MANILA, Philippines — Seventeen years is a lifetime in the Manila indie scene. It is long enough for labels to rise and fold, for beloved venues to disappear beneath glass and concrete, and for the restless urgency of youth to harden into something more durable.
For We Are Imaginary, seventeen years have led not to reinvention, but to clarity.
Their self-titled third album, released this January via floppydisks, does not sound like a band trying to chase a moment. It sounds like a band that has finally stopped watching the clock. There is no scramble here, no bid for relevance. What you hear instead is patience—earned, deliberate, and confident.
Produced by Joey Santos alongside frontman Ahmad Tanji, the record is a study in what happens when a band trades proving for being. Built on a foundation of dreamy guitar rock, it moves through shoegaze and noise-pop textures—warm, fuzzed-out soundscapes that swell into tension before settling into a hard-won calm. It is immersive without being indulgent, expansive without losing its center.
An Album as Internal Monologue
Tanji describes the nine-track release as an internal monologue: a conversation that begins in uncertainty and ends not with a dramatic resolution, but with acceptance.
“This collection feels more cohesive,” he says. “There’s a sense of comfort and confidence. I guess that comes with growing with the band for seventeen years and trusting the people you work with.”
That trust powers the album quietly but decisively. Recorded at Love One Another Studio with veteran engineer Angee Rozul, the record leans into a distinctly nineties sonic palette—wide, dynamic mixes that privilege feeling over polish. It is a patient album. It allows itself hushed passages that would have felt too exposed a decade ago, then lets them rise into waves of distortion and release.
That push and pull feels instinctive, shaped by years of playing together. Brothers Khalid and Ahmad Tanji, joined by longtime drummer JJ Rodriguez, move through these shifts with an ease that can’t be rehearsed. It’s the sound of musicians who know when to fill space—and when to leave it alone.
The Discipline of Restraint
If the band’s 2016 debut, Death to Romanticism, was fueled by youthful insistence, this self-titled release feels mapped rather than charged. It is a geography of restraint.
After years of performing across Southeast Asia—from Singapore to Vietnam—We Are Imaginary has outgrown the need for volume as a means of expression. On this record, noise is no longer an end in itself. It is used sparingly, purposefully, as texture: the low-grade hum of daily life, the emotional reckoning of adulthood, the realization that not every story needs a clean arc.
The album rewards patience. It is designed to be heard in its entirety, ideally in a single sitting, allowing silence to do as much work as sound. In a culture of skipping and shuffling, it asks for attention—and repays it.
The Assurance of Staying Power
In a music scene that shifts quickly and often forgets its own history, We Are Imaginary presents a version of itself that feels assured and reflective. They are no longer trying to ride the current. They have learned how to hold their ground within it.
With a vinyl release planned for the first quarter of 2026 via Eikon Records, the band is quietly cementing its place as one of the scene’s rare constants. Not because they stayed the same, but because they stayed long enough to change honestly.
They have found clarity in the noise. And for listeners who have grown alongside them, it sounds unmistakably like coming home.
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