Global Arizona was an amazing time filled with great friends, good music, and one bad ass stage. I got the chance to sit down with Dabin after his set and talk about his upcoming tour with Illenium, his music and recent LP Two Hearts, and his life in general. Dabin is a genuine, kind-hearted guy who is all around talented when it comes to music and I am truly blessed to have gotten the opportunity to sit down and talk to him about his story.
Dabin has been making music all of his life for as long as he can remember with major thanks to his parents. “My parents put me in a lot of extracurricular activities to funnel out what I did and didn’t like but what clicked the most for me was music.” Dabin was always creating music with his friends but when he went to University it became harder and harder to be creative with his friends and he said, “I found electronic music and the idea of being able to produce on the go, by yourself, with just a pair of headphones was very enticing for me.” Electronic dance music has developed this reputation of sitting at a laptop and pressing play, but Dabin’s roots in music classes and instruments have carried over to help him to create that authentic instrumental sound. You can hear the heart and soul in his music which for him has been a “musical catharsis to connect music with whatever I am feeling.”
While Dabin had a passion for music it can always be hard to convince your friends and family that creating music is viable as a professional career. Dabin comes from a very traditional Asian family but he talked about the fact that it was his parents who pushed him into music in the first place which rooted his drive to make it a career. Despite their hesitations, “at the end of the day, your parents just want to see you succeed and the music industry is a hard industry, so they eventually came around and now they enjoy it.” It is true that almost anyone can create electronic music by themselves on a laptop, but Dabin’s style is authentic, often combining live instrument recordings, mesmerizing vocals, and emotional beats. His background with live instruments has led him to create a, “more emotionally driven, melodic sound” that has defined him as a melodic His introduction to electronic music began in University at 18 with the classic Skrillex, Botnek and Felix Cartel; but he soon started to gravitate towards the more house stylings of Nero, Gemini and Flux Pavilion. “It wasn’t until I heard Nero and Gemini that I realized that I wanted to make music like that.” Dabin talked about how now he tends to receive inspiration from musicians outside of the realm of EDM explaining that, “I gravitate towards Florence and the Machine and Muse, all these people with big cinematic sound.”
One of the coolest things about Dabin as an artist is the combination of his unique melodic sound and his presence on the usually heavy Kannibalen Record. Kannibalen is known for its heavier bass sounds featuring Snails, Black Tiger Sex Machine (BTSM), Kai Wachi, and Apashe. While all of them may be bass heavy producers, all of these artists create their own unique sounds making their music easily identifiable. The Kannibalen Family took Dabin in fairly young and they “emphasized that you can create whatever you want and if we believe in it we will release it. They’ve always been very supportive of creating music that fulfills something in you which has been amazing.” Earlier this year Dabin released the Two Hearts LP on Kannibalen Records which was and still is one of my favorite collections of music to this day.
Dabin talked about always wanting to do an LP but wanted to take his time with it to allow it to develop. The very first song released before the LP was announced was Hold, in which Dabin said, “That was where I started finding the sound that I like and the palate that I really like to utilize in my music.” As I talked to Dabin more about the Two Hearts LP, the more I truly started to understand and appreciate its depth. Dabin described the concept in a way that shows how deeply rooted in emotion and personal reflection his music is.
“I was going through some things in my personal life and Two Hearts represents how when two people get together they create this universe with each other that only they understand so it is the rise and fall of a universe that you have created with someone else. Each song represents stages throughout the relationship and it was an experience that I learned a lot from and I am excited to see what I can create next.”
On my way back to Tucson on Sunday night, I listened to the Two Hearts LP twice with attentive ears and knowing the story behind it made it a much more powerful and compelling story of love and turmoil, communicated through emotionally driven music. I would definitely encourage everyone to take the time and listen to the whole LP to gain a full appreciation of the story it tells.
While Dabin can’t talk too much about his upcoming projects, he did state that he has a remix coming out soon and is currently working on an EP that he is excited about. Illenium just released the Awake album and has launched a tour featuring Dabin as one of the supports. Dabin has toured as support for artists like BTSM but he is super excited to tour with “someone in my own realm of music.” I asked in general how he was feeling about the tour and Dabin replied, ”I’m super excited, Illenium is one of the first guys to have ever supported my music and he is just one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet.” The Awake Tour will be within Dabin’s own style and genre of EDM so it will give him a chance to “show everyone what I’m about.” Said the Sky also performed at Global Dance and is going to be one of the other supports for Illenium’s Awake Tour and while Dabin and Said the Sky have yet to work together on something Dabin admits that “we will be touring together and on the road together so who knows something might happen.”
At the end of the interview I asked Dabin if he had a message that he would like to share with his fans and he said this:
“I really appreciate when you can connect to my music on an emotional level and it has been my dream to kind of help people the way that music has helped me and when people reciprocate that feeling it means the world to me, more than playing any festival or show. I always want to make music that will touch someone and create that connection.”
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