Good Vibes Festival 2017: An interview with Alextbh about Music, Fandoms and Staying Alive

Young heartbreak & heartthrob groove-maker, Alextbh, will be performing at Good Vibes Festival 2017 on 12 August at The Ranch, Gohtong Jaya, Genting Highlands alongside major local and international acts. He’s come a long way since his Soundcloud days and the release of his Alive EP. He’s collaborating with artistes from  other countries such as  from Indonesia to Sam Rui from Singapore and currently raking in  millions of plays on Spotify (Stoop So Low now has 2,009,448 plays). Recently, he released his latest single, Like That, which adds more variety to his discography as it sounds much brighter and more vibrant than his initial works.  He’s also about to reach a much bigger audience, with an Asia tour coming soon!

 

We got the chance to talk to the the man behind the Pink aesthetic himself. One cloudy day, in KLCC Park…

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Wanna introduce yourself?

Hi, I’m Alextbh. I’m with Zim right now. We’re at DOME KLCC . We’re next to the fountain but there are no fountain features. During raya there would be so many features, but they don’t give a shit about people after Raya.

How do you feel about performing at Good Vibes with an awesome lineup?

To share the stage with people like  and , that feels fucking crazy. Apparently, its Dua Li-pay, and not the Malay way of saying it. Like two cockroaches.

Are there any bands performing that you really love?

Definitely looking forward to & . I love their music. I spent all my years in university listening to them. Especially Snakehips. I love the collaborative nature of Snakehips bringing all these artistes that collaborate with them. Each time they release a single it’s fresh but fundamentally Snakehips. They’re on another league.

Does the name ‘Alextbh’ represent the honesty behind your music?

Yeah, I guess. *laughs* It’s not really that deep. One day, I decided to come up with a stage name, and that’s what I came up with. There isn’t a connotation. But I guess if anything it portrays me as an  honest individual, and you can hear that in my lyrics and music.

Do you go through a lot of stage names before you got to Alextbh?

I don’t really recall, but I was pretty sure I would’t want my own name. It just sounds weird. Like Alex Bong *laughs*

But that’s a marketable name too, no?

*laughs* Hahaha that could be! But I don’t foresee myself making reggae music.

I understand that you’re an engineering student from MMU, so how do you juggle that?

I no longer juggle that! *laughs* I finished my diploma and now I do nothing but music. I wish I would have said “Yeah, I definitely found a way to juggle between engineering and music” but f*** no”. When I was in school, I basically pushed all of the academia aside and focused solely on music. When my friends were studying at night, I was studying music. It kinda took a toll on my academic performance at the very end of the semester, which was when my career started, but at the same time it took a toll on my CGPA. I don’t really have sound advice for anyone who wants to juggle. I’m a very unilateral person, I focus on one thing at a time.

Do you come from a music background?

Yeah! I came from a very musical background. I never finished piano officially, but that really helped me out a lot on sound design and composition. Everything else is YouTube videos and tutorials.

How long did you have to learn from the tutorials until you decided that you were good enough to be an artist?

A culmination of years of being obsessed with watching YouTube tutorials and that eureka moment when I was heartbroken and I was like “f*** it”.

When did this happen?

October 2015. I would say every song were separate heartbreaks. I’m a hopeless romantic.

Did you experiment with other sounds before you decided on this R&B-heavy sound?

Previously, it’s very experimental and electronic, especially with the Alive EP. I was trying everything. But after that I felt the most comfortable with the R&B realm, when I started to strip everything down and started becoming more minimalist. For the Alive era, I felt like “Hey look, this sounds really cool, I’m gonna throw everything at it”. It’s a very maximalist album. But after Stoop So Low, I just kept it very simple. I make the lyrics and the vocals as the protruding part of my tracks.

Who are your biggest R&B influences?

A lot of people. Definitely, ., , , – I love all of them. They make calm, simple, bedtime kinda romantic songs. I just love that.

Since you’re new to the artist scene, relatively speaking, do you get used to performing in front of a large crowd?

I definitely love performing for people, I just feel like for now, I just need to deal with my anxiety. I remember when I was very young, I always try and pretend to perform in a big stage. It has always been a dream, with an air piano, air guitar, air drums everything. Now I’m actually doing it I realize that there are so many complexities behind an otherwise mundane-looking performance. There are so many things I have to do to maintain some sort of presence and I realized it’s really tough.

Most memorable performance for you?

Recently at an event at Gaslight Cafe. That was crazy! I was piss drunk while I was performing. I love the whole close knit thing. I love this rapper style kind of performance where there’s no stage, I’m not elevated and I’m just surrounded by people. I can just shove myself into the crowd – I love it.

Do you hate it when people don’t dance at your performance?

Back then I would say yes because it contributes a lot to my anxiety. When I see people not grooving to my song it exacerbates my anxiety. But I’ve come to terms that as a performer I have to keep figuring out how to make people going and make people feel more comfortable because if you’re nervous yourself the whole place would be very tense.

If you could choose like any artistes you would like to collaborate with who would it be?

I would choose to collaborate with Selena Gomez. *laughs* I’m just gonna be really blunt here; I think editing her vocals would be quiet the challenge and I’m always up for it. AND she’s a popstar, I can always ride her fame. She’s going to give me all the follows, all the listens and on top of that I get to challenge myself to learn how to edit herself.

How important do you think social media presence in terms of being a celebrity now?

Crazy important. It’s a huge part of what I do. It’s how people give me feedback, and it’s how I present myself to people before they meet me in person. It’s a platform to let people know who I am, what I do, my persona and what my message is like.

Are you trying to construct a celebrity identity for yourself through social media?

