A large brushed ink circle on dark indigo paper holds a magnified stretch of the comet's trail in warm gold. Beside it, the song's title, Glasshouse - Demo, is painted in pale gold brush lettering. Below the title, a torn scrap of gold-washed paper holds a hand-painted play button for the video. Further down: a short note about the song in a narrow column, and small brushed circles for the pieces either side of this one on the trail.

Glasshouse - Demo

song · Mar ’26

listen onyoutube

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released
march 2026
tags

about this song

This song is a critique of Singapore. Beautiful and safe as she is, she lacks soul. Here, we worship productivity and prosperity—a mindset left with the incredible legacy inherited from our forefathers. I argue that Singaporeans, or perhaps East Asians, have a somewhat warped perspective that looks at interactions with each other more transactionally than neighbourly. Pragmatic and competitive to a fault. Most infrastructure here were built by foreign hands because we can afford them. I believe that there is a population of youth here that will grow up knowing little of our country and feel little loyalty. Honestly, it would be difficult to describe our culture with little more than our Singlish and orientation towards outcompeting others in succeeding, whatever shape that might take.

Written and produced within two weeks for a school project. I've returned to songwriting with much stronger command of the language and a more mature perspective of life. This piece is a good benchmark for the register I write at now. I have several songs queued for production.

Experimented with AI image generators Qwen and Gemini, supported by Claude for prompts and checks.