Nabi Air, an electronic music duo, wrote their latest EP while traveling. They shared their reflections on how the countries they visited inspired their music.
“Nabi Air” means butterfly in Korean, bubbling up in Hebrew. It’s fitting for their music, which they describe as “dreamy, sentimental electropop…with sultry vocals.”
Like their name, their music is globally influenced.
Yoonha Jeong and Deric Cheng, the duo behind Nabi Air, have worked on their songs around the world, from South America to South Asia.
With their first EP, “If Dreams Are for Nighttime,” dropping today, I chatted with them about the behind-the-scenes of their production process, and how the places they’ve visited have shaped their music.
Costa Rica reminded them of how visual beauty can inspire music
Half a year after Nabi Air started, they took a trip to Costa Rica.
One evening, they caught the sunset at a nearby beach. There were vivid pink hues stretched across the sky, melting in the ocean’s horizon and reflected in the wet sand before their feet.
“The sky was full of different gradients. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” says Yoonha. “I didn’t want to blink because I didn’t want the image to leave me.”
It wasn’t just the beauty of the sunset that awed them, but the surreal atmosphere.
“We felt like kids, because we were surrounded by massive plants, vines you could climb up, and a few dogs came over later and played with us on the beach,” describes Deric. “Hermit crabs were crawling all around us. It felt like we were in an otherworldly, Dr. Seuss kind of place.”
The visuals were already imprinted in their minds, but they wanted to preserve their experience in a tangible form through music.
The two stayed up the entire night composing a draft of their song “Playa Grande,” which was named after the beach. Their goal was to capture the sense of majesty in nature.
In the song, you can hear the sounds of footsteps walking in the sand, and Yoonha whispering “wow” at the sight. It starts with tranquil and peaceful sounds, then gradually gets more intense to convey the grandeur they felt. It ends as a soft lullaby; the sun sets and the duo returns home.
It was an intimate experience, but through music, they were able to capture and share the vivid beauty that they witnessed.
Peru taught them to seek solitude and moments of reflection
A year after the Costa Rica trip, Nabi Air traveled to Peru.
They lived on Uros Floating Islands, a manmade housing plot in the middle of Lake Titicaca. The islands consist of layers of reeds, which the residents replenish every few months.
“It’s a strong communal structure where everyone gets together and helps to build—they just pick up their houses, add more reeds, and put the houses back on,” describes Deric.
Oftentimes, it felt like they were the only ones on the islands. The solitude and peacefulness enabled them to get into a reflective mindset. They spent their days listening to other artists they admired, soaking in their songs.
“Peru was perfect for making music because it’s a place that’s less about going out and meeting people, and more about just seeing different things we’ve never seen before,” says Yoonha.
For Nabi Air, this period of absorbing fresh influences gave them a solid foundation for their later music production.
India taught them to pay attention to the extremes of daily life
Deric took a solo trip to India, so that he could push his travel boundaries and experience a place of stark contrasts. “I knew I could use these extremes to help me figure out how to live and where I wanted to go with my music,” explains Deric.
He spent his time attending shows and meeting local musicians, including tabla and sitar players. He developed a dark hip hop beat that works well with Indian music, and asked the musicians to perform on top of the beat with their own instruments. It opened his eyes to how much more there is to rhythm than just the classical hip hop structure.
He also sampled sounds from daily life, sometimes recording hours at a time. One day, he encountered a scene of 50-60 children, humming and chanting inside a massive reverberating canyon.
When visiting the daily markets, he found that women would rap out the words of what they were selling. “They’d say things like ‘pineapple-pineapple-mango-pineapple-mango’ in a rhythm,” says Deric. “They were changing their flow, but somehow always on beat.”
When he asked the women about their musicality, they were surprised. They weren’t trying to make music, but rather just trying to get people to notice their products.
It was from these small slices of life that Deric collected the most interesting samples, which inspired the development of his musical taste.
