Part 2

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

Definitely. Writing the music feels like I’m painting, whereas nailing down the details of production, sound design and mixing feels like a work of embroidery rather than sculpting.

The closest material approximation I can accord to the process is that of ‘kasut manek’ - a traditional artform of beading that’s from my Peranakan culture. It’s extremely detailed and laborious work that requires lots of attention and care, yet at the same time must be done with the overall picture in mind.

Every individual bead must be threaded one by one, by hand. Picking up the bead with the needle, letting the bead slip down the thread, and then finally piercing the fabric at a very precise location to fasten the bead - everything plays out the way I deal with sound.

At the same time, how I create my sonic palettes is through a lot of experimentation. It feels like swatching colours on a surface to see which ones would come together nicely; sometimes some sounds work beautifully together, other times not (and I’ve made a lot of really weird music through that process). I’m interested in experimenting with sounds that people might not typically associate together.

For example, “braided cords” was a reimagining of a ’standard’ breaks track that might use one of the common break samples (amen break, funky drummer etc.), where I instead used a drum break from a 70s Brazilian jazz record, and combined that with orchestral samples of a glockenspiel and plucked strings.

Getting to a point where those sounds all made sense together did take quite a lot of work and experimentation, but I would say I’m really happy with the result.

How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?
 
Extremely important.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds?
 
Listening to the sound of the forest in the land I grew up in is extremely powerful for me.  

That’s not to say I don’t connect with natural environments and their sounds elsewhere - I went camping a few months ago in Northumberland, UK, and heard the most stunning dawn chorus in the morning that was really moving. However, I think there’s something subliminal about hearing the forest on home soil - my body almost affirms to itself that yes, this is where I’m from.

And of course, the actual sound of the forest / natural environments are tangibly different because they are different ecosystems and species - anyone who has lived in Singapore (or Southeast Asia) reading this would definitely recognise the call of the Asian Koel.

Many animals communicate through sound. Based either on experience or intuition, do you feel as though interspecies communication is possible and important? Is there a creative element to it, would you say?

I don’t think there could be anything more important than learning to listen to the non-human world around us. There’s so much literature and discourse out there that talks about the importance of de-centering the Anthropocenic way of seeing the world, and I think there’s a huge case to be made for enabling that through sound.

While I’m not a practicing Taoist, I think there are a lot of ideas from its philosophies which I’m deeply influenced by, particularly in the idea of a universal binding force that flows through everything all the same.

Going back to the idea of kasut manek, I think of myself when making my music as but one bead in the grander fabric of universal experience, just as are things like mountains, rocks, the sky, the trees and water.
 
Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?

Rest your ears, take breaks, always bring earplugs to spaces where you know you’ll be exposed to loud sounds.
 
We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

To me, I’m particularly fascinated by the timing of sounds, especially in terms of when they occur during the day.

So rather than thinking of how sound surrounds me every second of the day, what’s more personally meaningful is the when - especially when they punctuate time at rhythmic instances, and silence in between is what allows these timed sounds to truly breathe.

For example, I find comfort in the chime of my rice cooker sounding in the evening as an anticipatory signal to the end of the day, and dinner with my family. Or, how bird calls in the evening never sound the same as they do at dawn. The sound of frogs at midnight in the big storm drain near my home in Singapore, especially so during the monsoon months.

Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time.” — Jean-Michel Basquiat
 
Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?
 
A lot more layered.
 
For interested readers, what are books, websites, articles or other sources of information you recommend for them to educate themselves on the topic?

I think there is something to be said about the danger of over-intellectualising topics like sound and music - but perhaps this has more to do with me and how I move through the world. I’m someone that tends to generally over-intellectualise everything; while I can be really interested in understanding how things work, it does often seem like some of that magic in not quite knowing something cerebrally is lost.

Music and sound is thus a sacred sphere for me, one of those last untouched frontiers, where I experience it very phenomenologically, rather than through an intellectualised, logical understanding of it.

For me, what truly deepens and enriches my knowledge and understanding of sound and music is reading books and accessing ideas beyond those that have to do specifically just with sound.

Going back to interspecies communication, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass is one of my favourite books ever and a title that I’m always recommending to anyone.

Another favourite of mine is Milan Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being - the book has almost little to do with sound, but does explore the social, emotional and political meanings of music in a really interesting way. Beyond that, it’s a beautifully written book and one that mirrors how I see the world a lot and sound in it; as a dance between dark and light.