Q&A: Taeo's Practice of Mindful Digestion and Articulation: How the Translation of Real Life Into Art is the Most Powerful Expression
WRITING MUSIC THAT’S AIMED AT CONNECTION — Taeo wants to make sure they’re saying what they want to say. On the morning of May 12, Taeo and I sat down via Zoom to talk about music, art, and everything in between. They just got back from a trip to Portugal and Paris so readjusting to Toronto has taken some time. We both agreed that we become different versions of ourselves in different countries; Taeo's Europe version was dressed in mainly button-ups and linens.
Their EP, When the Past Was Around, is an ambient dream sequence containing four songs that were all made at home during the pandemic. “I just made it off my phone,” Taeo explained. “I didn't have any equipment or money, but I thought I [could] probably do it on my phone because Steve Lacy did it on his phone — that was my idea. I just kept working on it. I knew it was gonna be a challenge but I kind of liked the challenge of it all.”
The album has a feel of a hazy day at the beach, your eyes covered by a hat that just barely lets in the sun rays; your skin is warm, and off in the distance your friends are playing in the water, their voices ricocheting off each other. Taeo's voice serenades you as they sing, “so warm between those lips, like crispy cream sweet, or maybe tangerines,” conjuring up images of the sweets you may have packed in a cooler just off to the side of your blanket.
Throughout our conversation, Taeo often said they felt a sense of fear when wanting to try new artistic endeavors, but realized that through introspection and facing those fears you can grow into the artist you want to be, whatever that might mean to you. The outcome is something beautiful, the music they've created hitting delicate points of vulnerability and transcending the listening experience into something more potent and intimate than ever.
Read below to learn more about Taeo’s process and what they’ve learned during their musical journey so far.
LUNA: As a musician, you go by Taeo. How did you get into writing and playing music, and why did you decide to actually pursue it?
TAEO: You wanna know the story story?
LUNA: Yeah, tell me your music story!
TAEO: I started writing music in maybe… grade nine? My music and writing style has changed a lot, obviously, it's grown with me, but I just started writing a lot of poetry. It was so cringe — childish stuff — but for its time it was good. I was listening to a lot of scene music so you can imagine the type of lyrics I was coming up with. Never Shout Never was the person I wanted to be. I went to Wexford, a music school for the arts — I applied in hopes of just getting better at playing guitar, so I auditioned, they liked me, but they said, “Your guitar playing is already pretty good — there's not much to teach you so we're gonna put you in vocals.” I never thought of myself as a singer — I knew I kinda wanted to … the first person that comes to mind is Nick Jonas.
LUNA: You saw him and were like, "I want to be him!"
TAEO: I want to be Nick Jonas! But that's also why I started playing guitar — I just saw people playing guitar and was like, “I wanna do that, that looks cool.” So they put me in vocals; my vocal teacher liked me, they gave me a lot of encouragement — that's kind of all it really was: music. I was in musical theater with a drama focus so I would sing and everything but there was no intention in it. I wanted to be an actor at the time — that's why I went to art school. While I was in school I was like, “Oh, I don't want to play guitar anymore, I just want to act.” And I still wrote — I would just write in my notes in my journal, little songs, and not really record them; I would just play them and sing them. I finished school [and] I tried to go into business school but I dropped out.
LUNA: Interesting twist.
TAEO: Right. I just wanted to make money, and then I realized I don't care about money. After that my brother was like, “Yo” … I'm telling the long story, you're like, “Where is the music?”
LUNA: No, please do [continue].
TAEO: My brother was like, “Yo”; he had a camera and stuff — he said he could use his camera because he got a new one so he was just like, “Don’t break it.” I started taking pictures nonstop of me and my friends hanging out and then eventually it turned into a career, so I [have been] doing photography since I was like 20/21. I’m 24 now. I was still doing music: at that point, I was writing songs and recording them in my voice notes. Every now and then I'd put something on SoundCloud but I was so shy. I had no confidence in it becoming anything or [feeling] like anyone's going to listen to it. But I knew the development was there — throughout high school and university I knew I was liking this more but I still didn't have the confidence to think I could actually become a musician. My friend Colin goes by Nilo Blues now — once I became closer with him we would just have fun in the studio. We went to my friend Vincent's house and made songs, and that was kind of the first spark. We were just having fun. I'd say I had an idea and we'd just build songs; three kids just having fun.
LUNA: Like a jam sesh?
