt both unfamiliar and refreshing," Song said. "Sampling a song by such a revered veteran was a lot of pressure, but that only made us more determined to get it right."

Asked why a group with members in their 20s would reach for music that predates them, Jeon said the choice was a deliberate change of pace.

"We've put out a lot of lyrical songs since our debut, but we felt the improvisational nature of jazz really suits us, and we wanted to show we can't be pinned to a single genre," he said. "Since it's music from before our time, we had to study it, listening together and talking through how to understand it and make it our own."

If the prerelease single "Open Your Eyes" was the album's gentler introduction, filtering the loose, searching feel of jazz piano through hip-hop and R&B, "Drop That!" turns that same impulse into something more direct and powerful.

"Our goal was to make good music that isn't boxed in by genre," Jang said, "and to make every style on the album easy to listen to."

Rounding out the seven tracks are "Vibe Check," "Slowly Bleed," "Fool For You," "Baby Bossa Nova" and "Eternity," which roam across different instruments and styles.

The members' fingerprints are all over the record. Jeon has lyric credits on "Open Your Eyes," "Fool For You," "Baby Bossa Nova" and "Drop That!"; Song co-wrote "Drop That!" and "Fool For You"; and Kenshin and Kim contributed to "Open Your Eyes" and "Vibe Check," respectively.

The closer, "Eternity," is the most personal of all, with all seven members writing lyrics about how their thoughts keep returning to their fandom, known as CLOSER.

Asked what they hoped to achieve with the album, Kenshin from Japan brought the room to laughter with a candid answer delivered in still-halting Korean — he wanted to shed the group's "bookish boy" image for more of a "runaway teen" vibe.

Jang quickly stepped in to steer things back on course.

"People often tell us our music is good, so we want the jazz concept to showcase what we do best," he said. "If we could earn one new nickname this time, it would be 'music matjip,'" he added, using Korean slang for a restaurant worth lining up for.