Even though we’ve worked together on a few different music projects (never to be revealed) from 2017 onward, we did not take it seriously until mid 2018. Back then, both Emil and I went through chaotic times, not knowing what to do in our lives and hopping from one personal low to another. Additionally, both of us experienced some pretty bad heartbreak / toxic relationships that year, not making the situation any easier. Something had to change and therefore we bundled our energy to focus on something we loved, creating music. Our budget was low and our equipment was basic, not allowing for the best possible production quality. Additionally, we were not the most experienced in mixing and mastering, skills we’d still need to acquire in the following months and years. Consequently, we had to think strategically about how we could develop these skills while also gaining some traction; after all, we’ve been studying at the same time and appreciated any extra revenue we could make – tutoring gigs or allowance money are not a sustainable source of revenue and we wanted to be independent.
As a result, we focused on making instrumental lofi beats, a niche genre that experienced great growth at that time. In no time we wrote and recorded a few lofi songs, Taro La being the first one. Fun fact: Taro La doesn’t really mean anything, the name is derived from a YouTube video called “The Art of Landscape”. However, mixing and mastering took wayyyy longer than expected and we did not manage to release Taro La on Spotify before June 2019. Partially this was due to the fact that we did not work together on the task as Emil traveled around Los Angeles and the United States’ west coast while Louis was doing an internship in Manila.
We were incredibly stoked when we finally released our first lofi beats on streaming services. Within a short amount of time we received amazing support from some wonderful people, including twitch streamer Klean. Less than two months in we had more than 20’000 monthly listeners on Spotify, something we would have never imagined before. Driven by this excitement we released 14 lofi beats in total until December 2019 before we felt like it was time to move on and work in the genre we truly identify with.
