When you see your city through squinted eyes, you can turn the imperfections and flaws into bokeh, into cotton candy, into lens flares. This is a love letter to the cities that leave us gasping in both awe and frustration, the cities that we want to escape to, the cities that we’re trapped in. Featuring 7 tracks of 80s-tinged vaporwave and vaporjazz that are really just synthwave tunes dressed in cocktail garb.
About the Collaborations
After a long hiatus, City Scape is my first release for 2026, borne out of a collaboration with long-time bandmate and producer Jappy Xavier, who is based in Munich and plays guitar on weekends. That first synthpoppy and jazzy tune, “Brand New Morning” turned into the inspiration for an album of instrumental songs about cities and urban life.
The second track uses drum programming from an ancient session with One Lone Clone (aka Karlo Samson), former bandmate and Manila-based writer/editor who makes beats for fun. He was also 1/3 of our triphop trio, Clone. Check that link out for some nostalgia.
About the Tracks
- Brand New Morning is the sort of hopeful, energetic track I love to wake up to. A track for sunrise walks or early morning coffee on the balcony when no one is up yet and the world looks fresh, your outlook optimistic. I gave Jappy the barebones of the track and full freedom to develop lead guitar melody and rhythm guitar parts. The outcome was better than anything I could’ve come up with, which is entirely the point of collaboration.
- Echoes of a Dying Star was birthed from some old drum loops that Karlo and I recorded either in Marikina in 1999 or in a tiny apartment in Makati in 2000 affectionately known as “Crime City” for the sheer amount of petty thefts and burglaries that happened in the condo units. We were going to use these drums for a remix project of some Pinoy nu-metal band whose stems we had gotten hold of. The remix never went anywhere, but the loops we generated from those sessions went on to become the foundation for a bunch of tracks in my first album, Yes, I am the Soft Asian Enemy.
- Midsummer Showers is the only song on this album with vocals. I was making the chillout/downtempo track and realized it might benefit from a line or two that could be repeated as the chorus. And so I wrote: “Rain falls down on you and me; blessing of eternity. Rain falls down on you and me; we align for all to see.” Why those words? I got married in June 2000, and midway through the open-air reception, rain fell. Which many would despair at. We took it as a great excuse to go indoors and have more fun. Some old-timers said this was a blessing from heaven. I’ll take those any day.
- Seeing Mercury is another downtempo track in a minor key, with some synthesizer soloes inspired by some really cool synth plugins from Cherry Audio, namely their Mercury 4. Why so much downtempo? I loved listening to all the Ibiza chillout collections back in the late 90s and 2000s. And my secret wish was always to have had a track of mine included in one of those compilation albums.
- Cosmopolitan Skylight reminds me of late 90s jazz fusion but slowed down and using 2020s recording techniques. Also, no sax solo. Organ solo, sure. So I’ll call this a vaporjazz/vaporwave track even if purists disagree.
- Hammock Time has the sort of dreamy lullaby-like intro that is often associated with peaceful Nintendo Wii game menu screens. In fact, it sounds as if it were performed on a mid-1990s Yamaha electone organ, the snazzy ones with the MIDI recording and sequencing? Yes those. This is a downtempo track (also pretty vaporwave, if you ask me) that takes major melodic inspiration from Brasilian bossa nova particularly with the major to minor chords in the chorus. Bossa nova has always been a love of mine.
- Supercubed is my midtempo album closer that starts quietly and builds up using a Fatboy Slim-type drum pattern. Key word here is optimistic and positive.
Credits
- Jappy Xavier plays all guitars on “Brand New Morning.”
- One Lone Clone (Karlo Samson) recorded the drum programming in “Echoes of a Dying Star” in a session that dates back to possibly 1999 (though probably closer to 2001).
- All other music and vocals by Lionel Zivan Valdellon.
File under: #vaporwave, #vaporjazz, #retrowave, #synthwave