Unmasking don.a.a.ron: The Enigmatic Synth Voyager Rekindling Memories Of The ’80s

don.a.a.ron delivers a sound of vintage charm and electronic-sheathed romanticism (Credit: Masta Rudy)

Speckled with the dust from a VHS tape and awash with Shinjuku-neon filters, the sound of don.a.a.ron is a campy fantasy. A bedroom project that pines for the past, don.a.a.ron makes music that latches onto the electronic sentiments of the ‘80s. With reverb-buffed snares that snap and synths that glisten like a Roland Juno, all patched through a tunnel of wistful haziness not unlike the textures of vaporwave, don.a.a.ron’s unapologetic homage is authentic and earnest.  

Listening to his debut album, F A C T S, is reminiscent of opening a time capsule buried underneath heaps of neo-urban flotsam, revealing charming and preserved musical treasures within. It’s an adventurous collection of vintage-dipped synth-pop that fans of synthwave and city pop would geek out about. And despite adopting a mysterious persona with his masked mien, don.a.a.ron doesn’t shy away from embellishing his tracks with smoky, Vandross-like vocals.

In this interview, I chat with the mastermind behind the mask to talk about his old-world obsessions, his bittersweet lyricism, and Super Mario’s world maps.

don.a.a.ron channels nostalgia naturally and eloquently (Credit: Masta Rudy)

Hello there, Don. Your artistry is clearly a blast from the past, sonically and visually. Why are you so attracted to nostalgia?

I remember the tail end of the ’80s and the early ’90s growing up. It was a nice period for me as a child. Because when you were a kid, everything was exciting. Everything seemed more colourful, and moments seemed more powerful because they were new – from watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Batman (the 1989 Michael Keaton one) in the cinema to running around Toys R’ Us looking for the latest Ninja Turtles action figure, and hearing all this amazing music coming out of my cousin’s garage and on the radio. I soaked it all in, and it’s kind of a happy place for me when I watch or listen to things from that era.

I feel you. Can you tell us about your journey prior to arriving at your debut album, F A C T S?

When I formed my first band some 15-plus years ago, I wanted to make the music I am currently making. But I didn’t know how to start. So I went along with what everyone else wanted to do for several years. Eventually, I got sick of making music. Coincidentally, that was the time I fled the country to live in the UK for a while. I didn't take any instruments with me but I had my laptop. This was where I discovered Garageband for the first time.

And suddenly, I felt this surge of energy and inspiration to make music again. It was exciting for me. Because the sounds that I heard were closer to the things I wanted to do all those years ago. I started making these little silly tracks for fun. But little did I realise at the time that they were going to lead up to where I am right now musically. And then one day, two years ago, I told myself, “You know what? If you don’t put these songs out right now, you’re never going to do it”. And so I released my remix of Arctic Monkey’s “Do I Wanna Know?”. And the ball has been rolling ever since.

On to F A C T S itself, is there a theme or message behind it?

I wouldn’t say that there’s an underlying message that ties all the songs together. It’s really a collection of songs that I just wanted to put together and release as an album. However, there is a message behind the title “F A C T S”. We’re living in an era where everyone thinks they’ve got the facts on life. We’ve got people running around claiming facts to everything. There are of course a small number of facts that dictate our lives, but as human beings, we don’t really know all as much as we’d like to think otherwise.

Do you have a favourite track on the album?

That’s a tough one. I love them all, but I’ll have to go with “AMYGDALA”. That song wasn’t supposed to be on the album. The song that was meant to go on in the first place got shelved at the last minute. And so I dug into my archives and pulled out this tune I had written for fun back in 2009. If you had listened to that early version, you would have thought it was the kind of music you’d hear on the World Map in a Mario Brothers game. But I felt that I needed to put that in the album as a reminder of how I started this thing making little tunes on my laptop a decade ago. And how I always have to remind myself to keep fun as an important value in my music-making.

Hardly your typical album release (Credit: Masta Rudy)

Throwing convention out the window, you released the limited edition of the album on floppy disks. Conceptually, it’s brilliant. But logistically, was it a nightmare?