Not far. So far the things I post online is very quintessentially ‘me’. This is what I’m doing. I’m not gonna put a lot of thought in my celebrity image. This fanbase thing, all of this is an afterthought to me. I try to stay as honest as I can as an online persona so that people can relate to me in a sense.

You have a very strong presence within the local LGBT community when it comes to music. What do you think of the label ‘queer music’?

Honestly in the beginning, I never had the intention of to have the label ‘queer music’ attached onto it because I make music that expresses how I feel and I just happen to be gay. On the other hand, I do feel like I play an important role to cultivate a sense of empowerment in the LGBT community. I make music about being heartbroken and that transcends the community but it does embrace LGBT values. I do believe in keeping the message and momentum going.

How does it empower the community per se?

Being blunt and being honest in what I say and do. It gives a sense of comfort to people to start embracing the values and to start thinking “Oh he’s going through a heartbreak and he talks about gay people very nonchalantly”. I want people to start embracing that.

Do you see yourself breaking out of the heartbreak theme of your music?

*laughs* Absolutely. I’m not gonna write heartbreak songs forever. I’ve been heartbroken for quiet a while and I never intended to make all of my songs like that. I swear to God, this one time I was making music and I  told myself “stick to the major chords, the happy chords” and then the song I’m making is sad as f***.*laughs* I end up gravitating towards sadness.

Your latest single Like That is pretty bright and upbeat though?

I wrote it to break out of that bubble and work on sounding more happy. I wanted to resonate with people who are in love right now.

You mentioned that you wanted to focus more on releasing singles only instead of an album? Why is that?

Mostly because I don’t want to promise people an album. I mean, I’m still an independent artist and the future has so many doors for me so I don’t really know what I want to do, but it’s definitely going to lead up to a body of work that’s going to have all of these songs. I feel like I’m always inspired. After I release a song, I’m always motivated to write more music, so singles definitely help out a lot.

If you could choose someone to write a love song for you, who would it be?

Taylor Swift. I want to see what she would think of me. I want her to sing about me in a bad light with a music video where she rips pictures of me. I would be ecstatic.

Do you have any favourite songs or albums of all time?

Flume‘s original self-titled album. That album is the reason why I wanted to pirate Logic Pro. I can’t pick a single song from that album. To think about it, he’s basically a veteran producer and he makes songs in a confined space. Same with Mura Masa, they make songs in confined spaces like in their own bedroom and they produce tracks that resonate with so many people. I find that very empowering. They’re proof that you don’t have to be a ‘certified’ artist or producer to make it out there. I feel like a lot of artists these days they try and break the fourth wall and it’s very refreshing. They know what they want, they know what their aesthetic is like, and they know how to sell themselves as a package.

What would you comment about the music industry right now?

Pay us more. What the f*** are you guys doing? That’s all I have to say. I feel like a lot of upcoming artists have the intention to wanna make music as their career but at the same time they have to pay rent. From what I see from the industry, a lot of these new artists deserve so much more. Unfortunately, you can’t really do that because in this industry if you wanna make it big you need to suck it up and be resilient.

But the silver lining is that if you are resilient, you do get more in the future. It’s not just Malaysia, it’s the same thing in Hollywood as well. People start off writing scripts for free. It generally is discouraging and it’s something we have to work on.

Some people are saying that new local indie or R&B music are too influenced by the West. What would you say to that?

The West does influence me *laughs*. For me, genres and sounds transcend a demographic. You can take a sound and make it yours. Best example is Sam Rui. When you listen to her you know it’s R&B, but you also know it’s very Asian as well. She definitely captured the Asian R&B essence very well and I always praise her for that.

When we were doing songwriting for my song You, she gave me the idea of making it more Chinese-accented in the melody and I loved that idea. It’s very refreshing. It doesn’t go too far astray from the every day R&B song, but we try to add more music.

 

What’s your opinion ‘fanbase rivalry’ or ‘stan’ (extreme fans) culture?

Have you seen Korean stans? That is crazy. I won’t ever be ready for that *laughs*. But I love stans. I love how they devote a lot of their lives to a person they probably won’t ever meet.

Are you in any ‘stan’dom?

I stan and her family. I do stan some people, like Taylor Swift, but not as hard as some of my friends. They go to their shows, buy their albums and defend everything that they do – when it comes to stanning culture I don’t really mind that. But at the same time, I feel like they have to know that celebrities are mundane, everyday people, and sometimes we do f*** up, and when they do it’s okay to accept their mistakes. But if you defend their wrongdoings, and that’s when you see the problem surfaces. That’s when you have ruthless attacks that forgo ethical boundaries.

There’s also the anonymity behind that. You’re not really an individual, you hide behind a fan account and you think that you can say whatever you want

Beyond musical figures, do you have any heroes or heroines?

Lorde, because I believe she doesn’t make music, she makes art *laughs*. My mother is my heroine! Lemme just tell you something, I called her earlier this morning and she doesn’t know what I’m doing right now. She doesn’t know that I’m an artist, that I sing on stage and that I’m going to other places to sing on stage. I told her everything this morning and I ended it by saying “I’m sorry I didn’t grow up to be the engineer son you always wanted”. All she said in reply was “I don’t care, son. I can’t really force you in what you want, and if that’s what you love doing then just go ahead. I don’t see anything wrong with that”. I expected her to say otherwise but when she said that I just cried.

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Any message for your fans who are going to see you at Good Vibes?

*pauses* The word ‘fans’ always catches me off-guard. See you at Good Vibes, and I think I’m gonna dance for you guys. I’ve been practicing for a while. Can’t wait to show it. I’m so freaking stoked. Hopefully with my crush in the middle of the stage.

 

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Find out more about Good Vibes at www.goodvibesfestival.com and buy tickets. The lineup for this year is filled with amazing artists!