by Selina Yang (@y_aniles)
Subsonic Eye melds dreamy riffs into heartwarming affirmations, while nourishing the hints of nature found amongst urban living. Although they skirt the edges of dream pop, with hints of shoegaze and jangle pop, they just want to be “guitar music”. The five-piece line up met with me outside a stereotypically American themed bar in San Francisco, riffing off each other’s one liners like the old school friends they are. Immediately after finishing the San Francisco gig, they packed their van to drive to the airport for Portland.
The tour for their latest album with Topshelf Records, All Around You, is their second time touring the United States, originally hailing from Singapore. Subsonic Eye is quickly establishing their international following, after receiving the familiarity of Singapore’s local music scene. On their first U.S. tour in 2022, they tracked down missing gear at the airport and traversed Yosemite forests. No matter where they are, they find inspiration in the intertwining cityscapes and greenery of Singapore’s highway-side forests, or federally zoned national parks frozen in time.
Nur Wahidah (vocals), Daniel Castro Borces (guitar), Jared Lim (guitar), Lucas Tee (drums), and Sam Venditti (bass) are hitting milestones. They’ve released four full length LPs, have played live on KEXP, and are slated to showcase at SXSW 2024. Since their first release in 2017, the band is already reflective on their earliest works. Between exasperated chuckles, they tease the older works for their past selves’ immaturity, while also being proud of how far they’ve grown. Subsonic Eye still has much more to give. While adjusting to the spotlight, Subsonic Eye takes it all with a wide-eyed grace. Through the band’s emphasis on nature, they recognize that the stakes are larger than themselves. In this interview, Subsonic Eye grapples with local vs. international fame, new experimentations from previous work, and how Singapore has shaped their themes.
credit: Christopher Sim
Selina: In previous interviews, you’ve made a lot of references to conspiracy theories. There was the 423 Hertz tuning on your previous album. You said the name “Subsonic Eye” came from the illuminati. Do you believe in conspiracy theories?
Borces: I change the story for the band name every time.
Wahidah: I believe in aliens.
Borces: I wouldn't call it a conspiracy theory, I would call it the truth. The 432 one I didn’t believe in, I just thought it was funny. If someone tried to learn the song, they can’t because it’s in a different frequency. Not rooted in any science, definitely bullshit and new age. I think there's some truth to some stuff. A little bit.
Selina: Then as of just today, what's the story behind the band name?
Borces: [To Wahidah] What do you want to make up? When I was like 15, I poked my eye at a subsonic speed. [Wahidah rolls her eyes]. I had to wear an eye patch for like two weeks.
Wahidah: It was karma.
Borces: After our O-level exams, the major exam you have to do in Singapore, I kind of lied to my parents. I used their money to watch a movie, and in the movie was a jump scare, so I poked my eye.
Selina: Why do you refer to your music as “guitar music”? Are you trying to separate yourselves from genre, or make a new one?
Borces: The songs are weaving in and out of many different genres, so I thought it was easier to just label it as “guitar music”. On our first two records – which are pretty bad – we called it dream pop and shoegaze. It wasn't really shoegaze, but even when we were beyond that sound, people were still calling us that kind of band. I thought it was misleading, so it was better to just call it guitar music. In that case, we don’t pigeonhole ourselves into one genre.
Selina: When you play shows in Southeast Asian versus America, do people dance differently?
Tee: In Singapore, I don't know if it's an age thing, but a lot of the kids are stage diving, having little push pits.
Wahidah: There's a lot of young kids also in Singapore shows, rather than our shows here, which are usually adults.
Borces: It feels a bit more unhinged over there. It’s a slow song, but then there’s a pit. Indonesia also.
Wahidah: Maybe because in Singapore it's really hot, so in the venue everyone's sweating. So it’s the same as an exercise. Over here, it’s pretty chill.
Borces: Over here, people just go up to you in full on conversations. In Singapore, that doesn’t happen as much, but maybe because everyone’s already our friend.
Selina: In Singapore’s music community, are artists revered, like how pop stars feel distant to us, or does the community feel local and communal?
Tee: Singapore, because it's so small, we know everyone. Chances are you’re going to be playing with the same bands most weekends.
Borces: We were playing shows every weekend to almost the same people. So now we're just a band there. If we're not playing a show, we're also watching. Because it's really so small. Singapore, you can drive around the whole place in like an hour.
Tee: There’s no mystique, no “can’t be touched” kind of thing.
Selina: How does international recognition feel different from local recognition?
Borces: It feels a bit more surreal, and with a bit of imposter syndrome. We’re just guys and gal. Last year after we played for KEXP, and when I was watching, it was almost like an AI deep fake, green screen, it didn't feel real. It's definitely a bit more surreal and pretty crazy. Playing here is doing different things to my brain, but playing in Singapore is just another weekend. But [internationally], we’re not here to fuck around.
