Album được phát hành lúc 10/10/2025.
1,6 nghìn từ, trải khắp 14 lượt.

To the Cities I've Never Known Nghe tại: Bandcamp, YouTube (danh sách phát), Spotify, Apple Music

Circlejourney ✑ booklet interior

“There is no place that is not haunted by many different spirits hidden there in silence, spirits one can "invoke" or not. Haunted places are the only ones people can live in—and this inverts the schema of the Panopticon. But like the gothic sculptures of kings and queens that once adorned Notre-Dame and have been buried for two centuries in the basement of a building in the rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin, these ‘spirits,’ themselves broken into pieces in like manner, do not speak any more than they see. This is a sort of knowledge that remains silent. Only hints of what is know but unrevealed are passed on ‘just between you and me.’”
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (translated by Steven Rendall)

Circlejourney ✑ booklet commentary

Can we ever truly know a city?

By the time we believe we’ve distilled its essential nature—strained it out of that bright chaos of sensation and emotion—wouldn’t it have morphed into something different?

What do we have but the stories we tell about them?

I love writing songs about those stories: the ones we tell about places, that become those places in time. I see it as one of the wonders of music, that we can conjure landscapes, scenes, and atmospheres with simple turns of melody and phrase.

To the Cities I’ve Never Known is a compilation of my favourite songs from the past two years. Some are about narrative and imagined worlds. Others are about cities that are hazy from years of distance; yet others are snapshots of scenes that now only exist in memory.

All of them are about the places that haunt me wherever I go. Enjoy!

The Fall Nghe tại: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music

Circlejourney ✑ booklet commentary

Undertale, am I right? I wrote this song for a 10th anniversary Undertale + Deltarune album. I won’t repeat the full commentary here, but it’s inspired by the interpretation of the Undertale intro where Frisk is on Mount Ebott for a suicide attempt.

I guess it is somewhat my style to take a dour, even ~edgy~ theme and turn it into an upbeat, optimistic song. I relate to that version of Frisk standing at the top of the mountain wondering if it would be better to end it all, who went on to save everyone else in the process.

Glad I could finally pay tribute to a game that has changed many lives. It was cathartic to lyrically portray the notion that you mean the world to far more people than you could possibly imagine.

Down the Road Nghe tại: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music

Circlejourney ✑ booklet commentary

Down the Road came to me in a dream where I was still a teen living in Singapore. In the dream, I was producing this song in FL Studio, and I listened to the chorus so many times that it was still stuck in my head when I woke up.

I’m a part-time country music aficionado; beyond the predilection for the major pentatonic scale and lyrics about mundane details of everyday life, I love the way many of them tell a story that gradually changes the meaning of a repeating chorus or refrain.

In hindsight, my love for such narrative songs heavily influenced my songwriting style, and that’s probably why dream-me chose to make one in homage to that.

Hauntsong Nghe tại: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music

Circlejourney ✑ booklet commentary

Hauntsong began as a 6-instrument song for NECROTHEATRE, but I always felt like the composition was suited to a full orchestral piece, so I went ahead and expanded the instrumentation.

House of Haunts tells the story of a cook-for-hire who joins the titular house and becomes trapped in a game where newcomers must face a new opponent every night, either defeating them or being fed to…whatever lives in the pit. It's eerie, it's gay, it has astronomical symbolism. Various lines here reference the manor’s many rooms and past inhabitants.

This song also has a visualiser animation courtesy of SketchyCC—check it out here!

Bird Song Nghe tại: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music

Circlejourney ✑ booklet commentary

I don’t know how much I’ve said about my plans to write an Eagles and Swans musical, but I’ve only ever released one other song under this concept: Memorialisation.

Bird Song is the second. It was conceptualised as a character song for Hollia, a birdkeeper who inherited her job from her parents. (Hollia is also the character featured in the track art for Idyllic.)

The introductory piano refrain and the line “How can you miss something you’ve never had?“ have existed in my MIDI drafts since 2016 or so, but I never had any push to complete the song...

...until I had a dream about writing a four part vocal harmony that just happened to have the exact chords I had envisioned for Bird Song. I recorded it the minute I woke up and, just like that, the song fell together. First the piano draft, then the orchestral rendition.

