“I love that aspect of creating a whole other atmosphere and world that you can just go into”

When Tran actually sat down in Ableton to produce a track, it took her a week before finally dropping it on Soundcloud. A few days later, she happened to hear the track on Berlin Community Radio by the DJ Renaissance Man, credited as “???” because she didn’t name the tracks correctly. “It was super exciting,” Tran says. “It was then I thought, is this how it feels to be noticed?” Soon, the Stockholm-based record label Staycore approached her to work with them on a record. She said yes, but not now. “They kept asking, ‘Do you still want to do something?’ and I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I’m not ready.” For a while, Tran struggled with expectations. As a DJ, she was known for making upbeat R&B mixes, and she felt the pressure to release dance tracks for her debut. Though privately, in her bedroom, she started challenging herself and pushing her music in the opposite direction: experimenting with sounds that were in contrast to what she was known for, like calm and melodic nature-inspired soundscapes. It took her two years before she eventually turned those experimentations into Poise (2017), her debut EP. The result is a 20 minute long mesmerizing soundscape that evokes lush but plastic greens, that aligns seamlessly with the cover art which Tran designed herself. The music plays easily on loop, as if in a video game. Like nightlife, video games serve as an alternate reality for Tran, where she can be free to be herself, or try something new entirely.

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Currently, Tran is at work on a musical concept that combines her production along with 3D visuals that imagines an avatar of herself as the protagonist of a video game. “I love that aspect of creating a whole other atmosphere and world that you can just go into,” she says. Tran explains her process as having a lot of “trial and error.” As a visual artist, she begins with an image that evokes a feeling. “I love when music is atmospherical, when you can really picture something. That’s my approach to music. If I can have an image and make the music for that, it’s really interesting for me.” She might have a melody in her head, which she’ll quickly sing into an iPhone recording to remember it. Then when she gets into the studio, she’ll play with sounds to match the right mood. “I can’t really come up with a concept too well musically and then follow it. It’s like I have a rough idea of a feel that I want to create.”

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