Working independently from his bedroom studio, Tarune has been embraced by Spotify’s indie-folk community, amassing over 13 million streams for his latest track, ‘Met A Girl’. Now, Tarune releases ‘ma 間’, an introspective song that delves into his emotions from early childhood, when his mother left for Taiwan.

Inspired by the Japanese concept of negative space and influenced by Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki’s focus on using calm moments to enhance storytelling, ‘ma 間’ explores themes of abandonment and confronting fears and vulnerabilities. Written and produced solely by Tarune, with mixing by Jake Aron (Solange, Snail Mail), this powerful and emotive track effortlessly blends delicate guitar chords with nostalgic melodies.

Delving introspectively into the track, Tarune shares “I believe that this song fell out of me so that I could hold myself in the ways I always needed, and maybe never felt I was. I needed this permission to take the time to feel, slow down and find the space to just be.”

Listen to the track…

We connected with Tarune to talk through the track, its emotive inspiration and his highly-anticipated upcoming project, ‘let him cry’.

Hey Tarune, how did your journey into music begin? And what were some key moments that led you to pursue it seriously?

My dad was one of those guys that had musical instruments in every crevice of our apartment. He just loved collecting all kinds of guitars and drums, percussion. During my childhood, he would host these group meditations at our house where everyone would chant and grab whatever instrument and join in. I remember when the group got big enough, I could sing my heart out and no one would hear me. He got me classical Spanish guitar lessons when I was 6, and then I was picked to sing as a Soprano (the highest voice!) at the St. Marks church choir here in the East Village. I’d always loved singing, and I admit, I had a couple horrible myspace bands with my friends, I recorded crappy demos on GarageBand and played many an empty acoustic gig at the Bitter End for the couple of friends who’d show. I did some musical theatre in middle school and High School, but always felt forced to do it since I was an actor who could sing. Considering music was about all I did with most of my free time, it’s crazy I didn’t call myself a ‘musician’ for real until I released my first song as Tarune back in 2019. It was the millionth version I’d recorded of my song Goodnight Baby. I just got really stoned one night and recorded a whole new version, sent it to my best friend Ivanna and she rushed over to my house at 2am and forced me to submit it on the spot. Thank God for her, if not for that, I might’ve kept on editing the demos in my bedroom til’ the end of time.

Your music has been described as a blend of indie-soul and bedroom pop. How would you describe your musical style, and what are some key influences?

Oh man. I received a message once and someone said ‘I’ve been going to sleep to your song for two years. Thank you!’ That message really helped me understand my own music. I often make music to help myself slow down and feel something. Influence wise, Frank Ocean’s Blonde & Endless, of course, Nick Hakim’s first EPs. Those meditation chants I learned as a kid… James Blake’s collage of a first album. Brazilian music, Bossanova, Luiz Bonfa’s Brazilian guitar record Introspection. John Lennon. Bon Iver. Dijon. And growing up watching Alicia Keys on MTV Top 20 every morning as a kid.

My sound really became a more intentional blend of what I made early on out of necessity. With cheap microphones, no studio, and a lot of feelings. I like to sample in personal voice memos, or field recordings if they make sense for cinematic effect. I have crazy respect for newer artists like Dijon and Adrianne Lenker, who make music with an even more stringent philosophies of ‘analog’ and raw-ness’. I embrace the fact that I prefer a messy sound, as long as it’s musical. I like how a camcorder recording sounds from 2004. I want to hear the background noises outside the window when I’m recording, the defects. And as a film/TV actor for years, I have this unique muscle of sharing-vulnerability, which I think helps with a more honest writing. My friend Samia who was an actress before she went into music full-time inspires me a ton; She does a kind of uber-vulnerable confessional that is so powerful. I think all that crosses over together to make whatever this Tarune sound is.

You’ve just dropped your latest track, ‘ma 間’, could you talk through your creative process for the track?

I’ve written love songs most of my life, but last year I was starting to focus more in therapy on how my mom left when I was a kid, how it’d affected me. I was just out of a session and recorded an improvisation on my voice memos. It was this 7-minute introspective confession. I listened to it on the subway a bunch of times the next day and cried a lot. I ended up borrowing my friend’s empty loft before she moved in and recorded there for a couple weeks. Because it was so empty, the reverb was naturally lush and echoey, like a church. There are so few places like that in New York. I eventually recorded a full take and built the final version of the song on top of that. I kept the first half really sparse and gentle, and built out the second half to feel like this ‘cinematic dive into my childhood’. I even recorded a pitch-shifted voice of myself as if it were my younger self, something I’d wanted to play with since I found out Frank Ocean had done it on ‘Ivy’. I made it so he (little me) harmonized with my voice. It ended becoming a really cathartic track for me, especially the final minute that sort of opens up into this dream world.

