“I’ve had a deep fascination with dramatic, conflict-oriented art ever since I was a kid,” 门尼 MONEY tells Apple Music. “I discovered through writing that this aesthetic preference hasn’t faded with time but still exerts a powerful influence on my work.” That influence is obvious throughout the 2024 concept album The Theatre, on which the artist takes on the simultaneous roles of songwriter, performer, producer and impresario. “When I write, I often imagine I’m standing both behind the curtain and in front of it, delivering dialogue to audiences of the past while waiting to raise the curtain on the stage of the present moment,” MONEY says. “If a particular lyric pricks you all of a sudden, that might be the instant your gaze locks with mine.” In stories drawn from the details of everyday life, the artist plays a series of parts across a range of settings, from expressing childhood trauma in the bleak nursery rhymes of “Doll” to exploring multiple viewpoints in the romantic tragedy of “Red”. These emotionally charged vignettes are brought to life with the same genre eclecticism found on MONEY’s self-titled debut, from restrained R&B, mellow rap and cathartic explosions of rock, to folk, jazz and icy electronic beats set against warm orchestral accompaniment. “On this album, music is more like a toolbox,” he says. “Once I have the story framed in lyrics, I select my tools to build it.” Below, the artist shares with Apple Music the stories behind three songs and how he made his musical theatre more immersive for the Spatial Audio release. “Passerby” “This one originates in the story of a friend of mine, who kept glancing out the window while we were eating. I split the song using two instances of the chorus, making three sections, or scenes, that correspond to different moods or mental states—a little challenge I set up for myself. And I added a bunch of Easter eggs, like incorporating a variation on the theme from Swan Lake into the second scene. The whole piece is in 4/4 time, but to distinguish the three sections, I packed the first and third parts with triplets. And to make the arrangement weightier, I chose physically substantial instruments—like the bass in the chorus and the guitar that plays all the way through. “In the stereo version, the biggest issue we had was that the bass frequencies clashed with the vocals, so, we were forced to cut back on the sub-bass in the chorus. That effectively muted the power of the original arrangement. When producing the track for Spatial Audio, we used layered sounds to ensure vocal clarity—and with the female vocals located higher up, we finally got that sub-bass to come out. My voice originally was absent from the centre of the mix of the final chorus, but in this version, I finally get to be heard.” “Red” “This was probably the most difficult song to write. The melody starts off in a major key but then switches to minor. And although the solo female part in the middle is in a minor key, it uses that same initial melody. So, in mapping all this out, I needed to consider many factors beyond just lyrics and music. “The rhythmic effects were constrained by the limitations of the original stereo mix. We were forced to put them all in the same place—and then cut them back to ensure a stable listening experience. But the Spatial Audio technology let us make major changes. For instance, in the original, the piano gets swallowed up by the emerging vocal effects, but here, we preserve our initial design. We re-inserted the war sounds we had previously deleted and kept the piano present to fully bring out the tense atmosphere.” “Beautiful Ending” “There was no way to achieve my design for the song using the stereo version’s two channels. We were mixing over 200 audio tracks—not just for the orchestral arrangement but tons of vocal tracks as well. At the tail end, where I wanted both a children’s choir and the voices of the album’s creators, we had to make a lot of trade-offs to preserve the orchestral sound. Fortunately, we were able to achieve my dream using Spatial Audio. When those three sections of children’s voices are wrapped in instruments, and the adult voices enter from all sides to wreath the listener in vocals, I can’t describe what happens—I just feel incredibly moved.”