Name: Lim Orion
Nationality: British-Malaysian-Chinese
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, producer
Recent event: Lim Orion has just announced dates for her upcoming UK tour. Catch her live here:
Jan 26th, The Cavendish Arms, Stockwell
Feb 16th, Claypath Deli, Durham
Feb 17th, The Common Room, Newcastle
Feb 21st, Thee Gladstone Arms, Borough
Feb 23rd, The Taphouse, Bristol
Feb 24th, St Matthews Church, Brighton
Recommendations: Italo Calvino – Cosmicomics; Beverly Glenn Copeland - Keyboard Fantasies

If you enjoyed this interview with Lim Orion and would like to find out more about her music, visit her on Instagram, and Facebook.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

I started jotting my thoughts down pretty early - I always loved the shape of language, and rhyming!

I took myself to Birmingham at about 15 and bought myself an unbranded electric guitar! Pearly and blue and probably didn’t sound so great but I loved it. I got a Jimi Hendrix guitar tab book which was really quite ambitious but taught myself ‘Little Wing’ and ‘Bold As Love’ extremely slowly.



When I was a teenager I fell for the harmonies and hooks of pop like Eternal, Janet Jackson, and Madonna - I think this love of strong female musicians came from my earliest memories of music singing harmonies with my mum and sister on long car journeys! And it’s stuck with me ever since - growing up in a strong female household became part of my story without really realising it.

From there I was mostly on a musical diet of Björk, Ani Difranco and PJ Harvey - getting into protest songs, non mainstream vocal styles and structures, and ways of of almost striking the guitar with acrylic nails taped on - they awoke my passion for breaking the rules as I knew them!



I guess I feel that music brings people together and it can really voice an unspoken feeling. Music can make you feel expressed but also transported - it's amazing to me how we can tap into the stories, raw feelings and worlds of other people and they feel like our own. Music lets my feelings breathe!

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

Wow, well I also somehow link music and images but not so directly as that - a big part of what I like to make is painted! So even though it’s the music that I focus on, I often create a painting to further describe a lyric or song.

Music’s feeling either implies a colour and texture (dark or bright, jagged or fluid), or it simply makes me wanna dance - this can be dancing with my whole body or my hand dancing around a page!

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

I think I am only just now getting close to my sound which has been a long time in the making even though it’s getting more minimal! It’s strange - the gigging world and the way the industry likes to categorise stuff always made me try to be easily describable! But since discovering my love of ambient music, it has allowed me to blur the edges of what I do and just make what I make.

The ambient scene is magic in that way because so much is free - tempo, rhythm, song structure, language, what a voice should do, how an instrument should be played are all open! And you can really feel this reflected in the people who make it too - the ambient scene is full of non-judgemental, really funny, open-minded individuals!

So I’m really happy that even though I am still a songwriter I am dipping a toe into that world now!

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

As I’ve said I think growing up in a household of women has always found its way into my music choices - I fell in love with PJ and Ani for the passion and I guess I was looking for ways to express myself and the mainstream ways didn’t quite work for me! But then I totally copied their style for a long while before I found my own which is ironic haha!

In recent years, and during the pandemic I have been more drawn to my ancestry - my Malaysian Chinese side of the family. I guess at a certain point we notice that we are made of where we came from as well as our own experiences and I really wanted to learn more about and tune into that! There’s a lot of strong folklore, superstitions, storytelling and astrology that had made its way into my music and the way I see the world and I think some of this comes from the characters on the Malay side of my family!

This also inspired me to change my name to the family name ‘Lim’ and use a lucky constellation ‘Orion’. My mum and Aunty were really happy when I used an old photo of them as kids in their birthplace of Ipoh as my album cover.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

Mythology, dreams, love and abstracted expression!

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

Ooh that’s a tricky one - I naturally veer towards all things of the past - I’m a nostalgia fiend, and I love the sound of old recordings. I also naturally love all things imperfect - the little mistakes on a recording, the way a drummer speeds up or slows down a bit, accidental looking blobs of paint etc … these things to me sound more human or real! Things that are too regulated, or perfect to me feel closer to machine-made instead of felt.

I know it’s not as simple as this because technology is useful in so many ways, but I feel like technology sometimes gets in the way of what is felt between people or in the moment. So I tend to be quite put off by anything too modern!

Having said that, now that I am listening to a lot more electronic, synthesised and ambient music I am interested in how these technologies are used to be more loose and expressive! So maybe I am a complete contradiction now!

