LA Music Review | Art, stories and advice
Pop, relaxing, and full of light!
Hi Dud, welcome to LA Music Review! Tell us a little bit about you and your music.
Freshly squeezed on a hot summer day in the suburbs of Muntinlupa City, Philippines, I am Dud Lemon, an artist of Cre8MUSIC Records. I love sampling and synthesizers; recreating and reinterpreting what I listen to.
Start streaming “Solitude” here:
Congrats on the release! What was your inspiration when you were doing this project?
Released on February 28, 2023. I took directly from Jonah‘s music with my hobby of making beats from my friend’s casual recordings during the peak of the pandemic. I wanted to take it up a notch when sampling Jonah where I wanted Jonah’s songs and sounds to tell a different groove and story with the same spirit.
“Sparks“, my very 1st work sampling Jonah, was taking the optimistic message of “Candlelight” and visualizing my experience of finding light in my own tunnel by contrasting an under-the-weather verse section of chopped vocal samples that opens up to a mystical and uplifting chorus of reversed loops all taken from “Candlelight” with touches of synthesizers and rough drum beats that I tried to program to sound as live as possible.
For “Solitude”, the 2nd track, I pitched down and slowed chopped up samples of her song “Kapit Pa Rin” to the point that the guitar sounded so lonely. That sound actually inspired the rest of the arrangement. With the loneliness I felt, I had to complement it with something that sounded spiritual yet indigenous, like it was always something within us, keeping us company. So I tried messing around with a souvenir kalimba (thumb piano) that had very limited tones and the rest was having fun.
“Summer Antics” actually has more story to it. Besides being punny with Jonah’s “Semantics”, it’s a personal soundtrack to my first summer outing after nearly 2 years of living indoors for the majority. My summer break away from work starts as an awkward and goofy fun time but as I talk and hang out more with friends new and old, it becomes unexpectedly intimate. You forget about work, the past 2 years, and have this intense happiness for the present until it slowly fades away to you making my next vacation plan on the calendar. Jonah said that she doesn’t care about the meaning of needing and wanting, as long as she cares for someone. I was in that moment.
What is your vision for this project? What lessons would you like to impart with your audience?
Bedroom or DIY beats. I want my audience to know that listening is half of making music. The rest is expressing yourself with what you have and who you are.
And that is why I am a Dud Lemon, a faulty defect, because I want to feel comfortable with failing to have the courage to try something new.
What is your favorite part of this body of work?
My favorite part is always the end result of how it comes so far from what the original sample was.
For each track, I love how the mixing in “Sparks” keeps the upper frequencies of the drums of “Candlelight” audible. With how I chopped it up and reversed it so much, it actually sounds like sparks of sound.
I love how “Solitude” introduced me to playing the kalimba in 4 ways to get different sounds. Plucking the bars, knocking on the back, tapping the sides, and striking the back with my palm.
Lastly, I love the chord progression I came up with in “Summer Antics” to match the chaotic chops of Jonah’s vocals that completely changed the mood of the song midway.
Anything else we should know about? Future releases?
More remixes from Jonah will be released soon. I have definitely broadened my sound palette with the latest ones. I also plan to recreate with some of my fellow Cre8ors as well. Maybe a compilation.
I play along every now and then with Jonah Agas for live renditions of her tracks. Hope to meet and listen to more people real soon!
