Battle of the B-Sides:: Moonbin&Sanha (ASTRO): Ghost Town

 My Stay friend who is also an Aroha asked me if I'd cover this one. It's been a long time since she suggested it, but I've been trying to figure out how I want to cover it because there's a very obvious approach to this, but that wasn't part of the original context of the song. It's only context that has developed from the passage of time and Moonbin's death, which isn't something I necessarily want to focus on because of the aforementioned non-original context and also that's also a bit more recent than I like to address The Sad. So there's that. This isn't the first group that I've done a post for that has lost a member (SHINee, f(x), Ladies' Code), but this one is by far the most recent.

Moonbin and Sanha are two of the three youngest members of the boy group ASTRO under Fantagio Entertainment. They debuted in ASTRO back in 2016, and debuted as a subunit together in 2020. 

Ghost Town was the pre-release from their second mini album, Refuge, in 2022. The songwriters are the producing group PCDC, which started out working on Cravity's songs and branched out into ASTRO and LUN8 songs later. This paragraph is quite short compared to what it normally is because the songwriters have very consistently not written for many groups. And fun fact, this album came out the same month as my very first Greatest Hits post! First time returning to March of 2022 in almost a year and a half.

You know, it's deeply appropriate for a song called "Ghost Town" start off so quietly haunting. The song never really leaves that liminal space, constantly spiraling and twisting over itself, but never quite going anywhere despite the amount of movement. Having lived in some very small towns in my life, that's kind of what it feels like.

It's also part of why I hate running on treadmills. I'm just running in place. There is no actual movement.

The song also doesn't stop, which is just fascinating. There are spots where the song has at most two bars of rest, but most of the time where there would be rests, the other member steps in to take the weight (and shout out to them for slow, melodic rapping when the pair of them are vocalists). Yes, there's a very clear beginning, but with how the song ends, it does kind of rotate back around to the beginning of the song. It's wonderfully thematic though for that liminal space of non-movement movement.

The music video is also in a liminal space. There's no real sense of time or space, though something about it does remind me a bit of an old movie theater, but the use of light and shadow is phenomenal. Half the time, they stand out well, and the other half of the time, it's almost like Moonbin and Sanha are formed out of the shadows, and that's what they fade into at the very end of the music video.

The actual cinematography here is just fascinating because we've got lens flares and light halos and subtle glitches and all sorts of fantastic little bits to it that give the video itself both a very specific feel and some added depth. As a fun fact, in my intro to film class, when we were talking about directors and auteurs, my professor showed us some clips of certain JJ Abrams films to show us how often he uses lens flares. There are enough of them in this music video that I smile in delight thinking about that.

This is a very chill song, very smooth, very nonplussed.

I'm going to start with Show Champion since this may have been the only time that they performed this on a music show. Technically this is a "fancam", but a full view performance to start? Yes, please.

First up, I deeply love that they're contrasting in their styling. Their shirts are in almost exactly the same style (Moonbin's in black and Sanha's in olive), though the main difference seems to be in the neckline. Sanha's exposes the slope of his neck and shoulder, where Moonbin's goes at least up to his Adam's apple. We've also got a difference in the sleeves. Sanha's are loose and flowy; Moonbin's are tight at the wrist and fluffy. And then, with their hair, Sanha gets the darker, cooler hair color (I'm actually reminded of a Crayola crayon, Raw Umber), where Moonbin gets a warm, almost Mahogany (I apparently have crayons on the brain today.)

I'm sure you weren't expecting specific crayons to be dropped in a K-Pop fangirling post, but here we are. I wasn't expecting it either.

The performance itself is simple, but the symmetry with the choreography is so cool. It doesn't come up very often, only with the chorus, but every time it does, the two of them just flow. 

Moonbin stepping forward first is only suitable as the elder member, and we don't get a lot of movement after, though in all honestly, what we do get is very subtle and kind of blink and you miss it.

The cool thing about this, and the reason why I am not going to share the proper, actual performance, is that you can literally see the moment where the "I am performing" focus drops right there at the very end. They get a little smiley and goofy, which is just so sweet to see. It's also the most replayed part of the video, so that's a fan favorite part.

If you're also surprised to find out that they did Ghost Town at Waterbomb, please raise your hand!

Mine is also raised, don't worry.

This one and the next two are all proper fancams, which I am happy to share because fancams have a special place here in this blog. 

Ooh, they look good in denim. And there are a few comments talking about Sanha's bicep mole, which apparently had its own recent debut. 

The audio quality is not as great as the professionally recorded Show Champion, but you can tell that those are live vocals, and we get to hear my absolute favorite thing, which is vibrato, very clearly. 

You can also see how relaxed they are. Released from the confines of a "proper" stage, they hold themselves loosely with a lovely little swagger. There's a lot of comfort there. 

I also found them performing it back at the LALAPA K-CONCERT in Bangkok!

The video also appears to have been uploaded in February of 2024, so the channel uploaded this...after. 

Again, it's a very loose performance, a lot of interacting with each other and with the crowd. It's a lovely song and very comfortable to watch. I'm actually really impressed with how comfortable they look in this song, even when it's in a more formal type of setting.

I love that they harmonize at the very end for the last couple lines. That's kind of the perfect way to end a song, especially one that's kind of lonely.

But.

Again, like with the Show Champion, when the performance properly ends and the lights go down, Moonbin starts smiling, turns to Sanha, and that's such a satisfied smile and nod he gives him.

Thank you for not ending the recording as soon as the song stopped. I doubt you'll ever see this, but know that I'm grateful for you for preserving that specific moment.

And this one is from the Kirukan Langit Indonesia Festival! 

Normally, I like to try to end any of these posts with a dance practice, but it would be odd for this kind of song. Instead, you get something with fans singing along and Sanha in a coat I want to steal (other notable coats are Mingi of ATEEZ during Django on their Will to Power: Towards the Light tour, and Wonwoo of Seventeen during Monster on their Follow Again tour).

I don't know about you, but I love getting to see them interacting with the crowd like that. Moonbin got as close as he could. 

This fancam is fun because both of them just kept getting so close. 

We also got a little bit of their post performance yapping. So much smiling. It's good to see and they're just adorable the way they start laughing at the very end when the fans screaming. 

Thank you, Stay Friend! I kind of love this song now and I hope this was satisfying enough for you. I got to do a little bit of detective work, which I also love, to hunt down and dig through to find the performances and the fancams. 

If you, my dearest reader, have any other songs you'd like to submit to me, drop a comment, shoot me a message wherever you found this, or you can completely anonymously submit via The Form. Bye!

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