For mixing, my friend Sarah Kinsley introduced me to this awesome engineer Jake Aron, who’d had worked on this L’Rain track that blew me away last year. He really took it to another, otherworldly place, but also glued it all together. I actually got the final mix while I was on the train (again), but this time I was in Taiwan with my mom. I remember hearing the final version and crying, looking out the window as the countryside flew by. That’s when I knew that it was done.

‘ma 間’ touches on themes of abandonment and personal growth. How did you channel these intense emotions into your music?

Around this song, I was cracking open my abandonment issues in therapy, and having some really candid phone conversations with my mother about why she’d left, communicating our feelings around it. Along with that, my therapist and I had started exploring this idea of ‘speaking to your inner child’, which had me emotionally raw and exhausted after my weekly sessions. My song ‘ma 間’ came from all this self-work: a song that was essentially a therapeutic stream of consciousness from my inner child. A confession of all the things he had needed to say to my mother, and admission of my avoidance. So, it naturally became an extremely personal track, and the process of writing it, even recording it, was in and of itself a healing and cathartic experience. Every time I play it it unlocks new feelings and gets me into a sensitive state, which is really why I do any of this in the first place.

You cite an interview with Hayao Miyazaki as an inspiration for the track, how did the Studio Ghibli co-founder influence the single?

Yes, I learned that the concept of ‘Ma 間’ in Japanese means ‘negative space’ or ‘emptiness’. I’d read an interview in the New York Times about Hayao Miyazaki (whose films I grew up obsessed with of course) and he’d spoken how ‘Ma 間’ deeply influenced his filmmaking — it was about embracing the space, the silence in-between. So, there was this inspiring meaning in Japanese art, and then, of course ‘ma’ is short for ‘mother’. At the same time, through therapy, I was learning that my pain was not attached to my mother herself, but actually the space that she’d left behind. This became a powerful concept that I wanted to incorporate into the song’s creation process — so I borrowed my friends empty loft to record it in, and used a special recording technique to capture as much of the stereo reverberations of the room as I could. This way I could really hear and feel that ‘space’ as my voice echoed throughout it.

‘Ma 間’ is not just mother, and not just emptiness — it is the relationship with that emptiness. So, I sang into the empty space and recorded it the best I could.

You were raised in New York to a family of Italian-Taiwanese heritage, do you find that each region has inspired your music?

On the Italian-American side of the family, we loved Frank Sinatra, and I learned a few of his songs to play after Christmas eve dinners. I’m sure his gentle crooning influenced my music, remember learning lots of Jazz oldies on the guitar in my teens. On the Taiwanese side, there were so few Asian-American artists I felt I could emulate, and I’d had a real disconnect with my Asian side, due to my distance from my mom.

In retrospect, I noticed that I had gravitated instead towards artists who were mixed like me— I remember loving Sean Lennon’s music, John Lennon’s half-Japanese son, and a band called ‘the Morning Benders’, whose band members were all mixed Asian. (They’ve since changed their name, but their last album Big Echo is absolutely incredible.)

I have found that in being a mixed person, the search for my own identity, in this new space, becomes a part of the music itself. I love to explore the mixing of genre, influences, and hopefully am creating my own new kind of niche.

You’ve earned numerous acting credits for roles in ‘Iron Fist’, ‘Catfight’ and ‘Sharper’. How do you balance your musical and acting career?

In the midst of working on this album, I began reading Rick Rubin’s ‘The Creative Act’, which spoke on learning to put yourself first before the audience. It was a somewhat radical thing to hear for me. I’d been acting most of my life, and a lot of being a kid actor is learning to ‘get approval’. A big step for me for my music was realizing that creating music, at its best, is an act of expression in my individuality. A chance to tell my own story. I’d spent so much time trying to fit into other’s stories that I had little idea of what my own really was. I think the inherent vulnerability of acting really helps me be an artist who can share my emotions in a more visceral way through music.

Acting can often be a waiting game, since a lot of it is out of your control. I’d already been recording music in my downtime between jobs, so I just decided to prioritize it a lot more because it was giving me such personal purpose and starting to pick up. Auditions would come and go, but a lot about growing as an actor involves literally having life experiences. And the therapeutic work that was sparked from my music has become pivotal to my understanding of myself.

What can we expect from your upcoming artist project this summer? Are there any themes or styles you’re particularly excited to explore?

Yes! My project ‘let him cry’ hopefully expands a lot on these ideas I’ve mentioned. It’s got a varying degree of themes represented in it, and I explored a bunch of new genres. ‘let him cry’ opens with a phone call with my mother, and goes right into the first track ‘ma 間’. From there, I like to believe that it explores the many ways that my trauma with her forever changed the way I love and find love for myself. It is an expression of joy, grief, loss and healing. Also, I’m just really excited for the way that the tracks lead into each other, and to share this last year or two of what I’ve been experimenting with. Hopefully people will find themselves slowing down with this project and taking a moment with me to just feel.