TAEO: Yeah, I was really into dream pop at that time. Again, very young-sounding, but that was my first take. Even with that, I made a song I was proud of at the time but I still didn't think it would be anything. Fast forward [and] everyone knew me as a photographer; people would get close to me and I would open up to certain people, whether that was my partner at the time or people who knew I could sing, and they would ask me questions, so I would play stuff for them. It was cool — people liked it — so I would send the songs to people [with] no intention of putting [them] out but just like, “Here, you can listen to it ’cause you like it.”
And then the pandemic happened and I couldn't do photography anymore. I was in a lull period, like most of us were. I got to the point where I was thinking about music a lot. My friend Colin/Nilo, before the pandemic was like, “Yo, I got to get you in the studio,” and I was always making up excuses to not go because I didn't want to embarrass myself or something. I finally got to the point where I was all alone; I was going through a lot: a breakup, my grandmother passing away from COVID. A lot of introspection, a lot of thought. I have always had a love-hate relationship with photography, which a lot of photographers go through, especially with the way social media works, and I was really reevaluating what kind of artist I wanted to be in general — not just in photography. I really wanted to be my own artist. I want to be able to create stuff for myself because that's what I’m most passionate about: expressing myself, in a sense. I was listening to a playlist once on Apple Music — when I used Apple Music; now I use Spotify. I don't know what playlist it was but it was just really boring songs, over and over and over. And I was thinking to myself, “I'm listening to a whole playlist of boring music, why am I not just trying to make music?” These people put music out — it's pop music, anyone could essentially get a deal if a record label wants to give it to them, why aren't I at least trying? I know I want to do this, deep down. It's a weird moment because I [couldn’t] really connect with anyone to make music [then], but I liked the idea of doing it myself. So that thought happens and I wasn't doing commission-based photography so I said, “I think it's time.” But I still didn't do it. I was like, “How do I do this now? Should I try and hit up Colin to go to the studio?” But it was the pandemic … it was the thick of it — the first November of that year.
LUNA: 2020?
TAEO: Yeah, it's been a minute.
LUNA: A little seed was planted.
TAEO: Yeah, that confidence was starting, like, “Oh yeah, I can do this.” A big thing for me, when it comes to my own art, is not that I'm a perfectionist, but that I'm very particular. Even in the way I speak I want to make sure I'm saying what I want to say, expressing how I want to feel. And that was intimidating when it comes to music because I've never really done this, like actually. So that seed was planted. Like I said, I was going through a breakup, and through the entire relationship I didn't really write music, weirdly enough. The way I thought about it is maybe I couldn't find the words at the time, like what I wanted to say in the relationship. I started playing guitar more in quarantine. I wrote two songs that aren't on the EP — no one [has] heard them yet but one of them is probably one of my favorite songs I've written.
LUNA: Do you find yourself being protective over the really good songs, the ones you're most proud of? Like you want to keep them to yourself a bit.
TAEO: In terms of the EP that is out right now, When the Past Was Around, people would offer me studio time to work on it, but I was so protective because I was like, “This might be the only music I ever make. “
LUNA: Yeah, that's scary.
TAEO: Like, “I don't know if I can make any more music,” other than these four songs, so I wanted it to be what it should be. And it wasn't until I wrote this first song that I was like, “Woah, I can do this.” The spark — the flame — got even bigger. I can write music. I can do this until I want to stop doing it. I didn't even work on that song — I made the demo for it, an it sounded good, the demo itself. It also gave me no pressure, in a sense, because at the end of the day, I made it on my phone, so if it sounds shit I can use that as an excuse. As I kept going and I kept developing it more, I didn't want to have to use that as an excuse. Let me learn how to mix, at least the basics, so that I can make them sound better. That's the origin of how I became Taeo, I guess. In terms of protection, I feel like every artist that makes music … they get antsy. I show the songs to people because I need that for myself or I'll go crazy. I need someone to hear it, and it teaches me patience. These songs deserve to be heard, so I want to make sure that they're heard.
LUNA: Would you consider yourself just an artist, generally? With artists, they can have a key focus, but I find, so much of the time, that they are into so many things and can go so many directions. Would you say you have one interest, or would you just consider yourself an artist overall?