Wahidah: The stakes are higher [internationally] because we literally had to come all the way here, with limited time.
Selina: For your two songs in Malay, previously you said that you choose to have those songs in Malay in order for them to feel more private, and close to you. What effect does that give to people who don't understand Malay listening to those songs?
Wahidah: Personally, writing and singing Malay songs feels different. Sometimes, when I struggle writing in English, the words will flex better in Malay, because there’s different ways to pronounce it that complement the music. Sometimes it hurts your head, and ends up with half Malay half English, because I don’t know what English words would fit here. For some reason, the Malay words fit better.
When I first wrote “Dijangka” and “Matahari,” I wanted it to be private, so only 10% of the listeners would understand it. Now, I want to write more Malaysian because that's literally my background and it would be nice to have more Malay songs.
Selina: In lyrics such as “Bug in Spring,” you use nature and love as metaphors for each other. Can you tell me more about how you developed that theme?
Wahidah: Being in nature taught me a lot of things about everything in life: love, life, whatever. I kind of approached everything with this ecological lens. Even love is reflected in nature, and nature is reflected in my life. They are parallel to each other.
Selina: Do you have any songs, whether from this last album or in general, that you're really proud of?
Lim: I like the new stuff we’re working on.
Borces: I’m proud of the song called “Fruitcake”. When we were working on it, it came out pretty smoothly, pretty natural.
Tee: I don't know how it ended up to be the way it is now. I couldn't tell you how it came about. I don't even know what the original demo sounds like anymore.
Borces: When everyone came together from the demo to the real song, it came out really smoothly. The first time we tried to play it, you could immediately tell people dug it.
Venditti: Really? I feel like the first few months of us playing “Fruitcake” or anything from Nature of Things, people… didn't get?.
Borces: Yeah, in a Singapore context. That was the one of the first few that people really seemed to like overseas.
Selina: When something experimental takes a while to grow on audiences, how do you avoid losing confidence if the reception isn’t what you expected?
Borces: You really never know until you play it, it may sound great on record, but sometimes it’s just not a good live song. That’s something we got better at. Especially in a tour setting, we’ll change the set list as the tour goes. In terms of an experimental shift in sound, I learned a lot from bands like Turnover and Title Fight. Especially with Turnover, an emo band, then they did the Peripheral Vision thing. It took a while to catch on, but it ended up that Peripheral Vision became the best thing they've done. That shift from emo to Peripheral Vision took a while, but it made them who they are now. I'm pretty confident that eventually people will like the shift in sound.
Selina: How did you order the songs in the new album? When I was listening through, I noticed juxtapositions between songs about cities and machinery, versus songs more about introspection.
Borces: We wrote it first, with a bunch of songs – how do we put the pieces together? I had the general concept in mind of keeping the pacing different.
Wahidah: I didn't even realize this, but it's nice that “Machine” and “Yearning” are beside each other. Because, the album is about nature in a city, realizing that it's everywhere you go. So I guess it's nice that it's moving in and out, so you realize nature is everywhere around you, even in the city.
Selina: Can you tell me more about the concept of “nature in the city”?
Wahidah: We always think of ‘a day out’, where we have to go to a park to feel this feeling of “I'm in this beautiful place experiencing something beautiful”. Then, we come back to the city and then we're like “Wow, this sucks, blah, blah, blah”. But, there's themes in nature that reflect how we communicate and organize ourselves. There are the same things happening in the forest: trees, tiny little weed plants, made into paper and stuff. It’s everywhere. You have to realize how to appreciate that in the city, instead of having to go to a different place to appreciate it. It’s kind of coping, really. Coping in a city with not much nature.
Selina: In that case, how do you cope?
Wahidah: You cope by adopting this urban idea.
Borces: The alternative is, what? I have to go out and hunt? No wi-fi, make shelter out of dirt, craft items?
Wahidah: [sarcastically] I appreciate the progress mankind has reached.
Borces: We might also be too machine-leaning, and become like Wall-E. There has to be a compromise.
Tee: I feel like Singapore is also the perfect middle ground, because there are trees everywhere. Along the highway, it's just forest. Where there are no buildings, there are always trees.
Wahidah: And there’s a park, five minutes from everywhere you're at.
Tee: In Singapore, nature is easily overlooked because it's everywhere.
Selina: Isn’t there that one airport in Singapore with that big fake waterfall? With your perspective on nature, how do you feel about it? On the outside it’s beautiful, but at the same time it’s super artificial.
Wahidah: I don’t really care for it.
Borces: It’s cool to look at while we eat, when we come back to Singapore.
Wahidah: I don’t get it, it doesn’t even look like a waterfall.
Borces: Nothing makes sense, we have animatronic dinosaurs outside the airport. There's this pavement where you can walk into the airport, and beside the pavement, it's just dinosaurs. When you google pictures of the airport, they never show you what's outside. From the inside, it looks like glass. There's dinosaurs outside.