The seasons are changing in Thailand, and winds thrash outside the windows in stormy Bangkok. Against the rumbling, Note dials in for a call. Her white tank top accentuates her sun-kissed glow, and her black hair flows to her waist. Even through the screen, she has a contagious energy that is as soothing as it is brilliant. Note feels like summer personified, and she brings calm to the chaos.
Perhaps her calmness is the learned composure of someone who has been in the public eye since she was a teenager. But as she tells me, she’s been sure of her destiny long before.
“I was always singing,” Note recalls her childhood with a smile. When she was 8 years old, her grandmother had Qi Gong classes that ended in performances on stage. As an extroverted child, naturally, she asked, “Hey Grandma, can I perform?” She strutted on stage, singing confidently and performing Thai dance. Those who were watching eventually started giving her tips, and in that moment, it clicked that this was a path she could take.
“Ever since I was a kid, I knew who I wanted to be, and I knew what kind of music I wanted to make, what songs I wanted to sing, what visuals I wanted to see, what I wanted to wear,” Note asserts.
And yet, why did someone so certain in herself stop making music for so long?
For years, Note Panayanggool was known as Note The Star. When 16-year-old Note went on exchange in Italy for 10 months, she used her ukulele as her communication tool when language failed. Returning to Thailand with renewed confidence, she signed up for the biggest Thai singing competition, barely having watched it before. Ultimately, she placed second and signed with Thailand’s biggest entertainment label for 5 years, moving to Bangkok alone to live out life as a pop star.
“Being with a label, of course, you have to follow them, and it’s totally normal, but I guess then it didn’t align with me. And so after the contract was over, I just did a U-turn. Instead of moving forward, I asked myself again, what did I really want?”
In her second year of university, Note landed an internship in New York. And there in the Big Apple, she fell in love with electronic music, inspiring her to start an electro-pop band named X0809 with her friend. Note describes this phase as her “rebellion”.
“Looking back now, I can see that I was a bit lost, you know? I just wanted to experiment and do everything I didn’t get to in the past five years under contract. So I just kind of went crazy a little bit, but it was so much fun, and I don’t regret anything.”
In the search for a topic to take her art, Note found ‘healing’, or in a way, it found her. She researched the various healing methods, finding inspiration from rituals and ceremonies from different cultures. As she discovered, sound healing and breathwork were the missing notes in her symphony. It was something so easily overlooked, but being mindful with every breath took effect.
“Because I’m a musician, it makes so much sense to implement the wisdom from sound healing to what I do. After that, I felt more confident in my skin, and I started wanting to do something bigger than myself.”
Last year, Note returned to the music industry under a new name: Notep. She is a singer, music producer, and DJ, but now, equally, a sound healer and environmentalist.
Diving into the world of spirituality unlocked an appreciation for nature that had been tucked away. “As an Asian, I was always taught to be grateful to those who give you life.” In Thai, the word is กตัญญู, and she found herself feeling gratitude for nature as a provider and protector.
Just the week before our interview, she helped organise a clean-up of one of the last mangroves on Koh Tao, where she had taken a course on marine biology. In 2020, she also founded “High On Your Own Supply”, an organisation that promotes sustainability and self-sufficiency, working closely with the youth on the aforementioned island.
Passionate about field recording, Note started including nature sounds into her tracks. Her most unexpected? Humpback whales. “Being with humpbacks—it was a mom and a calf—the mom was protecting the calf, like come under me. And after a while, when she saw that we didn’t mean harm, she actually encouraged the baby to come up and swim with us,” Note shares. “So it’s very magical, and it’s very humbling. It reminded me how small I am and how big and powerful and wise nature is.”
Note had stepped away from making music for a while, struggling with burnout and lost in direction. But connecting with nature and others who believed in the same things she did gave her the confidence to return. With her latest album, Metamorphogenesis, she greets the world with her new passions, converging her many roles into one. The album begins with ambient sounds, mixed with sound healing (there’s a track titled “Guided Breathing”), before turning into electronic pop with vocals and transitioning into dance music with an experimental touch.
“It was like art therapy for me to fall in love with music and make music again,” Note confesses, “I did that album for myself.”
Now, she is working on a new EP fully with her audience in mind. “Okay, I’m ready to give!” she says with a laugh. The new EP is set to be an easy listen, reminiscent of beach days that resonate with the water sign in her.
On how she hopes the audience will feel listening to her music, Note says, “I just want them [the audience] to feel peace and connect them to themselves. It could be with themselves, with their environment, with the people around them, or with nature.”
Photography: Aekarat Ubonsri
Styling: Foxla Chiu
Makeup Artist: Chanajit Dechasatidwong
Hair Stylist: Akkarachai Deedpin
Photography Assistants: Santipong Jodnok & Asawanon Chaam
Fashion Assistant: Ratchaphon Charoenkusol
Producer: Jakkrathorn Phonphai
Location: The Corner House Bangkok, PrumPlum Stand
