Still Awake, Still Here

Nine months after their previous work "City Lights / vanilla," EMDEE1 & MCpero's single "Still Awake, Still Here" will be released digitally on February 13, 2026.
Featuring rapper MCpero, beatmaker EMDEE1, material arranger Shintaro Aoki, mixer/mastering engineer taiyaki, and artwork by meow. Reuniting the same lineup as the previous work "City Lights / vanilla," this new release is not merely a re-recording or remix of "City Lights."
It is a version born from another approach, recapturing the dawn lights gazed upon that day from a different angle, interpretation, and emotion.
From the crisp, dawn air of "City Lights," the scene shifts abruptly to the stage of "Still Awake, Still Here": a clear winter night, a biting cold. Only deep silence envelops the sparsely populated streets, and the sight of fine snowflakes drifting quietly and slowly from the midnight blue sky is imbued with endless loneliness.
In that cold where even another's warmth feels distant, when you catch sight of a streetlight's faint glow and touch its gentle light, surely everyone has that moment of remembering and relying on the certain warmth residing within themselves-the warmth of their own body temperature.
EMDEE1 & MCpero's minimal yet delicate sound design in this work, "Still Awake, Still Here," evokes an introspective tranquility, like gently embracing oneself in solitude.
Continuing from the previous work, meow's artwork shifts perspective to the narrow gaps between crowded buildings, affirming solitude.
The sky's color is the darkness before dawn. Can you see, faintly within the frame, that space depicted in the artwork for EMDEE1 & MCpero's previous work, "City Lights/vanilla"? Somewhere on the same timeline, in the same city, you sense another someone trying to see the night through. What the falling snow signifies and what it affects is left to the listener's heart.
"Still awake. Still here."
Doesn't it sound like someone, somewhere, listening to this song while staring blankly at a streetlight, murmurs this to no one in particular?