Ahns finds music in Malaysia’s everyday landscapes

Every artiste has a different source of inspiration. For Kuala Lumpur-based singer-songwriter Ahns, it often begins with a place.

The roads he grew up around, the Malaysian weather and even the floodwater that once entered his childhood home all find their way into his music.

That is the heart of “Southeast Express”, Ahns’ 10-track debut album, to be released on Oct 16 after nearly a decade of writing and recording.

Ahns, who works as a designer, grew up moving between Gombak and Segambut, and later spent much of his adult life working in and around industrial zones. For Ahns, those places are more than settings for his songs – they are tools to express himself.

“I’m very drawn to landscapes because it allows me to show rather than tell and describe too much,” he told FMT Lifestyle.

“Many of the songs were written from the perspective of my younger self, but viewed through the eyes of the person I’ve become.”

A recurring theme is how deeply people’s lives can be shaped by forces beyond their control.

“Swimming”, one of three singles released ahead of the album, leans into atmospheric, indie-pop sonics that use the metaphor of tropical weather and water to capture feelings of emotional stagnation. The lyrics repeat the cycles of waiting for rain “to stop, to pour” to reflect the exhaustion of feeling stuck in a repetitive routine.

Ahns explained that the song draws on a childhood memory of growing up with his sister in Sri Kembangan, a flood-prone area.

“As kids, we would get really excited seeing a big pool of water entering the house,” he said.

Looking back, however, he realised that as children, they were unaware of the anxiety it caused the adults around them.

“That contrast is what I wanted to capture in the song. The music sounds almost apocalyptic, but the lyrics have this childlike quality.”

“Swimming” was written lyrically in 2019, and its melody completed the following year. Some songs on the album were written a decade ago and others much later, allowing the album to capture changes in the way he experienced the world.

Some material, like “Happy Mansion”, deals with heavier subjects including violence, but writing about them required him to rethink his approach to songwriting.

“I would just write it in the form of a journal, just streams of consciousness. Then I would clean it up, edit it and build a song around it,” he said.

Ahns’s music could broadly be described as alternative, with artistes such as Perfume Genius, St Vincent and Radiohead among his teenage influences.

“Over the years, I’ve started to resonate with artistes who are genre agnostic. They use whatever sounds serve the needs of the story they’re trying to tell, which is essentially what I do as well.”

He also created cohesion across the album by working with only guitar and ambient sounds.

As a designer, he treats music and visual art as parts of the same project. On stage, he pairs his music with self-directed footage gathered over time, offering a visual window into the world behind his songs.

At KL Fashion Week 2025, Ahns created the sound and backdrop visuals for designer Ezzati Amira’s show.

“If I had the budget to shoot music videos for all my songs, I would love to do that,” he said. This approach made one listener exclaim: “Wow, you make Malaysia look so pretty.”

“I take that as a huge compliment. There’s so much potential in translating Malaysia into art and sound. I’m excited to just keep doing that.”

Ahns will soon embark on a regional tour called the “Satellite” exchange, taking the album across five states before its release, sharing each stop with a local artiste.

Ultimately, “Southeast Express” finds meaning in the ordinary details of Malaysian life that often go unnoticed.

“Instead of always reaching out for something far and big, what if the really cool things are already happening around you or inside you? I hope that’s what people feel as well at the end of listening to the album,” Ahns said.

Watch Ahns’s music videos here and listen to his songs on Spotify.

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