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

Deciding to learn the sax a couple of years ago was a big development for me! I wasn’t sure if I would be able to learn it but I was listening to more and more sax-led music and always felt so drawn to its sound! I loved hearing it in Ethiopian jazz recordings like the music of Mulatu Astetke because it was played joyfully and fluidly - it was much more like a vocal to my ears and much more playful and textural than the serious or suave kinds of modern jazz I had heard before.



I’m so happy I decided to play this instrument because I love implying the feeling of the song with the tone of the sax, and I have this totally different brushstroke to improvise and sort of sing with, without words! It’s really freeing from the literal!

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

A cup of tea in bed looking out of my big window where there is a lot of sky and trees to see - I like peaceful mornings or a small walk to let my head come together or air out naturally!

And then afternoons if I’m lucky enough to have the day off I might twiddle the guitar, write or paint, then evenings I like to socialise - either seeing live music or mostly over food!

Lately I’ve been enjoying cooking for people. Sharing some food and a few laughs with friends is pretty much my favourite thing to do!

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

The last solo recording I released, ‘Cosmic Salt’, was almost an attempt to tap into my own personal mythology!



Writing down dreams or surreal stories I imagined; for example I went to visit the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, I imagined that it was once a man who wished to be immortal and then was turned in this church where he had only the tourists for company - this became the song and video for ‘Gold Plated’.

Because I sometimes paint my songs, I was tempted to try this process in reverse - so I bought postcards from art gallery gift shops and tried writing lyrics in response to the pictures, and these also became songs. I was very lucky to be offered free recording time at an amazing London studio but the deal was that it would be offered to me at very short notice so this kind of shaped it.

The whole album was in the spirit of spontaneity! - what can be made without too much overthinking or processing. Some songs were even written in a day and recorded that evening.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

I love both! They are very different and if you manage to get in the zone, both feel very rare and special!

With collaboration the music can feel like a great conversation - like you synchronise and the combination can only happen if you surrender a little bit of control and release a little of yourself to the other person and vice versa - so there’s a lot of trust there. When I create something by myself - I am trying to release myself to myself! Not to stand in my own way and to trust myself! And in some ways that is more difficult.

I like the excercise of collaborating because the other musicians’ influences bring in strands of music that haven’t come from me! It can be so new and so exciting with flavours you don’t usually cook with! The excercise of trying to effectively express something alone is interesting too - figuring out what it is you really want to say and managing to say it can be so empowering.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

This is a big question I sometimes puzzle over - what do people get from music!

I think we have these deep places in ourselves that only music can reach. Music brings us together to dance, to share a moment, to allow ourselves to be moved, to sing along, harmonise, to understand a lyric.

Even when we make or listen to music by ourselves I think it’s about sharing because we understand or are understood.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

Every song I have written has helped me to understand these questions in my own world. I think there’s something magic about giving your story a voice! It turns something trapped into energy somehow and the fact that it can then have a similar effect on the listener is just incredible to me!

I think music makes us very fortunate to be a sort of therapy and community in one!

So many occasions that other people’s music has moved me – way, way too many to describe! The first time I heard Beach Boys ‘God Only Knows’ broke and then mended my heart!



Listening to Ani Difranco’s ‘Shameless’ made me feel an unapologetic rush!



PJ Harvey's ‘Kamikaze’ made me run down the road feeling fearless! … the list goes on!



How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?

Oh I don’t know much about science, and I’m self taught with music. But I find it interesting that when we feel pain, we make a sound to deal with that pain - we scream, or groan or say ow! I heard that there is some research which shows how it calms our nervous systems when we sing together!

I believe that everything in the universe vibrates so there are sacred rhythms and vibrations. The tide is rhythmic, and sounds are a wave shape … So I guess what I believe is that there is a lot more happening than just hearing or making a piece of music!

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Hmmm I feel like you might accidentally express yourself in the day to day whether it’s how slowly you make your breakfast if you’re tired or how you walk when you’re excited, or how you talk when you’re in love or whatever …

But yes, I think, to me it’s very different! Music is a deliberate connection with your deeper self!

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it is able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

I think sound can unite and heal us on some level - and some part of this may be scientific! Certain notes also resonate in different areas of the body so perhaps the meaning is implied depending on where we feel it!

But generally I think that art provokes our emotion in a way that is more unexplainable and mysterious which is why I love it!