Oh, absolutely not. I managed to find the floppy disks and a disk reader online; got the labels printed too. I thought I’d take a different direction with my merchandise. Vinyl and cassettes are great, and I might do something for those formats one day. But for now, I’d like to do things my own way.

Fans of the vaporwave movement might gravitate towards your album. Are you a big devotee yourself?

I would like to say, though, that I don’t really consider my work to be purely vaporwave in essence. My music is definitely influenced by vaporwave, but there are a lot of other elements that go into my sound. It is definitely rooted in the ’80s, inspired by musicians like Yellow Magic Orchestra, Alexander O’Neal, Roxy Music, The S.O.S  Band and Prince. I try to incorporate bits and pieces of things like early ’90s house, hip-hop and trip-hop too. I guess the closest thing to vaporwave in my music is the track “HIMURA”. That one originally started off as a 120 BPM kind of song, but the vibe didn’t feel right. So then, I slowed it down in post-production and I was like, “Okay. Now we’re cooking”.

Like his influences, don.a.a.ron’s sounds have numerous layers (Credit: don.a.a.ron)

What’s your production, instrument and plug-in setup like? Are the guitars and trumpets in the album also played by you?

Some people don’t believe me when I tell them the whole thing was recorded on Garageband ’09 on the same Macbook Pro I’ve had the last 10 years. There were times when it was almost impossible to listen back to a song because the software would keep crashing. I used a lot of freeware soft synths, a couple of outboard synths, and a Telecaster. Simple things really. I come from the school of doing a lot with what I have. Got that from my grandmother. Bless her.

My friend Farhan Remy from MMLD played the trumpet on “NO ONE ELSE” and “LESS THAN 3”. I met him one night when he was playing at a bar in Clarke Quay. The dude lives and breathes music day and night. I’ve never seen anyone else take a solo like he can. Incredible.

Your album features collaborations with some big names in hip-hop like Mark Bonafide. How did you land that partnership?

Mark is one of my closest friends. We actually met on a Prince fan website back in 2004 or 2005 – yes, two dudes meeting on a fan forum. The first time we met was to exchange Prince bootlegs on CD. He wasn’t Mark Bonafide at that point yet, though. Years later, I found out he released his first album, The Bonafide Experience. We always spoke about making music together. Finally, in about 2013, we decided to work together musically and I haven't looked back. The first thing we wrote together was a song called “Some Girls” off Mark’s LV/RBL album. Right now, I’m working with him on his next full-length too.

The addition of his own quality vocals makes don.a.a.ron a standout producer (Credit: don.a.a.ron)

You boldly incorporate your own vocals in your album, and it pays off. What inspires your lyrics?

One of my biggest inspirations in lyric writing is Sting. The Synchronicity album by The Police, especially. I love the idea of how “Every Breath You Take” goes over people’s heads as a love song when it’s really about a stalker. I always love to write lyrics that can mean different things to different people. “LESS THAN 3” is an example of that. Everyone knows that “less than three” (<3) is a symbol for the heart. I decided to put a spin on that. The song is about online dating; in particular, how a lot of people seem to rank each other. “She’s an eight. He’s a five,” that sort of thing. The character in this story is telling this person that he or she is less than three for objectifying people that way.

It appears that you frequently hide your face behind a mask. Are you a low-key, shy individual?

As an everyday person that eats, drinks and sleeps? No. But as an artiste, I’d much prefer to release a work of art and then disappear into the nothingness to work on something else.

don.a.a.ron has gotten the attention of foreign music labels (Credit: Masta Rudy)

So what are you working on at the moment?

I have a compilation album that's coming out on a vaporwave label at the end of the year. It's going to be a bunch of remixes of songs from F A C T S, as well as some new ideas that I've been experimenting with. I might be playing a show or two as well. We'll see what happens.

And to end off, your marketing videos adopt vintage footage, especially from Japanese entertainment. Is Japanese culture a big thing for you?

I love the hell out of Japan. I’m learning more about the culture, though. I would also like to say that Singapore’s culture plays a big role in my art too. My music videos have featured Singapore Airlines stewardesses and local actresses.

For more information on don.a.a.ron, follow his official website. You can listen to his debut album, F A C T S, on Spotify.