About The Isan Project

An international collaboration of Thai and Western music The Isan Project is the brainchild of William (Will) Robinson, who has been involved in the international music industry for over 20 years as a lyricist and executive producer The idea of The Isan Project came about after Will had a holiday in Thailand in 2012, where he discovered an Isan band on the Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok. The group were performing their craft busking for money. Realizing that although the Northeastern part of Thailand, or what is referred to “Isan”, is an economically poor part of the country both in terms of natural and human resources, it does possess a strong musical history of instruments and styles.

Will took great interest in the Phin guitar, and ‘Morlam ’songs, and initially bought 500 MP3's from shopping malls to learn more about the Isan music. Falling in love with Thai culture and the people, Will moved to Thailand and presently lives in Chiang Mai. Through a good friend and drummer, Erik Hargrove, he was fortunate to meet wellknown Thai artists including Ford Sopchai Kraiyunsen of Fatboyzstaff , who were able to give Will more insight into the Isan music and the music industry in Thailand as a whole. After attending several local gigs, Will decided to visit Isan to personally discover the source of where all this interesting music came from. He took a camera crew with him to create a video blog, and started to develop a few of his own musical ideas using sounds from Isan and fusing them with contemporary music from the Western world. He has travelled across the country to both ‘unseen’ and popular tourist destinations such as Nong Han, Yasathon for the Bang Fai Festival, Nakhon Pathom for the Boat Illumination Festival, Phanom Rung for the Phanom Rung Festival and Soi Morlam in Udon Thani, to name a few. While travelling around Thailand, Will penned “Thailand Amazing Thailand”, which was performed by Pui Duangpon Ponghasuk and went viral with over 70,000 shares and 100,000 Likes. From such humble beginnings, The Isan Project has now grown into a collaboration of some great musicians and artists from Thailand, USA and the UK under, enjoying chart success in the UK with “Strangers” that made No.11 in the Music Week Pop Chart and “Forever” (Remix) which made it to No. 21, while “Nana” (sung by Errol Reid and Pui Duangpon) took top spot in iTunes Thailand. These songs were incorporated into The Isan Project’s debut album, “The Spirit of Isan”, which was released in 2015.

The Isan Project’s second album, “Beautiful North”, is being released on 31st March 2023, and includes a song specially co-written by Will and Daniel Ryan, “Where the Eagles Fly”, as a tribute to British hero, Vern Unsworth, who masterminded the rescue mission of the 12 Wild Boars and their coach from the Tham Luang cave in July 2018. The song is performed by Daniel, who Will developed as an artist from the age of 15 with his first single being “Oh No, Not I”. After The Tourism Authority of Thailand sponsored the launch of “Where the Eagles fly” they invited Will to write a theme song for Thailand which Will and Daniel penned song called “This is the moment” which is performed by Disney voclaist Sonna Rele. Will made a video in 23 locations around Thailand in hope of encouraging tourists to come back to Thailand after the pandemic. Most recently the writing duo penned "Amazing Thailand Dance With Me" and Will took to the road once again to put together a video for the song which is tipped by many to be an all time favourite.

Projects of this size requires many creative people. Although Will is the Executive Producer, Producer and writer of the music for each of The Isan Project’s songs as well as the Producer of the videos, he has engaged about 26 specialists in the musical field - - five co-writers, five sound engineers, a mix engineer, three co-producers (including Bee Gee Robin Gibbs’ producer - Michael Graves), mixing engineer Livingstone brown,two re mixers, ten musicians (including James Brown’s drummer, Erik Hargrove), six singers including Mariam from B5 and Errol Reid (ex-front man of China Black). While the songs have been recorded in Ohio, Copenhagen, Pattaya, Bangkok Singapore and London, the videos have been shot all over Thailand and in New York City. In addition, choreography on "Forever" has been created by one of the world’s best choreographers, Jermaine Browne, who has worked with such famous entertainers such as Justin Timberlake, Jennifer Lopez and Christina Aguilera. The Isan Project combines traditional Thai and Isan musical sounds with modern Western lyrics and music, and take these songs to the world stage, songs from The Isan Project can be downloaded from iTunes, Apple, Spotify, and Amazon. For more information, please visit www.theisanproject.com