New EP by An Honest Mistake’s Darren Teh is a personal tribute of love, grief and reflection
UNDER the name DVR3N, musician Darren Teh recently released Songs For My Father, a new EP dedicated to his late father on the first anniversary of his passing. His most personal project to date, the mini album was born from a process of grief, love and reflection.
“Throughout the writing process, all I could think of was him. The love, the sacrifice, the commitment to family – everything he instilled in us as men. I could not put it into words, so I let the music flow from the heart,” said Darren in the EP’s press statement.
More popularly known as the lead singer of the pop rock band An Honest Mistake, the apple apparently did not fall far from the tree, as Darren told theSun that his father also played in a band and was instrumental in steeping him and his brother in a rich music environment.
These memories, family stories and private moments that defined Darren’s relationship with his father George Teh were used as the basis for Songs For My Father’s five instrumental-only tracks. The longest and arguably main piece is the last track IGuessThisIsHowHeavenSoundsLike.
Constructed around actual recordings of his father while in the hospital, it is an intimate track for Darren, where in the first clip, his father says: “Darren, can you hear me? I think you and mum need to come to the hospital now. It is really important” in Hokkien, while the second was his father responding “All good” to a question asked by the musician.
In the actual song, both voice clips are only faintly discernible, placed behind Darren’s instrumental music. When asked why he did not compose it in a way that his father’s voice was more audible and not surrounded by a wall of sound, Darren explained that to him, he can always hear his father’s voice and that the accompanying music gave it further personal meaning.
“Hearing his voice again felt like he was still here. Every time I listen to the track, I feel like he is telling me that everything is fine, that everything is ‘all good’, wherever he may be now.”
As for why Songs For My Father was released as a DVR3N side project as opposed to through An Honest Mistake, the musician explained that he wanted full control over the narrative, including his creative choice to not sing or to experiment the way he does on IGuessThisIsHowHeavenSoundsLike.
For Darren, the absence of his father was difficult to put into words, so he verbalised his grief through the songwriting, building each piece as he went along and allowed himself to flow freely without constraints. He said it was therapeutic and at the end of the day, for a personal project such as this EP, maybe that is all that matters.