TAEO: That was one of the things I was thinking about in quarantine, like, “Who am I as an artist?” I had to really get over the idea that photography was all I could do. That helped me better my relationship with photography because I would go through crises like, "Fuck, if I'm not a photographer, what am I, who am I?” I have no eggs in any other baskets other than art right now. So what the fuck do I do?” When I decided that I could do music, it bettered my relationship with photography because I started doing more photography for myself instead of for clients, and it made me fall in love with it all over again. Whenever people ask me — especially when I just started and had no music out at the time — “What do you do? Who are you?” I would get nervous. In my head I'm like, “What the fuck do I say?” and when I say something like, “Oh, I'm a photographer but I do this right now,” or it was like, “I guess I do this,” it was never something confident. It wasn't until one of my friends, Michelle … really hit me when … he asked what I do and I said, “Oh I guess I’m a musician?” and he said “You guess?” and I said, “Sorry, I am a musician.” That really hit me because … I thought for sure I was kidding myself. In general, nowadays I say I’m a musician or recording artist. I don't know how long I'll do music. I'm just gonna do it when I feel like it — [that] sorta thing. But that was also kind of fun because, when you're a musician, you think, “How am I gonna brand myself?” I talked to my cousin who manages people in Scarborough and he was like, “Oh, you gotta do this,” and that was giving me anxiety. God, I don't want to do any of that.
LUNA: There are all these checklists of what you have to have, who you have to be.
TAEO: Yeah, I was like, I want to try and be my type of artist still — just like how I was thinking about it with photography. A big reason why I wanted to do music was that I have the privilege of having visual arts aspects — this would be giving me the opportunity to not only work with people to learn but to do my own visual stuff, to at least conceptualize. Using my brain or creativity without even having the pressure of actually having to produce everything myself.
LUNA: With music, so much of it is the promotion or music videos, and if you are a visual artist you can combine the two and have your own original self, right?
TAEO: It’s really cool. Originally [with] this first project I wanted to be incredibly community-based. I was going to re-record the music and everything because I had my resources — the only thing I can do is just include people and have them be a part of this project in whatever way they believe in it. I couldn't do that musically because of the pandemic. For a whole year, I went through a whole back and forth of “do I re-record it, do I try and polish it up as demos?” Eventually, I landed on it just being demos. But for the visual aspect, I want it to be community-driven. I had ideas but I have a friend from BC that I met; I said, “I love your art, here's my idea, what can we do?” and then we had this collab. Whoever wants to work with me, let's do something cool on the visual aspect. Even though I do want to be included, I struggled with this because I am a visual person — yes, I do want to do all this stuff, but sometimes I want to kick back. I did all the music, let someone else have their fun as well.
LUNA: You said you started off more with lyrics and poetry. Now considering yourself a musical artist, do you think your process is more based on sound or is it more lyrical?
TAEO: It's funny, I've had this question come up this week a couple of times but I haven't been able to pinpoint the answer. Lyrics and the instrumentation, I think are very much hand in hand.
LUNA: They grow together.
TAEO: On the first project, I kinda wrote music and lyrics separately, weirdly enough. A lot of it was … I came up with guitar parts, and wrote the lyrics a year later, lyrics totally out of context to the guitar part.
LUNA: Separate entities.
TAEO: Yeah, “Honeydew” was the first song I wrote for the first project. I wrote the guitar for it [and] I knew it was something, that it represented me in some form, this guitar part. This is what I’ve been working towards, the feeling of what I’ve been trying to get when I write. But I had no idea what to say, no idea what melodies I wanted on it. And with a lot of the music, it is just feeling. Recently, I've been learning to write with other people because a lot of the time I write by myself. I [was writing] with my friends Steph or Colin, and they’d pitch something, they'd give me lyrics … and they weren’t bad lyrics or anything but I was just like, “AhH, it's not hitting me.”
LUNA: You don't get that emotional feeling with it.
TAEO: Yeah, I'll go with my gut. It is emotion — my music, in its essence, is very emotional, I would say. Whatever emotion you're supposed to feel, that's why the first project is very intimate. I did musically and lyrically pour my heart out on it so it is very much [from the] gut. “Is this what im trying to say?” It's like when you are preparing to have an important conversation and I’m like, “‘Kay, that's not what I meant to say” and with music and writing, I can re-do it and then I can get it right. I know deep down what I'm feeling, I just don't necessarily know how to articulate it or what words come out. In general, it's hand in hand. When I write now, it's a lot of jamming, and I just start singing something and if it sticks that time then it sticks, and if not I just come back to it. It does go back and forth. One song I wrote simply because it was summer, I was on my balcony, and I would just play music and there was this one progression I really liked. I didn’t necessarily have the intention of writing a song, but I liked it, and I would play it whenever my roommate was reading because I was like, “Oh, this is a nice song to read to.”
LUNA: Almost atmospheric.
TAEO: What’s a song I want to write that I can read and vibe on a beach to or something. It's not about that at all, the song. I built the energy off that. I build off a lot — lyrics or sound.
