Bio / History

Bio (Intro)

My name is Cecily Renns. I'm a bunny girl writer and musician and I've been writing and producing music for 8 years, since 2016! I've released over 30 albums, and worked with artists such as Cacola, BrokenTeeth and Ida Deerz.

I'm also a furry and transgender! I've been trans since 2022. I was born in Seoul, South Korea, on the 21st of March, 2002, and was raised bilingual. I've had Bipolar disorder since I was 14 years old, and I'm probably autistic too but never diagnosed with that. The first bands I remember loving are The Beatles, Queen, Billy Joel, Elton John, and Jonathan Coulton. My favourite musician is Dima Foxpaws, who is also my mentor and best friend. My favorite artist of all time is my partner and wife, Biddy Fox, or Beatrix.

Cool and New Music Team (2016-2018)

When I played Undertale for the first time in 2015, that awakened something in me. I wanted to make music like the songs in that game, and I eventually learned that not only a single guy made all of it, but also that he made it on his computer with no real instruments. So I downloaded Toby Fox's DAW of choice, which was FL Studio 12, which I still use to this day. (I will never update it)

I made my first song in December of 2015, and I'd make random, dumb tunes on and off since then, until February of 2016, when I read a web comic called Homestuck.

Homestuck, for better or for worse, completely changed the trajectory of my life. I joined the community and made friends for the first time. And in April, while Homestuck ended its serialization, a new phoenix would rise from the ashes; a fan comic called "cool and new web comic."

We were all obsessed with it, and in June, there was an unofficial call for musicians to create an album about it, so I applied. Thus I began my journey on the "cool and new music team." We released 65 projects across 5 years, and I was one of the first members to join. I quickly became part of the inner circle, becoming a moderator and a frequent contributor to albums. I made significant progress as a songwriter as well; my first album was a spoof of the Undertale soundtrack called "Basement Tale," filled with discordant, chaotic soundfont tracks. But slowly and slowly, I learned how to write normal music.

After about 6 months of doing this, I started pursuing my own solo releases. I made a soundtrack to a fake web comic I wanted to write called "Ryan Jolin." And eventually, inspired by the geek rock music of artists such as Lemon Demon, Tally Hall and Jonathan Coulton, I created my first album with vocal tracks, called Discordant. I realized that this is what I wanted to do; I never really wanted to become a Video Game Music composer, which is what most of my peers in the CANMT wanted to be. I wanted to write songs and lyrics and stories.

So, inspired by my experiences in the Homestuck fandom and being in the cool and new music team, I created a 88 minute long synthpop opera called "Rain." To this day, it is probably one of my most dense works. This caused a lot of friction in the inner community of the CANMT I was in at the time, with some of them mistakenly believing it to be a mockery of who we were. Nevertheless, this led me to fall out of touch with the CANMT for a few years, until 3 years later, in 2021, when I contributed to their final project.

UnPop (2018-2019)

2018 was mostly a year of me trying to find my own musical style after completely abandoning the VGM aesthetic. I experimented a lot of with different rock and pop genres. "Seasons" featured a lot of these experimentations, while "Agonist Antagonist" consisted of me going to a folk/chamber pop direction. I also made two notable singles - "i made an album," an LCD Soundsystem inspired dance-punk track, and "2009", a 14 minute long song about my dead father.

In 2019, I slowed down my prolificity considerably. But I think this is the year when my music actually started becoming focused, cohesive and worth listening back to. The first album I made was called "17살의 여름비탄", or "Summer Heartbreak" in English. It was a pop punk concept album, based on a novel I was writing at the time. (Which I did finish - one year after this album came out!)

But in truth, throughout all of 2019, beginning from the 25th of December, 2018, I had been working on another project. I had heard Patricia Taxxon's "Little Spoon" on that Christmas day, and it inspired me to write my own about gay people destroying capitalism. So over the course of a year, I created "UnPop," which released on the 25th of December, 2019.

UnPop changed everything. Up until this point, the only audience I had were friends I had from the cool and new music team. But UnPop actually gained traction; it got some 50 or so ratings on RateYourMusic, which was a lot of people who actually listened to my music. For the first time, I had some semblance of an audience. I wasn't singing out into the void anymore.

Post-UnPop (2019-2020)

After UnPop, I worked on a few miscellaneous projects, although nothing as career-defining as UnPop. I made a covers album called "Attitude Made of Influence," and I finished up a hip-hop album I had been writing since 2018 called "colour this death," my only major original album project in 2020.

