By Erika Kuehl | Staff Writer
Houston junior and student musician Tryston Obevoen, also known as Sinoda, is set to release new music within the next few months. He began making music before he was in middle school, and now, more than halfway through his college career, he has a manager and almost 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.
“I’ve been making music since I was a baby,” Obevoen said. “But I started releasing in high school, my junior year of high school, but it just always clicked. I taught myself a bunch of instruments, and it just made sense.”
Obevoen said when he gets an idea for a song, he typically starts by recording it in his room.
“I have a little setup in my room that I can put up, but that’s more for just fun,” Obevoen said. “I’ll send it out to somebody to master, but if I really want a high-quality tape, then I’ll go to a studio in Houston.”
In his upcoming album, which has the tentative name of “Soundtrack To My Suicide,” Obevoen said half of the songs will be happy, while the other half will be darker in tone. He plans to release the songs as singles first.
“There’s a lot of Dua Lipa sort of sounding songs, very pop-y,” Obevoen said. “Then there are some that are a lot like Lil Uzi. And then there are some that are a lot like Gunna and quite a bit of Drake vibes.”
Obevoen said one of his favorite unreleased songs, “Letter To My Ex-Lover,” was therapeutic to record.
“It was just cool to write that because it’s almost like closure, and whenever I’m in weird predicaments, I write songs,” Obevoen said. “And so that was a good one because it actually sounds good too.”
Obevoen said his top artist on Spotify last year was Lana Del Rey, and his dream collaboration would be with her and The Weeknd.
“Her music is very calming and soothing,” Obevoen said. “And her lyrics, even though I’m not a girl, it sounds very relatable. Then it’s also her aesthetic. It’s almost like her voice puts me in a spell. I’m in a trance when I listen to her music.”
After taking a break from releasing new music to focus on school this past year, Obevoen said he is ready to continue.
“I hopped off for a bit,” Obevoen said. “I was kind of off it for a minute because I tried to focus on school. And then, now that I got my grades up and [class] chilled out, school is not hard to manage.”
Obevoen said his advice for aspiring student musicians is to focus on what they enjoy making rather than on other people’s opinions.
“Honestly, just push it out without caring if people are going to like it,” Obevoen said. “And don’t overthink yourself, because usually, if you think the song is good, it’s probably good.”
Post-graduation, Obevoen said he plans to pursue a professional career while making music on the side.
“It’s like a hobby,” Obevoen said. “I’m always going to make music till I die, because I’m good at it, and I find solace, and it’s almost therapeutic in a way. It’s also just the one thing I understand really well. I’m not very good at any subject in particular, like sports, but I’m actually good at music. It makes sense in my mind, so I’m always going to do it, but in terms of rapping and releasing music and stuff, time will just tell. If I would blow up, then for sure.”
Largo, Fla., junior Tilon Thompson is a good friend of Obevoen and said he likes the upcoming album more than anything Obevoen has released in the past.
“I think he’s gone from a lot more of rapping to incorporating a lot of different styles of music into his songs,” Thompson said. “And I think he’s done a very good job of that. He sounds like he’s taken a little bit from all the major artists and made his own niche in the music industry.”
