Lyle Kam’s Catharsis Chasing Recollections

After six years of releasing music, Kam wondered how he could outdo himself. The result is a new EP, out next week, titled re:collections. “Every song could be a single,” he says in this interview.

“This feels more holistic,” Kam says, “because I’ve had more time to go through all the stages of the creative process.

Lyle Kam prefers to never do the same thing twice. 

Since he first began releasing music in 2019, his desire has always been to find something new to challenge himself with. In the beginning, this meant teaching himself how to play music and then, how to produce, how to sing or write lyrics. 

“The whole reason that I started doing music is because I was bored,” he told me recently in an interview from Toronto, where he is based. After--school boredom, he explained, is what led him to try his hand at music. “It was kind of like a chance encounter that allowed me to pick music, but I really just picked up a guitar and thought, ‘Well, this is fun.’” 

Since then, Kam has speedily released three EPs and a dense output of singles, all of which showcase his skill in producing dreamy pop music. Next week, he will release his latest project re:collections, which contains several singles from the past year and a handful of new songs. 

This stands as Kam’s first independent release since parting ways with his indie label. “I was working on their deadline,” he said, which often resulted in him overthinking the music that was released. Was it the best that he could do? What if he had been given more time to marinate on the music he had made? 

Re:collection is a course correction from the grind. Now, given the freedom to experiment and sit on music, Kam spent a year making the project’s music.”I had a lot of time to fully produce and mix everything to how I wanted it. I think every song on that project feels good,” he said. “All of the songs could be a single if I wanted them to be.” 

Kam recorded and considered over fifty songs for this EP, and tested several demos on TikTok to see what would appeal the most to his audience. The benefit, he said, is that he loves every single track. “This feels more holistic because I’ve had more time to go through all the stages of the creative process,” he continued. ”With this current project, I would play every song and think every one is a great song.”

To be sure, re:collections contains some of Kam’s best work. Listen, for example, to “mutual” and hear how Kam’s soft, smooth production sounds fit for a Sofia Coppola soundtrack. Another highlight, “all we do is talk” aligns with the chill pop made by Lauve or Ed Sheeran. Lately I’m struck by the newest single “rush”, a fast paced track about the dopamine of falling in love.

Kam is intentional about this soundscape. “Producing is such an underrated process of a song,” he told me, explaining that "everything is centered around the music being chill.” 

Kam didn’t grow up in a musical family, but he started playing instruments at a young age. “A guitar is the first thing I picked up and I just fiddled around with it. Then I progressed and thought, ‘Oh, this is fun. What can I do next? Finger-style guitar? Cool. What can I do next?’

This is where boredom benefitted Kam – he was never satisfied to stick with one hobby. “It all just led to being an artist,” he surmised, “and doing what I’ve never done before.”

Living in Toronto, where there is a thriving independent music scene, is also a plus for a young artist. “Toronto has such a diverse musical landscape and there's such a niche for other musical artists,” he said. “Once you’re in, it’s very easy to build relationships with other people.”

Although, he admitted, the city’s music community can sometimes feel cliquey – especially to outsiders.”Sometimes it feels like getting into those spaces is impossible unless you know people who are already in there,” he said. “A lot of the time it's like, how do you get yourself into those spaces? That is the hard part. But it is very rewarding once you’re in. You can build a community that inspires you.” 

While his hometown’s community has been instrumental in supporting Kam, he learned music almost entirely on his own. He learned to play guitar by watching YouTube videos – The Beatles’ “Yesterday” was the first song he learned. From there, he began to teach himself new chords and sought out new songs to learn. 

He also used music as a way to process and express his emotions. “There’s no time in the day to think about what happened or how you felt,” he explained. So, he used writing as the time to take inventory of his life. Eventually, he began to release his music to streaming services. 

Kam maintains that he didn’t “properly” begin releasing music until 2019. “That’s when I felt like I’m actually making music,” he said. “Before 2019, I was releasing music and putting it on Spotify. But at that time, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was releasing songs that I thought were bangers,” he remembered,” But hey weren’t really finding people.”

Kam wondered if the problem was that he “didn’t have the chops” to succeed yet. He knew he needed to experiment more, push himself more and see what he could create if he gained more knowledge about production. The disconnect, he explained, was that “you have the taste for it but you don’t have the experience. So only when you start to dabble more and practice it matches up later.” 

He continued, “In 2018, I was in that bottom area. I would think that the songs are good? But there's a lot of things that I wasn’t aware of.” He combatted this feeling of imposter syndrome by releasing a song every month in 2019. “I worked on trying to get my production to sound good.”

That year, in October, the single “In Love” began to blow up on TikTok. Bolstered by the reception, Kam gathered the rest of the songs he had worked on and released them as an EP, his first, titled Dogfight. 

“From there,” he said, “it was following the steps of I released this, how can I promote it, and how can I keep making things that feel good. How can I always one-up myself?” 

Re:collection comes at a natural next progression for Kam. “I’m very conscious about the songs I’m making right now,” he told me. “From beginning to end, this EP was made entirely by me.”

So, how does Lam plan to reinvent again? “i’m trying to get myself out of my comfort zone and put myself in rooms where I’m working with other people,” he said. Perhaps he’s learned all he can on his own, and as Kam sees it, his music would likely benefit from other ideas. 

Today, Kam is working as a full-time artist. His goal, he said, is to make the music his job. What sustains him even when the money is tight is his reason for becoming an artist. “For me, I make music because I want to give back to the world something that is a reflection of my thoughts,” he said. He wants those thoughts “to help other people.” 

For now, what really motivates Kam is the high he gets from creating music. “I feel the most excitement and alive when I’m working on something that just hits in the right way to trigger the brain," he said. Re:collection is the latest example of that kind of catharsis chasing high. 

But there is something else, too, that is motivating Kam these days, and that is a quiet confidence that his music could move the needle for him. He hears it when fans message him about how much a certain song means to them or when he sees how certain lyrics take off on TikTok. That reaffirms to him that he is right where he needs to be. 

“I’m not one of those guys who does it for the art. I wouldn’t do music if part of me didn’t think I wouldn’t make it,” he reflected. “I want to create something better than I’ve done before. You have to have some sort of an ego to do that. You have to think, ‘Oh, I can do something that’s better and better than before.’”