Wherever You Were Nghe tại: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music

Circlejourney ✑ booklet commentary

Wherever You Were is a character song for Marin and Cielo, the deuteragonists of my webcomic Compass who spend the story sailing in search of the edge of the world. It was an absolute privilege to collab with Céleste on this; I sing Cielo’s part and she sings Marin’s.

Long before they meet, the two sense there’s something they are searching for without knowing what it is. The lyrics gesture at the sense of déjà vu they have when they see each other for the first time in a port city.

Wherever You Were was initially released by itself, and I wrote a big block of commentary to accompany it. I’m so pleased with how it came out that I decided to rerelease it here with improved production.

No Wonderland Nghe tại: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music

Circlejourney ✑ booklet commentary

No Wonderland was written as a character song for bonebark’s Justin Hallworth, a nightclub owner with more issues than the New York Times. The lyrics explore his turbulent life and the problems he’s made a habit of ignoring.

This song continues to be one of my favourites, especially lyrically. Few things feel better than coming up with satisfying paired internal rhymes, and the song’s slow tempo gave me room to sneak in a lot of these.

Equator Nghe tại: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music

Circlejourney ✑ booklet commentary

I wrote Equator the day before I left on a trip back to Singapore, and it ended up being about that moment in time.

Usually, these kinds of songs are about escaping to a tropical paradise...so I wanted to subvert that aesthetic with lyrics that are instead about wanting to go home.

跟我一起看大海: come watch the ocean with me
海浪代表我的爱: the ocean waves symbolise my love

The latter line is structurally a nod to the titular line from 月亮代表我的心 (the moon symbolises my heart).

...and scene Nghe tại: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music

Circlejourney ✑ booklet commentary

...and scene was inspired by the art piece by DDP for the Unofficial MSPA Fans’ Fondly Regard Illustration. (For that album, artists drew their illustrations first and then musicians created tracks based on them.)

The painting features Ardata from the Hiveswap Friendsim, a livestreamer who tortures trolls for her audience’s entertainment. A completely sound way of coping with your problems if you ask me.

I wanted to hint at the disjoint of her on- and offscreen identies and the way the horror of her daily doings seep through the cracks in her facade, no matter the image she projects on camera.

Postcard Lullabies Nghe tại: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music

Circlejourney ✑ booklet commentary

Postcard Lullabies is the most biographical song on this album. Here I go inventing a spectrum of biographicality just for this album, but if the majority of these songs are a 1 – 3 on the scale, then Equator is a 7, and this one is a 10.

This song was originally intended to be the third track on my EP Love Letters, but for various reasons, it finds its home here instead.

I could go on for ages about all the significant details here, but the most important is the quote of Interlude, a song that (to my knowledge) is not publicly available to listen to and will likely remain that way. Unearthing the stems for that song in an old USB drive is what made Postcard Lullabies come to be.

Dreams and Wakes Nghe tại: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music

Circlejourney ✑ booklet commentary

Dreams and Wakes is the second track on this album that was made for UMSPAF’s Fondly Regard Illustration. This one was inspired by SelanPike’s illustration of Problem Sleuth (main character from the comic of the same name) using his final attack Sepulchritude, rendered here in the Renaissance Piéta motif.

Dreams and Wakes aims to evoke the feel of transcendence and the deific themes of the comic scene and the art piece. Why does dreamy dancepop sounds like gods and angels to me? Not sure, I just rolled with it.

I had many candidates for the penultimate track, but of my repertoire from the past 2 years, this is perhaps the track I’m proudest of, and I wanted it in my public discography.

Time Keeps Marching Nghe tại: Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music

Circlejourney ✑ booklet commentary

As a teen, running away from home/school was how I coped with feeling like I wasn’t enough. Time Keeps Marching speaks to that: the solace of vanishing into the unknown, the magnet-pull of home, the comfort of knowing it will pass. (It’s probably a 5 on biographicality.)

The project was initially spliced together from two different drafts that happened to have the same chords and syncopated rhythm—one with the bells and strings, the other with the piano. I meant for it to be instrumental, but after a few listens I sensed a sparkle that compelled me to start singing lyrics over it.

I knew the layered sections needed multiple singers to distinguish the various voices. I’m incredibly grateful that I got to collaborate with Ucklin and Waltz and for how much their vocal talents add to the track!

Rainy Sunday

Circlejourney ✑ booklet commentary

Rainy Sunday was written in March 2025, while/about waiting for Tropical Cyclone Alfred to pass. I recorded the entire songwriting process, which you can watch on YouTube.