isaacprease Is Riding the Momentum

The Singapore-based musician is juggling multiple projects as a soloist and member of quiet morning. Music, he says, “is the one thing I never lost interest in.”

Isaac Prease is the first to admit he has a lot going on. The evening we met for this interview, he had just wrapped a photo shoot with quiet morning, a band he formed with two friends. The band was in what he described as a “crunch period,” submitting an album for distribution, planning a second album, and working on a separate project that the band is receiving government support for.

There’s a good reason for this: quiet morning is beginning to gain traction on streaming. While they’ve yet to crack a smash hit, the group is building a steady base of listeners. It was selected for a partnership with Spotify Singapore, where they’re based, and it’s opened for Hongjoin, a popular Singaporean soloist. Seeing the fans in person, Isaac said, has changed everything for the group. He found a box of treats and gifts, including a personalized notebook, that a fan in Indonesia gave him. As he held it up, he laughed, still taken by surprise that he’s living a relatively normal life, but that he means so much to a listener.

“I understand where fans are coming from because I’m a huge fan of other artists too. I would want to give them gifts, go to their shows and scream their lyrics back at them,” he said tentatively. “I just never imagined people doing that for me.”

As quiet morning’s profile has grown, Isaac has begun to mull over the next direction for his solo music, where his name is stylized as isaacprease. While quiet morning can be strict about the music it creates, Isaac is more liberal with the creative direction he takes. He’s been known to hop between genres, starting with an interest in lo-fi rap nearly five years ago. His newest single, “HER PARTY,” released in June, follows a shift in Isaac’s sound that began with “5 hours,” a moody single released last year. “The production on those songs felt like a step up for me,” he said. “It was the first time I released something, listened back, and thought, ‘I like this. I would actually listen to my own song.’”

Isaac’s bar for whether he’s on the right track with music is simple: would he recommend the song to a friend? It’s been a few months since the release of “her party,” and he still considers it a good song, one he’d be happy to share with friends even if he didn’t make it. “I don’t get tired of it,” he added.

If this seems like a lot for an artist to handle, though, Isaac insists that the process is creatively refreshing, invigorating even. “It keeps me going. I love music, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop doing it,” he said. “Between writing, rehearsals and shows with the band, I’m basically eating and breathing music all the time.”

Isaac grew up jumping back and forth between Jakarta, Indonesia, and Perth, Australia.

Growing up in Jakarta and Perth, he said, “was probably the most relaxing time I ever had as a kid.” School was easy. The best part of his day was going to the skate park, where he’d stay until his dad, a product designer, was done researching at a library.

When his family moved to Singapore, he experienced his first real culture shock. “The moment I got into school, it was just like homework, assignments, tests, and like everybody was so used to it,” he said. “But I wasn't.”

Isaac remembers asking his mother once if he could learn to play piano, but she brushed the idea away. His mother, a pre-school teacher, was pragmatic. What would he do if he were a musician? He needed to study.

Perhaps because no one in his family understood why he should learn music, Isaac saved up his own money for piano lessons once he turned sixteen. “It’s quite an Asian stereotype for Asian kids to get put into violin or piano lessons,” Isaac said — but his family wasn’t like that. “I definitely wasn’t thinking about making music yet,” he told me. “I just wanted to play music.”

The piano became a springboard into production. He joined a production class in school and learned programs like Reaper, then FL Studio. Pretty soon, his life revolved around making music. Often, he’d make beats before he even ate breakfast. Sometimes, in school, he would put his earbuds in to make music – and completely ignore the teacher.

Isaac felt like he had found his calling. But after a year of grinding out beats, he realized that it would be hard to succeed without making a name for himself – especially in Singapore, where name recognition gets you the farthest. Isaac decided he had to try singing, thinking it would be the easiest way to make a name for himself. He bought a mic and started practicing. But there was one problem: “I couldn't sing, and my family hated it when I practiced."

Isaac learned how to use Auto-Tune to improve his vocals, but the fact remained: He still didn’t sound great. He was drawn, though, to rap and trap beats. Those were the most interesting to make, and the artists who inspired him most were rappers like Juice WRLD. “I wasn’t really tuned into the Singapore scene,” he said. 