LUNA: You were talking about the feeling of the music, and one of my questions is who or what inspires you? I find that a lot of the time with writing, it's an experience that you have that you want to write down. What are the things in your life that inspire you to make music that you want to add to your songs?
TAEO: I'm a very visual person. A lot of the time it's just the things I see. I guess it's just living life. In terms of what inspires me that I want to put in my music, I want to make memories. I want to vibe with my friends; a lot of it is visual cues. For the first project, the idea I had behind it as I was developing it more [was] to get that feeling I wanted… I started conceptualizing the whole thing as a dream sequence. That's why I have weird alternative noises throughout all of it. Even in the first song, “Lull,” I have weird synths, like whale noises almost. Especially with the lyric, “I feel like I’m drowning,” I wanted it to feel like a dream sequence where I'm drowning and I’m in a pool of water, and by the time you get to the second song, I'm in the air.
LUNA: The whole thing is an experience.
TAEO: That just makes sense in my brain. I'm trying to make just songs and singles, but I work a lot better with the idea of a bigger picture. I've gotten ideas from just reading. That sounds so basic, but I read this one book, “If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things” and it's just someone describing scenes of people interacting. They might be mundane, but they describe it very beautifully, and that's an approach I have towards writing music — how can I describe something? Some of my favorite lyrics and songs just find the right words. We all think the same thoughts and we all experience the same things but they put it in words that you know when you listen to something and it's like, "This is exactly how I'm feeling or what I'm thinking, how did they do that?"
LUNA: Yeah, like I've always felt that but I've never been able to articulate it.
TAEO: I feel like I've had that before. During quarantine, I found myself giving my friends advice because I was going through some mindfulness wave.
LUNA: You're out of that wave now?
TAEO: No, I'm more chill — I was high on it in the best way possible. I was shining a bright light. It kinda stuck with art and music. I'd tell people who make art these things, and my friend told me, “Dom, you say these things in a way that I need to hear it,” even though she already knew all these things. Your brain can get cluttered. So in terms of music and art and everything and sharing it, it's like you have the privilege to say things that people can gravitate towards, I'm forgetting the word. Not gravitate, there's a better word for it. It starts with a C. I'll yell it out at one point. But yeah, having the privilege to say those things. Wing recently told this about me. I'm not really an artist where I can just come up with shit. You know how there are some people, like Tim Burton, where it's like, “How the fuck did you come up with that?" I'm more so of an artist and a person where I see, I hear, I feel, I take it in, and then what does that mean inside of me? And then I take it back out.
LUNA: You're sort of translating real life.
TAEO: Yeah, I'd say a big theme in my life is just articulation. Digestion and articulation. Because I love perspective. I don't care what it is, I love hearing what people have to say, how people live, and what things are. I like to have an opinion and see how it makes me feel, and that way I can talk to people better. I can understand myself better. That's what I think it is, in terms of life, just trying to understand stuff. That's what I put into my music. Because all this is, is just me trying to understand myself, and then I release it because maybe it could help someone else, in a sense.
LUNA: So what's next?
TAEO: This first project is very intimate, it's kind of one experience between me and whoever is listening. Now I want to make something me and my friends can just vibe to. Take everything I learned and use a different lens. In my head, it's, “What do I see when I look through the lens of R&B and rock?” That's kind of the base genre I'm doing the second project off. I'm writing this album to push myself. What am I gonna have fun performing? I've been thinking about … the live performance experience, or the listening experience now.
LUNA: We're running out of time, wanna do a little rapid fire?
TAEO: Yeah.
LUNA: Would you rather be a frog or a gecko?
TAEO: Geckos are those little cute guys? I think I gotta go with frog though — I'd want to be a big frog.
LUNA: Good name for a cat?
TAEO: My cat's name is Disco.
LUNA: Second choice for your band or stage name?
TAEO: Just my name. I was gonna go with Dominic Matteo or just Dominic.
LUNA: A song you want to cover?
TAEO: I was just listening to Prince, so "Why You Gotta Treat Me So Bad."
LUNA: Dream collab?
TAEO: So many — I'd say, right now, Kaytranada or River Tiber.
LUNA: 15 seconds to shout anything at your 12-year-old self, what would you say?
TAEO: Dance more!
After that, our 40 minutes were up. It's almost prophetic how the last words to hit the air were a resounding “dance more,” evocative of the transformative powers of letting go and letting yourself fully experience something, which is perhaps the boiling point of Taeos music: experiencing life and all its joys and mundanity.
Check out Taeo's Demo EP, When the Past Was Around, and keep an eye out for future endeavors!
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