By Jocelle Koh

Singaporean-Australian singer-songwriter and producer Charlie Lim has long since gained critical acclaim across the region, not just for his soulful vocal deliveries or for his genre-traversing musical innovations which have inspired generations of listeners and musicians in Singapore.

Instead, what underlies most of Lim’s creations has been a stunning attention to detail and meticulousness which gives voice to the most complex of emotions. A double-edged sword; while the artist’s perfectionist nature has given rise to some of the most forward-thinking and progressive musical creations regionwide, it has also encouraged inertia, rumination and perhaps countless sleepless nights on Charlie’s part.

Fifteen years after releasing his self-titled EP ‘Charlie Lim’ in 2011, Lim has continued to pour generously into each and every one of his works; but yet with his third LP DAYDREAM which has a penchant for softer, dreamier textures, something feels different here. Like he’s in the process of learning to let go.

In particular, there is a sense of letting go that was markedly less present in his previous equally ambitious albums TIME / SPACE and CHECK-HOOK. In many ways a musical chronicling of the turbulent journey of acknowledging ones’ limits, picking up the pieces and starting again, the album not only chronicles the process, but seems to embody Lim’s practice in motion.

We picked the introspective musician’s brain on the experiences and reflections that have culminated into the creation of his most hopeful, breathtaking and sonically softest body of work yet. 

It’s been eight years since you last released a full-length LP, although you’ve released many singles and EPs along the way. What made it feel like it was the right time to make DAYDREAM into an album?

I’ve been writing sporadically throughout the past few years since CHECK-HOOK, but a lot of those releases written in that time existed in their own worlds, and many of them were also collaborations or live albums as well. With DAYDREAM, I was working on music through a particularly difficult period of my life, and initially I didn’t realise that the songs I was making were connected. A lot of them were just stream-of-consciousness type jams during sessions; I suppose in their own way they were just individual attempts to understand whatever I was going through at the time.

The album revealed itself quite slowly. It was only after living with the songs for a while that I started being able to draw a thread between them. They were approaching similar questions from different angles. But looking back, it almost feels inevitable how it all came together, and perhaps a little self-prophetic.

Much of this album was conceptualised in between London and Singapore. How did these different environments shape the world of DAYDREAM?

I think being in London felt like I got to disappear a little.

A lot of the early writing happened with my friend Will (Goldsmith, aka sugi.wa), where we could spend entire days improvising, talking, going for walks, listening to music and following ideas without knowing whether any of it was going to become a song. There was a sense of distance from my normal life in Singapore that made it easier to play again and not think so much about outcomes. 

Coming back to Singapore was where I had to live with everything afterwards. A lot of the editing, recording, mixing and harder decisions happened back home, sometimes months or years after those original sessions. I also spent quite a bit of time in Melbourne working on it when I was visiting family. 

So I guess being in different places served quite different purposes. The UK gave the record a lot of its spontaneity and openness; Singapore and Melbourne gave it patience and perspective. It wasn’t really intentional, but I guess DAYDREAM needed both.

We’ve talked about this before, but your third album sounds like a lesson in letting go for you. Was that concept something that came through consciously during the creative process?

Not really…I think I spent a lot of that period doing the opposite, just trying desperately to hold onto things and getting carried away with fixations that were not good for me.

I think “letting go” is one of those phrases that sounds peaceful when we say it, but the reality you get from it is usually more disappointing. Sometimes it means accepting that you are not going to get the answers you want, and that you cannot change what has already happened. You can understand something intellectually and still be completely unable to release it emotionally.

I think the record gradually became about that tension. Not necessarily finding closure or peace or whatever, but recognising the limits of what you can control and deciding what you are going to do with yourself after that. A lot of the meaning became apparent to me only after the songs were written. 

I guess together with letting go comes a certain sonic lightness that I hear this time around. Was the lightness an intentional element on this album?

I like the word “lightness”, although I don’t think that was the intent per se. There was definitely a bit more confidence to not overdress things and trust that the main elements of what I had were enough to carry the songs. With my previous records I could get quite obsessed with arrangement and detail and just piling on more layers…“track-maxxing”, as you will. I think there’s always this instinct that if there was space available, something should occupy it. Even just adding effects like reverb and delay. Maybe it was part habit and part insecurity, or just trying to reference something we heard before that we think sounds good or “correct”. But I was in a different headspace, maybe I was growing out of that phase, so there was very little of that which I guess was liberating. Perhaps I felt more childlike in my approach to making music again, and was able to cast any preconceived notions aside, and had support from my collaborators to just go ahead and do what felt right.

I mean, there’s still a lot going on if you listen closely, so I wouldn’t necessarily call it a minimalist record. There is still a lot of shaping and blending and layering of textures. But I became much more conscious of creating room around things, and also leaving things more naked and upfront when they need to be.

You’ve worked closely with musical collaborators sugi.wa, Aneirin and Sarah Su on the compositions and production of this album. How do you feel they contributed musically and otherwise to the spirit of this album?

The thing I valued most was that none of them made me feel like I had to “perform” around them. There was enough trust for the music to be unfinished, messy or uncertain for quite a long time.

Will (sugi.wa) was hugely important in helping me rediscover a sense of play. We spent a lot of time improvising without necessarily trying to write songs, being in a state of play, and I remember not having that feeling for a long time. I became better at recognising an interesting accident and saying, “just leave that alone.” Working with him reminded me that you can create the conditions for something to happen without controlling exactly what happens.