Indonesia and Vietnam brought them back to the roots of why they wanted to create music
After releasing 3 initial songs, Nabi Air found themselves in a musical rut. They had written several promising drafts but hadn’t finished a song for a while. Eventually, they decided to leave their full-time jobs and travel around Southeast Asia to refocus on their music.
In Indonesia, they visited an island called Gili Air — its name has an uncanny resemblance to Nabi Air, which felt special to Yoonha. She loved walking around the streets, where locals hosted spontaneous jam sessions after work. “They weren’t doing it for any other reason besides just loving music,” reflects Yoonha.
In Vietnam, Yoonha was welcomed into a home in Sapa, because the host was a singer who loved spending time with musicians. At night, they gathered around the fire, playing ukulele and guitar and singing for hours.
“I’ve always loved going to shows in the States, but they usually came with full-blown production,” says Yoonha. “But when you’re on the road, you just bump into random moments, and they’re all super pure.”
For Yoonha, the most impactful part of her travels was meeting musicians who made music just for the sake of it. “They were amazing musicians but they didn’t put their music on the Internet or even record properly. They just performed for their friends,” she says.
In Hanoi, Deric loved discovering the local music scene, the micro-communities and pockets of people who all enjoy the same shows and songs. In one club, he encountered a duo who had beautiful, classically-trained voices, but spent their entire first song making meowing noises.
These moments all reminded Nabi Air of why they went into music in the first place, for the enjoyment of it, the experimentation, and the communities they discovered.
What it was like to balance a creative career while traveling
When they left for Southeast Asia, Nabi Air intentionally didn’t book a return flight, because they didn’t want to set a date to limit themselves. They just wanted to throw themselves into music and see where it led.
They loved the flexibility of being able to produce music in new cities, sometimes recording ideas for melodies while just walking around. They learned to work on-the-go, and even finished their single “Flavorless” on the top bunk of a 6-person room in a sleeper train.
They also felt like their focus on music helped them remember the trip more vividly. “It’s like synesthesia,” says Deric. “When you hear a sound, it reminds you of all the different flavors and feelings that you get from a period of time when you’re traveling.”
However, there were unexpected challenges as well. “We underestimated the full-time job of traveling,” reflects Yoonha. They were ambitious about their travels, and it was difficult to balance spontaneity and self-discipline.
They also found it difficult to record without a studio. In a hotel room, they got yelled at by a neighbor for singing the same verse over and over again. In another recording session, Yoonha had to sit inside a padded closet, with a bookshelf behind her and a sheet draped over her head, all set up in order to insulate her voice. “We’ve done all sorts of recordings in crazy contraptions,” says Deric. “And all the sounds sucked.”
Mostly, though, the duo felt anxiety about leaving their jobs and pursuing their dreams.
“People say it’s brave and inspiring for me to do this. But that’s only the first step,” says Yoonha. “After that, I’m constantly wondering am I good enough? Can I actually do this?”
“Music is challenging because there are always people who do it better in terms of beats, instrumentals, singing,” says Deric. “It’s a challenging process to love what you’re making while always pushing to be better, wanting it to be more than what it is.”
It was difficult to decide what opportunities to chase. “Once you start comparing yourself to the music you want to be and try to be creative about it, it’s hard to stay on one simple path,” says Deric. “There are so many directions to go and musical influences, and you just want to get better at all of them. It’s a lot more to deal with, emotionally, than a 9-to-5 job.”
These feelings are captured in their EP. Their song “Goalkeepers” reflects the self-doubt associated with pursuing their passions, as well as their realization that they were the only ones who could make their dreams into a reality. “Ebb and Flow” is about an anxiety attack and the intense emotional rollercoaster they faced as creatives, the waves of getting lost and then taking a step back and being able to breathe again.
In terms of the overall trip, Yoonha reflects: “Of course, traveling is not the way. It’s one way to do things, not the best or right way. But traveling did help me challenge my fundamental goals in music…it can be a really inspiring and introspective experience.”
The value of travel was found in stepping back, seeing things anew and bringing in fresh perspectives to their music.
Listen to their full EP here!
They’re on Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Youtube, and SoundCloud—anywhere you can find music.