But then he met the members of quiet morning.

If name recognition can take you far in Singapore, so does knowing the right people. Once Isaac turned eighteen, he began finding a circle of artists he could hang out with and eventually make music with. His first friend in the industry often hosted mixers at his studio apartment, where Isaac began to meet other musicians. After a few months of hanging out, the crew began collaborating.

“That’s when I really started to open my ears to other genres,” he remembered. He started looking beyond rap and found hyperpop. He liked the maximized, over-the-top sound the genre produced, and he began to love artists like Eric DOA, Glaive and brakence. “I just had tunnel vision on creating music like that,” he said.

Thinking back to that time, Isaac said with a laugh,  “I definitely listen to my old stuff sometimes, and I'm like, I cannot make this anymore. I just cannot.” But he can still hear how excited he was to try something, to emulate the artists he was inspired by – even if it’s embarrassing to listen to now. “The music definitely has that childish energy to it, which I find really endearing.”

Years later, when Isaac was hanging out with his friend Tylo one night, the connections all started to converge. Isaac remembers telling him,  “I want to create a collective. Do you want to make some sort of group where we bring people together and make music, like Brockhampton?”

They decided to bring Rae, a mutual friend who had already worked with Tylo, in on the idea. “It wasn't difficult to bring everyone together,” Isaac said. “We all shared the same vision, and Ray was really into it.”

quiet morning officially formed on July 2, 2025 and released its first single, “nice dress,” two days later. Originally, the members wanted quiet morning to function as a collective so they could bring in more people. But there was a clear difference in response between quiet morning as a collective and a boy band. It was disappointing to learn they couldn’t add more people, especially given how vast Singapore’s music scene is, but Isaac said, “but we saw that this format worked for us.”

In my opinion, their best work came a year later with the EP “under my skin.” The group hit its stride with its blend of alt-pop and R&B on tracks like “touch” and “angel in disguise.” The members have been persistent in curating a sound that is distinct for quiet morning, and “under my skin” is where that hard work pays off.

Isaac emphasized that the extra work isn’t a problem. This is a passion for the members, and it’s been exciting to see what's come out in just a year. “We all have responsibilities outside music, so we use our free time to work on the band,” he said. “It works better for us to work individually, bring our strongest ideas back to the group, and then build from there.”

Looking back at the past year, Isaac finds himself thinking, “How did we get here?” The band set several clear goals when they debuted, and he’s been surprised to see them hit so many marks. Sometimes, he said, “It feels like we manifested this while also believing in ourselves and doing the work.”

As things have ramped up for Isaac, he’s kept writing and creating his own music. “I genuinely enjoy writing,” he told me. “I’ll write anytime, anywhere.”

Lately, he’s started playing around with ideas for an EP. When he was a rookie musician, Isaac wasn’t interested in creating a cohesive project. He just wanted to make the music that interested him. But now, he’s trying to figure out what Isaacprease, the artist, can represent and sound like.

“There has never really been one theme across my solo discography because, for a long time, I wasn’t thinking about it that seriously,” he said. “I was just making music for fun. Now that it’s becoming more serious, I think that if I change my sound, I want there to be a reason and a bigger idea behind it.”

He credits his band’s manager as one reason he’s developed such a strong work ethic. In the early days when the band would complain that they didn’t have inspiration or that writing was difficult, their manager would say, “If you worked at a creative agency or somewhere that required you to write articles, what do you think your boss would say if you told them you had writer’s block?”

That reasoning made sense to Isaac. “Music is my passion, but at this point it’s also a job,” he said. “I have to find ways to work through writer’s block. There are ways to be creative even when you don’t feel creative.”

Isaac remembered how, as a child, he would often hyperfixate on new obsessions, something that he now realizes was ADHD. The disorder, he explained, has actually benefited his creativity. “My brain goes wherever it wants to go, so creating music doesn’t feel as mentally taxing in that way,” he said.

When he was younger, Isaac wanted to be so many things: a ventriloquist, a photographer, a magician. Eventually, though, he’d grow bored of them all and move on.

“Music was the one thing I hyperfixated on,” he recalled after a pause, “and never lost interest in.”