Q: You want to make dance music more accessible. Can you elaborate to our audience what that means?
RED MOTION: To be honest, making dance music more accessible is just a halfway point for the final purpose of my project, Red Motion Project, which is to make people love instrumental music. Talking about my experience in Japan, dance music is not regarded as popular or mainstream music, and it rarely charts in. I think this is because people who are not musicians tend to listen to the lyrics of the track, and many dance music tracks such as house and trance do not have them. They usually get confused and say “Where are the lyrics?” when they encounter instrumental music. Why they get confused is simple, they just don’t know that kind of music. I have felt I should let them know the joy of listening to instrumental music, and I thought producing dance music, especially EDM is the best way to do that because it is very popular these days, even though its peak has passed.
Q: Do you have any specific objective with “Don’t Matter to Me?”
RED MOTION: “Don’t Matter to Me” aims to let audiences hear and love the drop without lyrics. Like I said, not so many audiences love instrumental music, so I try not to remove lyrics completely right now. It also has a purpose to broaden my genre. Actually, it is my first time making a track like Future House which sounds similar to Dropgun, and I learned a lot from this genre. I really hope a lot of people love its sound, rhythm, and melody.
Q: How did you get into dance music?
RED MOTION: I fell in love with dance music when I was around 8 by getting an iPod nano from my dad. I listened to a lot of songs, such as, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, and Maroon 5, which were imported from his rock or metal tasted CDs. Then, I found a unique track inside of his collection, “Dreamscape,” by 009 Sound System. Yes, the old YouTube tutorial song. You must have heard it. I literally fell in love with that sound, and started listening to trance like Anjunabeats. During the EDM era, I was hooked on “I Want You To Know” by Zedd so hard, and it was my first time hearing an EDM-ish song. My first experience of EDM was close to pop, but songs that I listened to many times were instrumental ones like Tobu, K-391, and some NCS songs.
Q: What about “Don’t Matter to Me” are you most proud of?
RED MOTION: I would say it is the rhythm and the chords in the drop. I love how chords change rapidly with a groovy rhythm. I added a hard attack on the synths to make them stand out so that it gives more rhythm. I am also proud that this track is composed very simply. I used drums, bass, synth, and some vocals only, and it still sounds awesome.
Q: How have you kept you motivation and passion alive for dance music during the pandemic?
RED MOTION: I have never lost my motivation and passion for producing music during the pandemic, and it is not necessary for me to have ways to keep them because I love making songs. If I’m forced to say how not to lose motivation, it will be to challenge producing various genres. Trying unfamiliar genres inspires me a lot because I get new ideas which do not exist in my original genre. Thanks to the pandemic, I got a lot of time to produce and challenge various music, so I’m working on many projects right now. For example, I’m working on a music video for “Don’t Matter to Me” with some dancers. It has not been completed yet, but it will be within this month.
Interviewed by Sarah Scott