Aneirin has the best work ethic; he cuts no corners and was just willing to try anything in order to translate the songs’ original intent and vision, and wasn’t afraid to redo things from scratch in order to get the best result. Especially during mixing, he understood that these songs did not need to be made bigger just because they could be. A lot of his work was about preserving intimacy and just having infinite patience. I hope it was a good learning journey for him too. 

Sarah (Su), whom I had released an EP with back in 2024 when we were both in London, happened to be in Melbourne when I was visiting family and they helped me with a couple of songs as well. They brought another kind of sensitivity to the process, and became a great springboard for lyrical ideas. 

On tracks such as Just When I Thought, elements that you’ve introduced in previous albums such as CHECK-HOOK come back to play but seem to come more naturally. Can you share more about the creative process for this album and how it was different from previous projects?

I guess I stopped worrying as much about whether things belonged together. I think I just gravitate to certain moods and textures more than others, though CHECK-HOOK was probably the first time I consciously tried to reconcile and experiment with some of those different parts of my musical vocabulary –post-dubstep, UK garage, alt-R&B, all of that.

With DAYDREAM, some of those references are still there, but I don’t think I was trying to demonstrate anything. If a song naturally wanted a breakbeat rhythm, I just followed it. If another wanted to be almost entirely piano and voice, that was fine too. 

A lot of the record began through improvisation rather than composition in the traditional sense. We would record long stretches of playing and then listen back for the moments where something felt alive. Sometimes the original performance stayed almost completely intact; although technically I’d also spent years pulling apart other things in the editing process. It’s strange because the process was simultaneously much freer but still just as meticulous.

You’ve always been somewhat of a perfectionist, something that came through in previous works. But there seems to be a certain acceptance of limitations in DAYDREAM. How did working on DAYDREAM feel different to when you were working on previous projects?

I think I am always going to struggle with perfectionism, but maybe I’ve just become more suspicious of what perfection means over time. I think we often associate refinement with improvement. You keep working on something and theoretically it should keep getting better. But music does not always behave that way. Sometimes you fix all the imperfections and realise you have also removed the thing that made the performance moving in the first place.

There are vocals and instrumental takes on this album that I could probably execute “better” now, but I would never replace them because I cannot reproduce whatever was happening emotionally in that particular moment. Maybe it’s a sentimental thing that I’ve attached to it, and maybe nobody would care if it was different, but who knows. But I guess I grew attached to what it represented.

I still obsess over tiny details for ridiculous amounts of time every now and then, but I think DAYDREAM became a good practice in recognising which imperfections should stay and how to protect what’s important.

I understand that this album was borne from a period of deep grief and reflection. Now that the album is done, do you feel it was a cathartic experience for processing what you were holding?

I am a little cautious about describing making music as therapy because I’m really not here to romanticise suffering. Therapy was therapy. Making a record was making a record.

The songs certainly gave me somewhere to put things that I did not know how to articulate yet, and writing them sometimes brought an enormous sense of release. But I also had songs that I could not finish because I had not actually understood what I was writing about.

A lot of the real work happened outside the studio. Therapy, difficult conversations, sitting with things I would rather have avoided, trying to take responsibility for certain decisions as best as I could.

Only then could I return to some of these songs and hear them differently.

So I do not know if DAYDREAM healed me. I think it became a record of someone changing. The person who finished the album is not quite the same person who started it, and I am grateful for that.

Do you have a particularly memorable song on this record for you? Can you tell us a little about the story behind that track?

Probably Nobody’s Home.

I’m usually a very slow writer, but it’s one of the few songs I have ever written that seemed to arrive almost completely formed. Will was messing around with these clarinet samples and I sat down at the piano, and then the whole thing just poured out in one sitting.

There was very little intellectualising involved. I was just following the song rather than constructing it.

I remember getting to the end and becoming completely overwhelmed. I walked to the corner of the room and started crying, and Will came over and gave me a hug. It felt like something had surfaced before I completely understood what it was.

Most of this album involved an enormous amount of editing and second-guessing, so Nobody’s Home is memorable precisely because it resisted all of that. It felt like the song already existed somewhere and I happened to stumble into it.

You’ve always been proficient at holding heaviness in your music and it’s something that you’ve become known for. With DAYDREAM it’s similar but also feels different at the same time. What do you hope that listeners can receive from this album?

I don’t know if I want to prescribe what somebody should receive from it. Once the music leaves you, people inevitably attach their own lives to it, and I think that is one of the beautiful things about making music. But I suppose I hope there is some sense of companionship in it. 

There is heaviness on this record, definitely, but I do not think DAYDREAM is ultimately about falling apart. For me it became more about what happens afterwards…when you have to get up, take responsibility for yourself and decide how you want to continue living, even if you didn’t get the resolution or redemption you wanted. There are no grand conclusions at the end of it. I have become much less interested in pretending I have those.

But I’d like to think that there is hope. Not necessarily the kind where everything suddenly makes sense, but the quieter kind where you accept that it might not, and you keep moving anyway.

If somebody can recognise themselves somewhere in that, then it really is such a blessing and privilege for me to be able to help be some sort of conduit. 

Charlie Lim’s third album ‘DAYDREAM’ is now available on all streaming platforms including Spotify and Apple Music. Head over to his bandcamp for limited vinyls, and follow him on Instagram for more updates.