I also worked on a huge video project called "Prologue to Actualize." "Actualize" was a novel I was writing, and using characters from this novel, I wrote a "video response" to a video I had watched, "A Serious Slump," in dialogue-format. This was a huge undertaking, because I had never created a whole edited video before. It was fun though, and I'd actually love to make something like this again! (Although making an actual playable visual novel would be easier)

Album-A-Month (2021)

For a couple years leading up to 2021, I had the idea of "Album-A-Month" - inspired by Thing-A-Week by Jonathan Coulton, in which he wrote and recorded a song every week for a year, I would write and produce a whole album every month for a year. I don't remember why I picked 2021 for the year I decided to do it, but I thought it was about high time, and that my musical skills were improved enough for it.

I can't talk about every album I made that year, but I did make 12 albums in one year, and some of them got some serious traction. Of which were "Childhood Erasure Logs," which had its own little Korean fandom form around it, and "Lily of the Valley", an album based on my Omori fanfiction book which I also wrote that year.

Album-A-Month was huge for me, and I gained a lot of audience, perspective and musicianship from it. I had built up a big brand for myself, so clearly everything was looking up Renns for me. There was not going to be a huge life event which would completely change and shatter my life as I knew it.

Cecily Renns (2022-2023)

So yeah. Long story short, in early 2022, I realized I was a girl. I had always identified as non-binary as JohnJRenns, but it wasn't something I put too much thought into; it was just a way of being transgressive and cool. But after a series of happenstance, I came into the realization that no, I just want to be a Girl.

I also met Bea. I discovered Biddy Fox's music in late 2021, while I was in the thick of Album-A-Month. I was going through the "art pop" tag on Bandcamp, and discovered her album "Super Biddy Fox." We became friends over the internet in the coming months, but it wasn't until April 2022 when we got super close and became partners. She helped a lot in helping me crack my egg.

Together, we wrote the first album I made as Cecily, called Dysfunctional Bunnygirl. This album blew up more than I ever could have expected. Frankly, I was terrified. I was abandoning a name and a brand I've been cultivating for 5 years. I wasn't sure if I could gain all those listeners back, ever. But Dysfunctional Bunnygirl was a huge success for me.

On 2023, we made our second album as Cecily, called "모두 살아," or "Everyone, Live." It was the sequel album to Album-A-Month's "Childhood Erasure Logs." This one also did pretty well, and on 2023, I also performed live twice at various Korean indie venues as well. I do think it's funny that in the span of 2 years and 2 albums, I now have more listeners and fans than I ever did making 25 albums as JohnJRenns across 5 years.

I also did some minor projects as Cecily, like "Pop²," a synthpop mini-album, or "Attitude Made of Influence 2," another covers album. I intend to go back to making Cecily albums eventually, but for now, I'm focusing my sights on another project.

MIDI Bunny (2023-2024)

MIDI Bunny was an idea I had ever since I started making music with Bea, but it didn't materialize until late 2022.

The idea behind MIDI Bunny wasn't simply a band between me and Bea, but a musical collective and a platform for any of our friends who needed it. I wanted every contributor to count as a "member," and anyone could make any kind of art project they wanted. The ultimate goal was to become a multi-media art collective, and that is still the goal.

For now though, we made an emo EP and called it "MIDI Bunny EP." This one was the breakthrough. It is still the most popular and notable project we've ever worked on. "ILY, Ramona" from this EP has 30,000 streams on Spotify now, which is more than any original song I've made has gotten. MIDI Bunny was blowing up, and we needed to pursue this more than anything.

From June 25th to August 25th of 2024, I went to New York and spent time at Bea's house. We met our friends, we went to Anthrocon, which we were actually invited to perform, and we did a live concert on the last day. Back at Bea's, we relentlessly worked on the MIDI Bunny full-length LP, which we had almost finished writing by the time I got there. We made the album, we put it out, and now we're in the present.

The future (?)

I don't know what the future holds for me yet. If you've been checking my social media, you'd know that I need to go serve in a mandatory conscription, because I'm South Korean. While I don't have to do army work, that also means my duration is longer, amounting to 3 years. I won't be able to work on a lot of music or most forms of artmaking, starting from 2025. But that is still in the future.

Before that happens, I intend to stream a lot more on my YouTube channel, because I really enjoy being a streamer. I also want to make a few minor side projects before I'm not allowed to make more music. And of course, even if I have to go do the draft, I'll still be able to make some music with my laptop. (I also get weekends off!)

That's my musical history so far! Thank you for reading. Stay happy!!!