Born in Jakarta, January 15th, 1998, Lindo Habie is an Indonesian music producer, composer, mixer, and a mastering engineer. At the age of 10, he began to play piano, and made it into his main hobby. Suffering from a massive boredom and his father’s departure, he constantly making music on his laptop, and starting in 2015, he independently wrote, composed, and produced many electronic instrumentals under the name “Lindo Habie“, a name he used for his own experimental instrumental-electronic production-based projects.
In this interview, Lindo Habie discusses the newest project, influences, and suriving as an independent musician in this globally connected, digitized world.
Full Q&A as well as links and a stream of the Imaginations EP are below.
https://soundcloud.com/lindohabie/sets/imaginations-ep
Let’s dive a little deeper into You, the artist and your music. What attracted you to this genre(s) or style(s)?
My first interest in music, especially electronic music and it’s sub-genres, started back at 2011, when I turned up my TV and there was David Guetta featuring Sia’s Titanium music video. It began to sparked up my ears, and it even pumped my heart so bad causing my head to jamming back and forth over and over. Still curious about the artist, I surfed the Internet and started to bought and listen to his songs. More and more electronic artists, and even DJs, ignited my interest in electronic music that year.
More insight was received when I was in 2012, I was watching Disney’s Wreck-it Ralph (Yes, I am big fan of Disney, and it’s soundtracks.) and at the end of the film, there was Owl City’s When Can I See You Again?. It was one. hell. of. a. beat. I was listening to it all day long and never got bored about it, and the moment I discovered all Owl City’s discography, I fell in love with all of them. The album “Ocean Eyes”, “All Things Bright and Beautiful” and “The Midsummer Station” were my favorites at the time because they had some songs I loved the most. Those dreamy synths filled with quirky lyrics had successfully made my ears melted.
In 2012-2013, two fantastic phenomenons called ‘Harlem Shake’ (Baauer – Harlem Shake) and ‘But first, let me take a selfie.’ (The Chainsmokers – #SELFIE) occured in my country. I was so obsessed in them I searched through the web and tried making instrumental covers of them, and ultimately failed. What a shame. They were not ‘sonically-right’ in my ears and decided to delete them from my laptop. Heck, I even shot some video for the ‘Harlem Shake’ phenomenon and it was hilarious. Both of them blew my mind completely and I started to become a fan of both Baauer and The Chainsmokers.
In the end of 2013, specifically, September 2013, my grandfather died because of old age, and my father, also died but because of an unknown reason.
It was that kind of event that would suddenly make you lifeless. Still strucked by those events, I’ve spent my days in my bedroom, thought about all things in life. “What is going on? What should I do next?”. Electronic music was the only one who can heal me at that time. The year 2013 and 2014 were also the golden age of electronic music, at least it was from my own perspective. Artists such as Calvin Harris, Avicii, Hardwell, and others rose to fame in those years, and I become a fan to every one of them. Their music gave me spirit, hope, craziness and happiness in life. And that’s what attracted me to electronic music. I’ll never forget what they did to me back in 2013.
How long have you been creating and sharing your music with the public?
1 year and a half, to be exact. From the year 2015, I decided to become a creative man. Instead of doing nothing, I started to compose and produce my own instrumental tracks in my laptop. It was also to get rid of my massive boredom at that time. For some tracks, the composition and production process took several weeks or months to complete. I also do the mastering and mixing proccess myself. Started in the mid of 2016, and until now I’m sharing my music through SoundCloud, and recently got independently signed with a distribution aggregator ‘Sugo Music Group’. That way I can distribute my music to anyone worldwide.
Who or what influences your playing and/or writing? Also, what motivates you to keep going?
Owl City, a.k.a. Adam Young (Thank God for creating this amazing person), and all electronic artists (and also DJs, some of them are mentioned above, gonna mention them again..) such as Calvin Harris, Matoma, Kygo, Steve Aoki, The Chainsmokers, Hardwell, Martin Garrix, et cetera. My motivation is my love and passion to electronic music. Music makes me to enjoy being a human, and be happy about it. Another motivation is for my own father and grandfather. I dedicate all my tracks for them. And, of course, to be listened by as many people as possible is one of my motivation too.
Were you trying to accomplish anything specific on this new project? Creatively or otherwise?
My new EP, Imaginations – EP contains what I’ve been trying to accomplish so far, something unique. I was trying to do different things, like, making tracks that have different and distinct genres from each other, and blend them all into one album. I could consider my tracks as having ‘experimental’ genres in it because I am also experimenting at my tracks with different beats and instrumentation. Creating an album that have tracks with multiple genres in it, that would be awesome.
I also a big fan of movie or motion picture soundtracks, got some inspirations from Michael Giacchino, Henry Jackman, Heitor Pereira, etc., so I would, maybe, incorporate them into my future releases next time..
What was the last song you listened to?
“I Started A Joke” by ConfidentialMX featuring Becky Hanson
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?
I prefer CDs. CDs are even better than MP3s (even the high-quality MP3s), I do buy CDs, and I’m going to promote my recent release with CDs, probably, if there’s enough budget though. But it also have slight disadvantages. For quality I choose CDs, but for portability, I prefer MP3s. I don’t like it when you have to travel with 30 CDs in your car. I can’t buy Vinyls anymore because there’s no vinyl player in my house.
How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?
Streaming services aren’t something a musician should totally worry about, but, well it’s 2016, and I prefer Spotify, anyway. Bandcamp and ReverbNation are nice places for an indie artist to distribute their projects and releases, I also put my music in there too. Both Apple Music and Spotify helps people and potential fans to discover hidden artists accross the world, and that’s a great and a better way to distribute and publish your works.
Other than the digital era overwhelming us with access to an abundance of music, what are one or two of the biggest challenges you face when trying to attract listeners to your music?
Promotion, I guess? That’s the first and that’s the hardest one. There’s like over millions of artists and musician that’s already exist in the world, and I have to promote my releases among these people in order to get noticed, and it’s so unbelievably hard. The second one is turning someone who listen to my music into fans. Surely any artist or musician should have something unique that will make them different from others.
Do you gig, tour or perform? Do you ever live stream? Where can music lovers see you live?
I am not a band, I am not a DJ, and since I’m considering myself an independent music producer and a music composer, I don’t think I’ll ever see myself performing in front of millions of people. But time will tell, I guess.
Where is the best place to connect with you online? Discover more of your music?
You can check out to these places to get the newest updates from me, the first best place would be my Website (http://lindohabie.wix.com/lindohabie), and then my Facebook profile (http://facebook.com/lindohabie), my Facebook page (http://facebook.com/lindohabiemusic) my Twitter profile (http://twitter.com/lindohabie98), my Instagram account (http://instagram.com/lindohabie98), and my YouTube channel (http://youtube.com/c/lindohabie).
You can also discover my music through iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Deezer, TIDAL, Google Play, etc.
Any last thoughts? Shout outs? Words of wisdom?
A powerful action begins with a powerful thought. Oh yeah, a big shout out to my mother and my little sister who always support me until the second I write this interview, and to all my family and my friends. You guys rock! And of course, I would be so freakingly happy if you read this interview. I hope you like and enjoy my music (or instrumentals), and you’ll become a fan. Sorry if my English is bad, I’m not a native speaker of it, but in case if you’re not understand to what I’m saying..
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Lindo.
