come home, cyborg

“come home, cyborg” (produced by mitamu + Zubin Hensler) is a solarpunk fairytale album about a cyborg named HANG-E on a journey to understand what it means to be human.

Each track functions as a chapter in the story, capturing HANG-E’s inner reflections or introducing characters they encounter along the way. The project draws from the solarpunk art movement, futurism, and East and Southeast Asian mythology to imagine a world where the technologies we create live in harmony with the natural world.

I chose a cyborg as the protagonist because they are a being built from fragments of both organic and inorganic material. In many ways, the cyborg becomes a metaphor for identity itself: something we assemble piece by piece from memory, culture, ancestry, and imagination.

In a time when dystopian futures dominate our cultural narratives, “come home, cyborg” invites listeners to imagine something different: a decolonized future where nature, technology, and humanity evolve together and help us build more compassionate worlds.

HANG-E is inspired by Hằng Nga (Chang’e), the moon goddess who drank the elixir of immortality and ascended to the moon. Like the cyborg protagonist, she exists between worlds—separated from humanity yet longing for connection.

concept art

In addition to composing the music, I will also be creating the visual artwork for the project. When writing music, I often visualize the worlds the story inhabits, and drawing became a natural extension of that process. Through visual art, I explore how these imagined spaces might look and feel, expanding the narrative beyond sound.

Much of my visual inspiration comes from Japanese anime and manga as well as East/Southeast Asian folklore. These stories shaped my imagination growing up, and revisiting them as an adult continues to influence the aesthetics, emotional language, and worldbuilding I bring into my music.

Below are concept illustrations for two singles from the album, included here as visual samples of the project’s world and aesthetic. Each single visual features an item from the world of the album, both to expand its environment and to subtly comment on hyperconsumption.

moon bunny🌙🐇

“moon bunny” is also inspired by the moon goddess in East and Southeast Asian folklore. The story follows a young human girl who aspires to be a superhero (think Sailor Moon). Escapism is a recurring theme throughout the album. Some of my earliest forms of reprieve came from immersing myself in the worlds of my heroes. It was a way of empowering myself when I felt powerless.

I often imagine what it would be like if my past self met my future self. This song represents that meeting between Moon Bunny and our cyborg protagonist.

unemployed

“unemployed” is a commentary on the growing mental toll of hustle culture alongside an increasingly unstable job market.

In this track, we meet the “NEET,” a young person who is Not in Education, Employment, or Training. Media often portrays the unemployed as reclusive individuals “wasting time” playing video games, a stereotype that is usually coded as masculine. In this piece, I wanted to reverse that image.

The music draws inspiration from the “girly” PC games I loved as a child, including dress-up games and magical girl aesthetics.

“come home, cyborg” was partially funded by the community support from Kickstarter, Asian Arts Initiative and Wildflower Composers